Local New York lawmakers are urging Kathy Hochul to sign legislation streamlining the recertification process for a program centering minority- and women-owned businesses in the construction industry.
The Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise certification program is a statewide program that expands business opportunities for minority and women business owners. Contractors on state-funded projects are required by New York State regulation to meet a 30% MWBE participation goal. As a result, chances to win bids for public works jobs improve for subcontractors certified as MWBE. The MWBE certificate is highly beneficial and is valid for five years upon receipt. However, according to local lawmakers, the recertification process for this program has become vague, time-consuming, and confusing, costing business owners time and money.
According to State Senator Michelle Hinchey, the recertification process has not just become tedious but also degrading.
“And I mean the stories we heard here, it's also just, quite frankly, pretty demeaning, especially for our women business owners," said Hinchey. "...of people within the system questioning their qualifications, questioning if they could possibly know how to run a general contracting firm or know anything about the construction industry, for example. That's ludicrous, and we shouldn't be putting our small businesses through that.”
Hinchey recently attended a roundtable discussion about the recertification process at the Capital Region Chamber of Commerce. One of the panelists was Alisa Cahill Henderson, president of Duncan & Cahill Incorporated in Troy. Her company is a general contractor that first became MWBE-certified in 2010. This certification opened doors for the company, helping them work on multi-million-dollar state projects, taking on smaller chunks of the contract to install parts of the projects. Seeing this as a benefit, Henderson re-certified in 2013 and 2017. However, when the time came for Henderson’s company to re-certify in 2021, she ran into roadblocks and barriers that cost her a total of $6,000.
Her latest recertification process, after the certificate was extended from three years to five, included confusing questions.
“The recertification process, we filled everything out like we usually do, it was probably a year's worth of questions. What jobs, I had to give them all the requisitions from the jobs that I ran, I had to send in things I had signed off. It was minuscule, sort of crazy stuff. I was running this company," said Henderson. "Never had a phone call, never had a question, or never had anybody visit, but just these questions. So, the questions started to get more vague, I didn't know what they were searching for.”
Not understanding the purpose of the questions, Henderson went to her attorney who helped her file for re-certification. After a year of answering questions and filling out every document, Henderson’s request for recertification was denied. When she and her lawyer appealed the denial, the process got even more confusing.
“I went back to the lawyer, and we had to appeal within 30 days. I mean, the first letter, the dates didn't match when I had to get in. So, I called, I got a solid date I had to have it in by, she, applied for the appeal. Then you have to apply for a FOIL to get all the information that they have back," said Henderson. "I asked for a virtual interview, rather than a recertification by or an appeal by paper. So, I asked for a virtual but I was never asked to attend a virtual and then I received my recertification."
After an additional nine months of this process, Cahill was finally certified again. According to lawmakers, Cahill’s story is not the outlier, it is the norm. Business owners often spend time and money outside of their daily work to apply, answer, and appeal for their recertification. Citing these hassles, Hinchey and Assemblymember John McDonald introduced a bill streamlining the recertification process. The bill, which passed both the state senate and the state assembly, now awaits governor Hochul’s signature and would make it easier for businesses to become re-certified if there has been no change in ownership or material change in management.
McDonald said this new process, which would make it easier by automatically re-certifying qualifying businesses, is a productive way for the state to make sure its goals are being met.
"We think it makes perfect sense, because, quite honestly, the state has set some very high goals for minority and women owned business participation, sometimes 25% to 30% of the job," said McDonald. "The state needs these firms to be active and engaged and working and doing a public work. And it's kind of self-defeating when you have one agency of the state basically putting these long-time businesses in a purgatory where they really don't know their status.”
