The District is aiming to spend a record sum with small businesses this year in hopes of kickstarting the local economy.
D.C. on Thursday released its annual Green Book, a guide to its spending and procurement plans for the year, and set a goal to spend $1.23 billion with small businesses. At an event downtown, Mayor Muriel Bowser said the D.C. government would be an economic driver for small business enterprises, as a way to encourage business growth in the region while making government spending “predictable, sustainable, defensible.”
“This is a tool, and our job in the government is to create opportunities. Your job is to go and get them,” Bowser said.
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D.C. has used the Green Book as a way to help businesses better understand government bureaucracy, but also to encourage companies to gain small business enterprise certification. That helps them do business with other government entities, too. When it released its first Green Book for fiscal 2016, it set and met a goal of $317 million with small businesses. Last year it hit $1.16 billion, Bowser said Thursday.
