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a 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 1 THIRD ANNUAL EPA/ STATE/ TRIBAL MBE/ WBE CONFERENCE VOLUME I1 JUNE 29, 2000 HILTON HOTEL ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO JEANETTE BROWN, DIRECTOR OSDBU MARK GORDON, OSDBU COUNSEL PATRICIA HIRSCH, OGC ELEANOR RAMSEY, Ph. D FRANK CARPENTER, HOWARD UNIVERSITY KEN REDDEN, OGC * . rn W 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2 MADAM : Good morning. Can we ask everyone on the outside to come in. Thank you. We are ready to start. Given everything that you've heard in the discussions yesterday, and we do appreciate the discussions, they were lively, good, stimulating and it's given us a lot of things that we need to go back and take a look at, and we will in fact do that.

After you've had a chance to sleep on it,

is there anything else that you thought of that you would like to raise at this time? Any questions,

questions on the proposed rule, any question you may  have had and you didn't raise it yesterday? Now is your opportunity. Don't be too shy. Yes, I need some help with the mic.

PIS. PATRICIA LOVING: Patricia Loving,

Texas Water Development Board, Austin, Texas, 1700 North Congress Avenue, Austin, 78711. .

MADAM CHAIR: Is that on?

MS. PATRICIA LOVING: Can you hear me now? Patricia Loving, Texas Water Development Board,

Austin, 1700 North Congress Avenue. I'm just still seeking some clarification on how those, what the thinking is for the exemptions, either the 100,000 or $ 250,000, and because the   is it correct then that if we give a loan, SRF program, if we give a loan to an I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1 6 17 18 19 20 21 22 2 3 24 2 5 3 entity that would be under one of those dollar amounts,

that they don` t need to negotiate a fair share goal with us? Is that what the intent is?

Could someone just clarify for me a little bit more? I would appreciate that, Mark, because if that's the intent, that we don't negotiate with them,

what goal   will we put a goal in their contract?

MADAM CHAIR: NO.

MS. PATRICIA LOVING: We will have to do all the positive good faith efforts.

MR. KEN REDDEN: And reporting,

MS. PATRICIA LOVING: And reporting, I got it. Thank you. So we would not put anything under contract for percentages?

MR. KEN REDDEN: Right.

MS. PATRICIA LOVING: Thank you.

MS. DEBORA BRADFORD: She just made a statement on SRF, did they make a choice. If it amounts   what I'm saying is, on the SRF, is it 250,000 but then you have a general exemption, do they have a choice?  I MADAM CHAIR: There are three exemptions,

MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: Exemptions posed in the alternative for SRF, the first two are just exempting them from the good faith goal negotiation, I 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 4 and there's a 100,000 1 t and a 250,000 dollar limit.

And then there's a third alternative proposed that would exempt them from everything but reporting for identified loans under 250,000. F o r all the alternatives, they would be

MADAM CHAIR: And then there is the overall $ 100,000 exemption across the board for all programs. Ellie?

MS. ELLIE WEBB: Ellie Webb, I work at Department of Inspections and Appeals, Des Moines,

Iowa. I have a real problem with that third exception.

I believe that good faith efforts is good business practice, and I don't think there should be an exception to good faith efforts.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you.

MR. DAVID BURKE: David Burke, Office of the Attorney General, Baltimore, Maryland. Where did this concept of the borrower negotiating with the state, the goal? I don't see that   I don't see any legal basis for that. I see a legal basis for the  \ I state negotiating, establishing, if you will, agreeing with EPA as to what the state's goal will be, and I see where there is an awful lot of responsibility on the state seeing to it that its loans comply with the program, but I've heard several times mentioned that 1 F"

9 10 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 16 17 18 1 2 2 c;; l 2 3 there would be negotiations with the borrower specific to a particular loan, and 4: don't see it. Could you show me with where that is3 MIS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: Where that comes from is the marching orders we have that any goal has to be related to the availability in the area of solicitation. So you're right, if the area of solicitation is the same as the state, they can just use the state goal.

MR. DAVID BURKE: We discussed yesterday the geographically specific, but where is it written that the local jurisdictions get to determine what the availability is or what the goal would be? I understand it has to be based on geographical. Did you understand the question?

MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: Right.

MR. DAVID BURKE: The distinction, because I think it's very important, particularly if EPA wants to see the state be the central force for compliance,

and I don't see anywhere in the regs where individual'

borrowers get to negotiate what the goal will be. As I understand it, a condition of a loan has to be that they will work in the good faith effort   excuse me

that they will work towards the goal. If they don't like it, they don/ t have to enter into the loan 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 6 agreement.

MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: Right. Thank' you,

MR. DAVID BURKE: Could you comment, where  is the legal basis?

MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: I think the choice,

where we looked at it is in the borrower choosing their area of solicitation and things being driven by that.

If a state wants to say, " all our borrowers for identified loans have to use our"   whatever you've gotten set up already for goals, area of relevant market areas for your goals, I don't know that there would be any problem in that.

MR. DAVID BURKE: I think you are missing the distinction I'm trying to make. For sake of argument 1/ 11 buy that there's a legal basis for being geographically specific. All right. The problem I had is what is the basis for the local jurisdiction running the show with respect to availability or disparity and getting to have a vote as to what that is. Do you see the

MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: I donlt know that we have a problem if the state wants to drive that. If the state wants to sayI " You're going to use this area of solicitation," we don't

MR. DAVID BURKE: No, no, no. Let's say 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 i a 19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 7 the state does the study or the local jurisdiction comes up with a study and it's a bogus study and t state doesnrt buy it. This concept of local, the borrowers running the show or having a vote on the state seeing to this compliance, I think itfs a totally new concept, and I would like to know the legal basis for it. And again, I understand what you're saying . about the study that will support it to be specific to that geographical area who calls the shots.

MR. MARK GORDON: I would like to ask you a question along the lines of what Pat said. Maybe we could rethink this and just basically say that the state will have to require its loan recipients to use the state relevant geographic area that the state uses and, that way, if we were to do that, there wouldn't be any need for localities or the borrowers to do anything, they would use numbers that would just get plugged in. How would you feel about that, if that was what was decided?

MR. DAVID BURKE: That would resolve that issue, I think it would, in terms of local jurisdictions, I would imagine we will have resistance on that. Y4 1 MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: I mean, I think that option is in the draft right now for the state to do 1 E"" 9 10 11 12 13 17 18 (! J 2 0 p9 2 2 i 8 that, just say, flYourre going to use our goalO8l We were trying to allow the flexibility for the locals to I have an out, if they wanted to use a different relevant geographic market to work that out with the state.

MR. DAVID BURKE: That's another thing altogether. And I don't know if I mentioned this yesterday, but off the top of my head, one alternative could be, if the state's goal shall be the goal for all loans, unless, unless the local jurisdiction has done a study and has been approved by the EPA just like the states. The state's study has to be approved by the authority and EPA. Then youIre not going to have abuse. You're not going to create an industry where people, consultants do studies to get out of

MR. MARK GORDON: D o you have a problem with that, the privity issue, since we are not in privity   the possible legal problem with that is we are not in privity with the borrowers. We are only in privity with the state.

MR. DAVID BURKE: Well, but the regs could still read the state study shall prevail unless the local jurisdiction has done a study and you've approv that study. I don't   why would you have to be in privity with the   I mean, all of these requirements,

you are not in privity with the borrower, yet the 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 3.0 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 18 19 20 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 borrower has to comply with a myriad of other aspects of the reg.

MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: But we are requiring the state to do that. The requirements are on the state to do certain things with the borrower. We are not   itls not for us to deal directly with the borrower. I get what you're saying. We will have to look at that.

MADAM CHAIR: We will look at it.

MR. DAVID BURKE: Okay.

MADAM CHAIR: Give it some serious thought e MR. GARRY KUYKENDALL: Garry Kuykendall,

Arkansas Soil & Water Conservation, 101 East Capital,

Suite 350, Little Rock, Arkansas. And I would like to piggy back on what he's talking about. And I talked to talk Connie, she works with this more than I do. On our goals, we don't have a problem with setting the state goals. It's a problem when you get into these small towns.

We had one of our towns, we asked for money from EPA, we simply asked for it, and it took out that town in an uproar and she was about to drop the whole program. And I think these small towns, they want the money to improve their water, to get better 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 18 water situations, but when you place certain requirements on any of them, they don't have the manpower on the phones or anything to do this.

And P thought that, what works for us that what we was doing is setting a statewide goal for the state of Arkansas. And I ` m afraid that what we are going to do with the SRP program is not going to be able to help the community to get the better water, you know, programs. Because if we start putting more requirements on them, especially on that kind of studies, because some of these towns are only lo,

15,000 people. Some are 8,000, 2,000. They are very small towns. And the population in Southern County is very small. So I think they would have a hard time,

and maybe wouldn't take the program serious and we could not loan the money out.

