The percentage of government contracts going to minority business owners has become another political football in the race for governor.
Mayor Martin O?Malley told a group of owners Tuesday that minority business enterprise development under the Ehrlich-Steele administration “has been a fraud,” saying the city had far exceeded state performance.
After the rally at the BWI Sheraton, O?Malley told The Examiner, “In their heart of hearts, they really don?t believe in it.”
A commission headed by Lt. Gov. Michael Steele overhauled the MBE program, and its success is widely touted by both Steele and Gov. Robert Ehrlich.
“I think it is a shame there is an argument over this,” said Sharon Pinder, special secretary for minority affairs appointed by Ehrlich. “Gov. Ehrlich has clearly made it a priority.”
O?Malley said the portion of city contracts going to minority businesses went from 14 percent in 2000 to 34 percent in 2006.
“We?re making progress,” O?Malley said.
In May, Ehrlich reported that minority and women businesses got 21 percent of the $4.5 billion in state procurement made in fiscal 2005, representing $954 million, an increase of almost $400 million. Actual payments to minority business enterprises ? the most important yardstick ? totaled almost $570 million and black-owned businesses got 17 percent of those payments.
“I just don?t see where it?s happening,” said Richard Stewart, head of Montgomery Mechanical Services and one of the organizers of the O?Malley event.
David Spears, president of Hydraulic Elevator Co., agreed, saying he thought the state program is pretty much “the status quo. Money is lost big time when you try to comply with their specifications.”
Pinder, who has headed her own information technology firms, questioned whether O?Malley?s numbers reflected actual payouts by the city, since she believed “there was no way they can even track payments.”
