Lincoln Restler Cites Disparity for Black Woman-Owned Businesses

Black- and Brown-owned businesses in New York City receive a disproportionately small fraction of municipal procurement dollars, according to data examined by city officials during a hearing.

In fiscal year 2025, which ended in September 2025, the overall value share for Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises dropped sharply from 17% to 8%.

Beyond that broad decline lies a narrower disparity affecting firms owned by women of color, New York City Councilmember Lincoln Restler stated during a September committee session.

“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?” Restler said.

“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,” Restler added.

White male-owned businesses continue to dominate the municipal contracting budget, which reached a historically high $46 billion disbursed in fiscal year 2025.

Certified white women- and Asian male-owned companies typically capture a larger value share of the limited funds allocated through the M/WBE program.

Black-owned firms secure about 7% of total M/WBE contracts, while Latino-owned businesses receive nearly 8%, figures presented at the hearing show.

These figures fall short of demographic realities in a municipality where Black and Brown residents make up roughly half the total population.

The municipal M/WBE initiative operates through the Department of Small Business Services, certifying enterprises with at least 51% women or nonwhite ownership.

While precursor programs existed before the year 2000, former Rudy Giuliani terminated them before a subsequent legislative bill established the current framework in 2005.

To improve tracking, the city is currently developing a new procurement platform known as B2G, mirroring oversight efforts previously deployed by New York State.

Procurement transparency remains constrained by flaws in the bookkeeping process.

Restler has sponsored a legislative bill that would require nonprofit vendors to report any subcontracting directed toward M/WBE firms.

“Nonprofits are an extension of city government,” Restler said.

“They are funded primarily by our taxpayer dollars and we can set goals in their contracts to achieve a multiplicity of benefits for New Yorkers, above and beyond delivering high-quality services to their clients. One example of that is creating more wealth and opportunity in diverse communities across our city through subcontracting with M/WBEs,” Restler said.