Long Beach Port Wants to Set Aside Contracts for Women and Minorities

By DAVID GREENBERG

Staff Reporter

The Port of Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners is considering doubling the amount of work set aside for small businesses, with the goal of increasing the number of contracts it awards to women- and minority-owned enterprises.

Historically, these groups have had difficulty winning business from the port, which spent $217 million last year just on construction services, its largest area of spending. Also covered are professional services and supply procurement.

Currently, the port’s Small Business Enterprise Program makes available 9 percent of its budget for those services to small businesses; under the new proposal that amount would be doubled to 18 percent.

“The big companies usually get the contacts because the smaller companies can’t qualify,” said harbor Commissioner Doris Topsy-Elvord, who is spearheading the measure. “It appears to me that most of the time the contracts are given to the same companies.”

In May, the board voted unanimously to move forward on the project, after a study was completed by the Long Beach port staff. A final version is expected to be approved this summer.

To make its larger contracts more accessible to smaller businesses, the Board of Harbor Commissioners is contemplating breaking up some of its largest contracts, valued in the tens of millions of dollars, into ones worth $6 million or less so smaller companies that specialize in only one or two tasks would qualify to bid on them.

The policy would also eliminate the months of red tape involved in even getting classification as a “small business.”

The proposal is modeled after a similar program adopted in 2001 by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which is consulting with the port on the program.

“There is a misperception that small businesses are not capable financially or organizationally to compete for contracts that public agencies tend to advertise,” said Bobbi Becker, the MWD’s business outreach program manager. “It’s absolutely not true.”

For the fiscal year ending June 30, the MWD is projected to allocate 40 percent of its contracted funding to small businesses, up from 28 percent in fiscal 2003 and 18 percent during fiscal 2002.

MWD also splits up large contracts a process called “un-bundling” when it is feasible. According to Becker, the added competition that comes with breaking up the contracts saved the agency nearly $13 million last fiscal year.

Not all large projects at the port can be un-bundled. Channel dredging, for instance, would likely require a single contract awarded to a large firm.

Topsy-Elvord wants to emulate the MWD by reducing the existing 15-20 page application for small business certification to a series of simple questions, with the answers notarized.

All businesses with 100 or fewer employees and a combined gross income of $10 million or less over three years would qualify, she said.

While attracting women- and minority-owned firms is a goal of the Long Beach port’s program, it doesn’t create specific set-asides based on race or gender, Topsy-Elford said.

The Port of Los Angeles has plans to implement a pilot program to assist small businesses, but has not yet done so.