Michael Garner Leads City MWBE Program into Future

By Mary Alice Miller
Mayor Eric Adams came into office with the intent of making New York City more equitable. And it has paid off. Adams has appointed a record number of minorities to top posts. And he has dramatically increased contracting with M/WBE businesses, moving NYC toward compliance with Local Law 174 of 2019.

“Over the past year we have awarded the highest number of City contracts to M/WBEs ever,” said Mayor Eric Adams. “We have awarded a total of $1.59 billion to M/WBEs across the City, a 15% increase from Fiscal Year 2022, the first year of our administration.”

LL 174 requires City agencies and elected offices to establish contracting goals to ensure that a designated percentage of their contracted funding is invested in business owned by women and people of color.

NYC has approximately $40 billion in annual contracting. One quarter of the City’s total procurement portfolio is subjected to LL 174. In Fiscal Year 2023, only 5% of that $40 billion went to M/WBEs, according to a 2024 report from the Comptroller’s office. Only about 20% of City-certified M/WBEs had a contract, purchase order, or approved subcontract registered by the City.

Under Mayor Adams direction, 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.
Mayor Adams issued an executive order include the five non-mayoral agencies with mayoral agencies in M/WBE contracting goals. Non-mayoral agencies represent 70% of the city’s budget. “I’m focusing on those five agencies to make sure that they are aligned with the vision of Mayor Adams,” said Michael Garner, Chief Business Diversity Officer for the City of New York.

“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. “Communities of color and women have been locked out of building wealth and have found it difficult to get their business off the ground.”

In order to increase M/WBE contracting with NYC Mayor Adams created the first ever Chief Business Diversity Officer (CBDO). Michael Garner is the first to hold that position. Garner also chairs Mayor Adams’ M/WBE Advisory Council, which advises the city on best practices, policies, and programming to help create more opportunities for M/WBEs to do business with the City.

Last year, an effort to make CBDO permanent, Question 6 on last year’s Ballot Proposals, failed to get enough votes to be added to the City Charter.
Garner has served as MTA’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, and has worked at the Schools Construction Authority and NYCHA.

In an interview on Inside City Hall, Garner said, “These are our tax dollars being spent. Government should not only be spending tax payers dollars more effectively, but more inclusively. And if there are any barriers to entry that would prevent agencies from doing so, then we need to change state laws, create new policies, give supportive services so that these firms can bid and we can start awarding contracts.”

Explaining the need to support M/WBEs, Garner said, “Access to contracts creates jobs in those communities of color who have been historically shut out. It equals home ownership opportunities for those business owners and better educational options and health care opportunities for their respective families.”

He said, “It’s a win, win when you take tax payers dollars and create more opportunities for all businesses, not only the top tier businesses but those businesses who have been trying to get into the marketplace.”

In FY 2024, the City awarded $6.4 billion in M/WBE contracts, with a goal to award $25 billion to minority and women owned businesses by 2026, and up to $60 billion by 2060.
Garner has initiated weekly meetings with city agencies to monitor M/WBE procurement. “Procurement officers not only report to their agency commissioners, but the mayor realigned their reporting to also report to City Hall,” said Garner. “I wanted to have monthly ‘Comstat’ type M/WBE meetings and the mayor said ‘No, I want those meetings weekly.’”

“Every Monday at 3 o’clock we meet with all the agencies at City Hall and we want to know how many contracts have you awarded since last week, how many of those contracts were awarded to M/WBE firms, and what’s in your pipeline,” said Garner. “We have been laser-focused on getting those agencies to change the way that they do business.”

Bringing home the point, Garner said, “$6.3 billion two years ago, $6.4 billion last year. That’s almost $14 billion in contracts that the Adams administration has awarded. $1.2 billion to women-owned businesses, over $1 billion to Black owned-businesses, and more than $800,000 to Hispanic-owned businesses.”

He added, “These firms are getting contracts en masse for the first time in the history of the City of New York.”
Garner said the M/WBE contracting has included mainly construction, but also information technology services, architect engineers, vendors and suppliers and legal services. “The NYCHA land trust awarded 11 contracts for those services; six of those firms were NYC certified M/WBEs,” he said.

A year ago Mayor Adams created a $50 million Minority Business Enterprise Guaranty Facility, which will serve as collateral for M/WBEs who want to secure loans to work on affordable housing projects. The fund includes $25 million from Goldman Sachs Asset Management and another $25 million from the city’s Housing Development Corp.

Guarantees are often required by lenders as a prerequisite to grant loans. Not having adequate guaranty funds has locked minority owned businesses out of opportunities, leaving no alternative but to partner with large, white-owned builders.
The $50 million guaranty could potentially make $500 million in loans available to minority developers who could help increase the availability of housing under Mayor Adams City of Yes agenda.

Mayor Adams has created a centralized construction mentoring program, which will include waivers of surety bonding and policy changes that will increase bidding opportunities and faster payments.

“This program is going to allow us to consolidate 10 construction agencies in the city of New York under one umbrella and will allocate projects to the centralized construction mentoring program, which was created by the NYC School Construction Authority. [And] we are going to further diversify the construction industry,” Garner told attendees at a recent M/WBE conference.

In addition to having an annual M/WBE conference, Garner said, “We also have monthly conferences in each of the boroughs in conjunction with the Borough Presidents and the Chambers of Commerce. We are bringing M/WBE programming to where the businesses are in each one of the boroughs.”

Garner said, “We are looking to do business with our M/WBE certified firms. It is one thing to get certified. Once you get certified we are working with Small Business Services (SBS) in getting those firms integrated into contracting opportunities at the more than 50 city agencies.”

SBS Connect is an online directory of NYC Certified Businesses in a searchable list of M/WBE, LBE (Locally-Based Enterprise), and EBE (Emerging Business Enterprise) businesses certified by the City of New York.