And, and it's the state that does that, as far as, if youIre a big enough state, you could break it down in quarters, sort of where your population is at, so you can maybe work on that issue in big towns.

But some of these, some of these towns got very small towns.

MR. MARK GORDON: Can I ask you a question. Do you know in your state how these small towns did their projects? Did they bid them the same c 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 11 way the state does now?

MR, GARRY KUYKENDALL: Yes.

MR. MARK GORDON: If they bid them the same as the state, then they would just use the state goal.

MR. GARRY KUYKENDALL: We stress using our will have when sitt than own goals and use the six good faith classe s, and there be a process and do all of that, and they don't no problem with that, but I think the problem is you make them do goals. And then their money is ng there and their water situation is no better what it was. \

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MS. DIONE ALEXANDER: Dione Alexander Wayne County Department of Environment. 415 Clifford,

Detroit, Michigan, 48226. I guess, taking the counter point to the state` s attorney general, I believe strongly in local home rule and, I think, as I read the draft, that if the local rules have had a different geographic parameter than the state, then the onus was on them to provide some study. If your 1 parameters were the same, you had no issue. And I think it` s relevant for all states because, if you look at most states, the urban population may be differently represented than the state as a whole.

For example, in Michigan, most of our 9 10 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 12 minority or disadvantaged businesses will be in one of the urban centers outside of the areas, so my county will be very different geographically or demographically from the state as a whole. So the onus would be on me to provide that burden of proof or evidence that I was different. But if you are working under the same parameters, I think it's a moot point,

and I would really not like to see the draft rule weakened by saying that local governments who wanted to provide that kind of supporting information could not provide it, and that they had to absolutely be held to the state standards, which is going to eliminate a lot of your minority women owned businesses who are in urban centers.

MR. MARK GORDON: It was never intended to eliminate those counties and other types of districts that negotiate separately.

MS. DIONE ALEXANDER: This isn't a ma of separate negotiation, what Ifm hearing in the changes that are being proposed on the day it is right now is that you are contemplating, as a result of the some of the conversation, that the state rule will be absolute. And I'm hearing, what if we told the local governments you just had to go with the state rule, and I would not like to see that inflexibility in there.

' L 1 I I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 1 7 1%

19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 For me itrs not an issue because I do negotiate separately, but I think i t V s an issue for the universal body here in that 1 think there are many other communities who might want to have a different standard than the state because their demographics are different or the geographic parameters are different, so itls an aside from the separately negotiated goals.

MADAM CHAIR: I see a number of heads shaking this way, as well as the other way. We will take it back, all of this back and look at it and see how we can, keeping in mind what we've heard here, and I'm sure your comments that will be coming in in writing, take all of them under consideration. I can't tell you how we` re going to end up,

Any other questions? Do you have a question, Robert?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No.

MADAM CHAIR: No. Okay. No other questions in the room?

MR. KEN SH. IDER: Ken Shider, New York State Environment Facilities Corporation. After you c B receive all of our comments, suggestions,

I recommendations, whatever by August 31; and aftef you've had a chance to review these comments or whatever, will there be a second revision document for f 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 1%

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 14 us to review and look at before its final? Thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: ItJs my guess, given all of the comments that welve received this week, we will probably have a second draft, and then we" 1 put that out via the internet and mail and we'll get it to the regional MBE WBE programs to distribute all those to the state reps. And hopefully it will be posted to our web site as soon as possible because of the difficulties. It's also on Mason Tillmans web site, so just keep your eyes and ears posted and tune in.

As soon as we come up with something,

we" 1 get it out, Most likely we will send out a second draft before we go to the proposed rule to the Federal Register. And then there's a chance for comments then as well, so you probably get three shots at it. This one, another one, and then the proposed rule itself in the Federal Register after 2001, into early 2001. So that gives everybody, I think, enough time, but you are helping us shape what we end up with now. Any other questions? That's it? Therels one in the back   two in the back.

MR. HAROLD RAINS: This doesn't really pertain to the rule, but I had an interesting discussion with an attorney this morning at breakfast,

from New York, who had defended as a defending attorney 15 a woman in New York who was registered within the MBE WBE program as owning seven different constru 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 2 3 24 25 companies. How are you going to address that so things like that stop? She didn't know any of them. She had no ownership in any of them, but they were all registered all in her name.

MADAM CHAIR: Could you give your name and your office.

MR Health Division.

MAD MR. HAROLD RAINS: The City Board and M CHAIR: Address.

HAROLD RAINS: 800 Northeast Oregon Street, Portland, Oregon, 97232.

MR. MARK GORDON: Was she prosecuted.

