A new report from the Maryland Governor’s Office of Small, Minority & Women Business Affairs shows that the rate of Minority Business Enterprise participation increased slightly last fiscal year, which included the first six months of the Moore-Miller administration.
The new figures on participation of women and minority businesses in state contracts provide the first glimpse into a new Democratic administration striving to meet the “statewide aspirational goal of 29 percent,” which was put forward during the administration of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan but was repeatedly fallen short of in meeting that mark of minority participation.
The 17.85 percent rate in fiscal year 2023 is slightly above the 17.27 percent rate in fiscal year 2022, the last full year of the Hogan administration. The highest rate in the last decade was 27.3 percent in fiscal year 2014, the last full year of the administration of Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley. It was during the O’Malley administration in 2013 that 29 percent goal was first set, according to an executive order signed by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore last year that aimed to promote data reporting by state agencies and local jurisdictions for state government contracts.
In this file photo, State Treasurer Dereck Davis, left, speaks during a Board of Public Works meeting in Annapolis, Maryland on Jan. 25, 2023. During their first meeting, Gov. Wes Moore, center, and Comptroller Brooke Lierman, right, voted unanimously with board veteran Davis on millions of dollars in state grants.
As a candidate for governor in 2022, Moore proposed meeting the state’s own goal as a way to close the gap in wealth between Black families and white families. In the gubernatorial debate before the general election that year, he indicated the state had an 8-to-1 racial wealth gap.
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