Revised City of South Bend Disparity Study Report

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City of South Bend Disparity Study 2020 To determine disparity ratios once utilization has been established, the next step is to calculate the availability of minority- and women -owned firms in the government's market area. Based on the product and geographic utilization data, the study should calculate weighted M/WBE availability estimates of ready, willing and able firms in the City's market. This is generally the "Custom Census" methodology recommended in the National Study Guidelines and repeatedly approved by the courts. This methodology includes both certified firms and non -certified firms owned by minorities or women. The Custom Census involves the following steps: 1. Develop directories of M/ WBEs to develop the Master M/WBE Directory. 2. Define a subset of business data to establish the availability of all firms. 3. Merge the Directory with the contract data file created during the utilization analysis. 4. Assign race, gender and 6 -digit North American Industry Classification System codes. 40 This analy- sis results in an overall availability estimate of the number of ready, willing and able M/WBEs that is a narrowly tailored, dollar -weighted average of all the underlying industry availability numbers, with larger weights applied to indus- tries with relatively more spending and lower weights applied to industries with relatively less spending. The availability figures should be also sub -divided by race, ethnicity, and gender. This approach has several benefits. As held by the federal court of appeals in finding the Illinois Department of Transportation's program to be constitu- tional, the "remedial nature of [DBE programs] militates in favor of a method of D/M/W/SBE availability calculation that casts a broader net" than merely using bidders lists or other agency or government directories. A broad meth- odology is also recommended by the USDOT for the federal DBE program, which has been upheld by every court. 41 Other methodologies relying only on vendor or bidder lists may overstate or understate availability as a proportion of the City's actual markets because they reflect only the results of the agency's own activities, not an accurate por- trayal of marketplace behavior. Other methods of whittling down availability by using assumptions based on surveys with limited response rates or guesses about firms' capacities easily lead to findings that women and minority busi- nesses no longer face discrimination or are unavailable, even when the firm is actually working on agency contracts. Many plaintiffs have argued that studies must somehow control for "capacity" of M/WBEs to perform specific agency contracts. The definition of "capacity" has varied based upon the plaintiff's particular point of view, but it has gener- 40. See National Disparity Study Guidelines, Chapter III, pp. 33-34. 41. See "Tips for Goal Setting in the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program', https://www.transportation.gov/ sites/dot.gov/files/docs/Ti ps_for_Goal-Setting_in_DBE_Program_20141106.pdf. 0 2020 Colette Holt & Associates, All Rights Reserved. 29