Double disparity remains for Black woman-owned businesses: Councilmember Restler

In fiscal year 2025, the value share for how much the city spends on contracts and purchase orders declined from 17% to 8% for Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises (M/WBEs). Beyond this disparity exists another disparity: Black- and Brown-owned companies, particularly those owned by Black or Brown women, receive a disproportionately smaller piece of an already small pie. New York City Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who chairs the Committee on Contracts, oversaw a hearing about M/WBEs this past September where this “disparity within a disparity” continued to come up. “The thing that troubled me the most was when we dug into the data and looked within the contracts that are going to [M/WBEs], who’s actually getting these contracts? Who’s benefitting?” said Restler. “ I was disheartened to see that out of every 100 contracts that goes to an M/WBE firm, just one of them is owned by a Black woman [and another] is owned by a Latina.

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