Over 70 representatives from the New York Statewide Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, community groups, government and union officials were at City Hall on Wednesday to seek a settlement into the certification of of minority and women owned businesses and the city's revision to Local Law 129.

In 2005, Local Law 129 established the Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise (M/WBEs), which set contracting goals for African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic-American and Caucasian female business owners in the areas of construction, goods, professional and standardized services. The program was to solve the disparities in the number of women and minorities contracted to do work for the city. Originally 20 percent of contracts were to be awarded to those groups, but the city claimed it often fell below this goal.

In 2010, during the Bloomberg Administration, the law was revised and percentages changed. The city said the new percentages were to reflect how many companies were certified to contract with the city and conducted its own disparity study. Minority business leaders objected to the proposed change at the time, and then increasingly noticed that the projections of contracts for Hispanic-owned contracting business had dropped from 9.6 percent to 4 percent. Female business owners' contracts had increased. Under the 2005 guidelines there were no goals for women-owned construction  businesses, but under the revised rules that category became 18 percent.

In 2011, city agencies met less than half of the programs goals. M/WBEs made roughly $73 million of the targeted $153 million total sum in contract earnings. In 2010, they made only about $70 million of the nearly $313 million goal, according to the Village Voice.

"I am a bit blown away that the City of New York would create a law as a result of its own purposeful inaction that resulted in the erecting of barriers that excluded qualified minorities and women from meaningful participation in municipal procurement opportunities, only to follow that inaction up with the current inaction," said Brian Figeroux, attorney and Chair of the New American Chamber of Commerce. "The City of New York has replaced one discriminatory barrier of exclusion for another, and so the result is the same no matter how you slice it, which is that available and qualified minority and women businesses are being excluding from municipal procurement opportunities."

At the law revision hearing, Harlem City Councilwoman Inez Dickens brought up the issue of fraud and whether some contracts, intended for women, might actually go to white-male business-owners instead, "I come from a small business background, and I can think of any number of businesses that are Caucasian-owned, by men, and they put their wives, their girlfriends, their daughter, whatever, up as the owners, and so maybe you should consider a time-frame where there's been a change in ownership, principal ownership," Dickens told the hearing, according to the Village Voice. 

Frank Garcia, Chair of the New York State Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce said his group sued the City a year ago for the enacting the law and doing its own disparity study, contrary to federal law. The lawsuit claims the law's revision deprives minority and women-owned businesses of billions of dollars in economic opportunity.  

Garcia said a week ago they offered the City a settlement to allocate 20 percent of contracts to M/WBEs and they are interested in talking to Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Comptroller Scott Stringer.