By ideastream's Brian Bull
More county contracts could be awarded to regional firms owned by minorities or women, if Cuyahoga County officials adopt legislation introduced today to tackle the issue.
A recent analysis shows that while minorities make up about 43 percent of small business contractors and 5 percent of primary contractors, just over 1 percent of Cuyahoga County contracts went to minority-owned businesses over a three-year period.
Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish says he wants to pass legislation that will expand the county鈥檚 Small Business Enterprise Program, and furthermore鈥�
鈥淲e will look at --in the bidding process -- the past history of bidders as to how they have done in terms of using minority and women-owned subcontractors in the past, and also whether in past projects they鈥檝e had diverse workforce," says Budish.
"If the answer to those questions -- either one or the other-- is 鈥測es鈥�, then they can get a bid preference, going forward.鈥�
Jose Feliciano is chairman of the Hispanic Roundtable, which promotes economic and political empowerment for the Hispanic Community. He applauds the legislation.
鈥淎t the same time, it鈥檚 long overdue," says Feliciano. "We鈥檝e been working on these issues with the prior administration urging them to do something similar and it fell on deaf ears.鈥�
Meanwhile, an inclusion officer position will be created to measure compliance with the proposed laws.
Budish says, the Cuyahoga County Council will likely put them to a vote next month.