NYC contracting with more minority- and women-owned businesses

Mayor Adams announced Friday the city awarded $1.59 billion to minority- and women-owned business contracts under the city’s Local Law 174 program — the highest contract amount in the program’s history. This is up slightly from $1.4 billion last year.
The city spent over $6 billion in total in fiscal year 2024, which ended in July, on historically marginalized businesses, the mayor said.
“City government is leading the way in showing you can invest in communities throughout the city and still deliver a quality product to New Yorkers,” Adams said at a press conference announcing the data. “Communities of color and women have been locked out of building wealth and have found it difficult to get their business off the ground.”
Adams also announced the creation of an M/WBE advisory board co-chaired by Michael Garner, who also heads the Office of M/WBE as Chief Business Diversity Officer.
The program, which aims to boost city business given to diverse companies, has fallen short in equitably distributing contracts to Black-, Hispanic- and women-of-color-owned businesses, according to a report released earlier this year by Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller.
Adams said Friday the city’s team had improved that track record: “[The] mission was to diversify the contracts that the city was having with individuals, and the team rolled up their sleeves, and we accomplished that task. A job well done. We’re far from where we want to be, but we’re going to continue to do so.”
A ballot measure that would have, in part, made the chief business diversity officer posting permanent, failed to pass on election day last week. Adams said Friday that this wouldn’t impact the M/WBE program’s operation.
In the agencies bound by Local Law 174, which mandates city agencies to have contracting goals ensuring a designated portion of their contracted funding is invested in diverse businesses, the utilization rate, or percentage of city contract dollars that went to vendors and contracts, was 31.2 percent — the highest in the program’s history.
Around a quarter of the City’s total procurement portfolio is subject to Local Law 174 goals.