Goode wants accurate reporting of minority participation in Philadelphia

By law Philadelphia cannot set quotas for hiring minority contractors.

But a City Councilman says he can’t even get an accurate count for how much city business is won by minority-owned businesses. 

Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. says he believes the Nutter Administration is cooking the books by excluding some city contracts in its count of how much minority participation there is in Philadelphia.

“They have excluded about 20 percent of contracts in the last fiscal year which is about $150 million of the $750 million that has been contracted,” Goode said. “In some cases they are excluding contracts because they say there is little or no minority participation by disadvantaged businesses but they also have a practice of excluding nonprofit contracts and that is against the law.”

Goode says the Nutter administration excludes the contracts to boost their numbers.

“They have claimed that they have exceeded their 25 percent goal of participation which they have not,” he said. “They have only reached that goal if they exclude contracts.   They claim they have reached a 28 percent participation rate when in fact it is 22 point five percent if you include all the contracts.”

Goode has introduced a bill to end the exclusions. 

The Nutter Administration says it will comment on the bill if and when it is considered in a Council committee hearing.