MR. HAROLD RAINS: Yes.

MR. MARK GORDON: What happened?

MR. HAROLD RAINS: She was acquitted.

MR. MARK GORDON: She was acquitted?

MR, HAROLD RAINS: Yes, on all charges.

MR. MARK GORDON: When you know about those kinds of things you can call them to EPA's attention and we will refer them to the Department of Justice. EPA itself does not prosecute those kinds of cases in court, but we can, depending on the max, there are remedies that we can try to take, but we wouldn't t 2 9 10 11 12 13 17 18 20 p9 22 cll 23 16 try to prosecute somebody criminally.

debarred? MADAM CHAIR: Were those companies MR. HAROLD RAINS: I'm sorry?

MADAM CHAIR: We do have a process in the federal government, when something like that happens,

and there's a falsification of information, a company this large can be debarred from getting federal funds.

MR. HAROLD RAINS: He didn't tell me all the pertinent information, I guess, for client privilege reasons, but he said that it was interesting khat she managed to get away with it.

MR. MARK GORDON: Maybe criminally, but as Jeanette said, they can be debarred. They can be suspended from doing business with the government for a certain period of time. And they can be even be barred.

MR. HAROLD RAINS: My question is, is there anything you can do in this rule to prevent that from happening? Is this, is the private certification or state certification going to solve that?  d MR. KEN REDDEN: One thing, I mean we heard comments earlier about self certification for women and that idea of having that in the final rule is something that we are going to think about, talk about e! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 2 3 2 4 2 5 17 more closely after this conference. So weBre aware of the concerns, you know, with broadening the situation and we will definitely discuss whether self

certification will remain for women business. That's one thing we are thinking about,

up to prevent fraud from occurring. how to tighten things MS, MARY KATHERINE BROWN: One area that is causing some concern is the   18m sorry. Mary Katherine Brown, from Mississippi. One area of concern is the new provision where even after the fair share goals have been achieved, that continued efforts are required. In construction projects, this may become a problem on our loan recipients because once construction contracts are awarded,

of procurement that occurs under them is change orders procurement, and usually work is in progress. the only other type So for them to have to, at that time, go through the six affirmative steps, what will happen to many of our loan recipients is the contractor, the construction contractor is going to request time extensions in order to meet the requirements and those kinds of things are going to end up being more costly to the project. So I don't know how you can do anything about that other than to perhaps look at maybe the types of procurement that you are going to require 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 17 18 2 2 c; l 2 3 3 2 4 continued efforts on.

MADAM CHAIR: When you, when you talk about construction and youlre talking about the change orders, are those new procurements?

THE PUBLIC: NO.

MS. MARY KATHERINE BROWN: NO   well,

couPd be.

MADAM CHAIR: Or are they?

MS. MARY KATHERINE BROWN: Because the only requirement under construction is that the procurement be within the scope of the original project, so it could be a nqw procurement. What is being procured could be new, but it meets the change order requirement, because it's in the original scope I of the contract.

MADAM CHAIR: So you're saying even if it's a new requirement, if they met that goal, they shouldnct have to go through the six affirmative steps on a new or any new procurement?

MS. MARY KATHERINE BROWN: It could be,

because the new procurement means a new item.

MADAM CHAIR: Right.

M S . MARY KATHERINE BROWN: We could, yes,

you could conceivably be talking about a procurement that is new, but to do the six affirmative steps at \ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1%

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 19 that point

MADAM CHAIR: Will be time

MS. MARY KATHERINE BROWN:   will be a and you're going to get   youdre going to time factor,

get a time extension from a construction contractor whenever you   whenever he is delayed, and that means you are going to increase the project costs. And it may be worth it. The decision may be that you want to see this happen. I'm just pointing out, it's going to be something that! s going to make some of our loan recipients be at an automatic disadvantage because this kind of thing is going to increase the cost of that project MADAM CHAIR: Okay.

MR. DAVE'" SHACKLEY. With the regional I [ S k" l counsel in the region of Denver.

questions, I guess conceptual in nature, and that would be, I don't know about Wayne County but the city of Denver did availability studies, did quite a few availability studies because they were in a court case over there in their program, which is a lot like the EPA or was a lot like the EPA program.

availability studies which focused on the five county area, which is the metro area around Denver, and they came up with higher numbers, which makes sense because I have a couple of So they did 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 a 1 12 13 14 15 16 17 1%

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2 0 that's where the significant portion of the minority and the business women population is. And if they advertise within that five county area, they certainly use those numbers. What happens if they advertise statewide? Do you use their numbers or do they use the state's numbers which are lower? loQ MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: They use the numbers that correlate to the geographic market area.

