Stringer Gives City Poor Grade in Boosting Minority Businesses

By PAULETTE GINDI

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer gave a D+ grade to the city for its inadequate promotion of women and minority owned businesses for giving only 4.9 percent of $21 billion in available funds to the group this past year.

The evaluation came after the release of Stringer’s fourth annual “Making the Grade” report, which is New York City agency’s report card on minority and women owned business enterprises, analyzing the performance of the city and its individual agencies on their spending on Minority and Woman Business Enterprise.

“The issue is about growing our neighborhoods by delivering real, community-level wealth creation,” Stringer said. “It’s critical to tackling our affordability crisis, and let there be no doubt that the city has a long way to go.”

The report uses data from the comptroller’s website, CheckbookNYC, to analyze the money spent by 31 mayoral agencies on Minority and Woman Business Enterprises during the year.

Even though the amount of spending has increased compared to previous years, the city’s grade remains a D+, mainly because the agencies who have the highest spending are also those with the worst Minority and Woman Business Enterprise performance, accoding to Stringer’s report.

Stringer encouraged the city to hire a full time chief diversity officer for every agency to focus on Minority and Woman Business Enterprise accountability.

“[4.9 percent] is so small. It’s the small piece of the pie that falls on the floor,” said Stringer.