MR. DAVE SHACKLEY: Okay. Now I just set you up here.

MS. PATRICIA HIRSCH: I'm shocked.

MR. DAVE SHACKLEY: So we are building the DIA. So let` s pretend they advertise statewide, which they don't do, but will let's pretend they did that.

So they use some numbers in there. Then we go for a construction contract, for a construction contract to build an airport or maybe a large sewage plant, or whatever, you are looking at a national procurement which is how think they did the procurements on DIA.

They advertised nationally. Well, what numbers do they ai /

use then? See, you Jumped to conclusions. 3.

( 2 I mean that's sort of the problem with,

when you look at the numbers, a small town may advertise statewide, but certainly the procurement area, the reality is it` s going to be geographically 9 10 11 12 13 18 ( J 2 0 a 2 2 2 4 21 whatever contractors you have to have in that part of the state, unless itls a large enough project to bring people in from elsewhere.

We have a lot of these problems in our region because in North Dakota they advertise in Minnesota; that's where the contractors are. Again,

you are looking at western Minnesota, which is not exactly   there is not a high minority population in western Minnesota, but you are looking in Wyoming, my God, most of the contractors in Wyoming come from Colorado.

So part of the problem is, we're not looking at the right geographic areas, and to try to do that is almost impossible. And if you l o o k at things like equipment, well, depending on what I'm buying, I may be advertising   like there may be five pump manufacturers and for some reason I buy directly.

Well, I may have a zero percent participation level because the five pump manufacturers are a bunch of White male owned   I mean, I don't know. And it depends a lot on what particular kind of thing I'm trying to buy, especially if I'm look at things like supplies and equipment.

And then if I take to say an Indian reservation, if I have a reservation, I have two 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1 2 13 14 15 16 17 1%

1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 1, 2 2 construction contractors on the reservation that are tribal members or tribally owned,

area and do I have 100 percent MBE goal there because the two within the reservation are Indian? Or do 1 say, look at all of South Dakota, which is going to change my number significantly. is that my geographic 1 donrt know how and what's the easiest or best way to try to defend the numbers because a lot of it depends on where in the world are you trying to bring contractors from.

MADAM CHAIR: I think, Dave, that's a good darn

MR. DAVE SHACKLEY: Figure that one out,

I think I should relinquish the microphone.

MADAM CHAIR: Any other questions,

concerns or issues? No? One of the things we did do and we should have available for you at the conclusion of the conference is the summary of the draft proposed rule that Mark so eloquently gave yesterday. We are having that typed up so you can carry that home with you SO that you can use that first as a talking point when you go back to your offices and businesses to say and to summarize, basically, what we were trying to say and do in this draft proposed rule. So that   we are working on that and we should have that availability   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ia 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 23 I mean   see what I mean? We will have that available for you.

One of the other things that I didn't mention, you should have received a certificate of attendance. I know some of you needed that to take back with you to your offices to show that you were here,

that kind of thing. and also I think it helps you in your training,

There are a couple of other things that we will need to do, and as we prepare to go into the next phase of this, I would like for you all to begin thinking about where you would like to go next year or year after next. We had a couple of proposals on Tuesday when we had the state breakout that maybe we would break it up and not have one big one, have regional ones or, if we have separate   you know, two,

one in the east and one ii? the west coast or something like that, or do you want to continue?

those kinds of discussion as well. Not here, but we can talk about that later, and you can give us your recommendations. I J m open to We also have the evaluations forms,

Please fill that out. As a matter of fact, could you take a few minutes to do that: now because I know a lot of times we get up and we move and we get busy with t 1 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 24 other things, and then those things aren't completed,

and I need feedback on what you think, and that would help us in preparation for the next conference and some of the other things that wedre doing.

I see Ms. White here from the State Department who is going to come and talk to us about opportunities at the state department as another federal agency. She is my colleague and OSDBU director from the state department. She is the chair of the OSDBU council that represents all of the federal agencies, and we looked at a lot of the issues that we discussed here, in particular, women owned businesses,

contract bundling, and a lot of other things.

So she is very knowledgeable and has many years of experience, and I'm not trying to date you,

Julie, but she is my colleague. So she'll come shortly and give you an overview of what it is they have been doing and what's available at the state department. Do we have any other federal agencies here? Can we get them to come? I would like to do that before we break.

The other thing that I would like to do, when we break, I want all of us to get up and go over, go back here to see the contractors, because we brought them here so that they could be afforded an opportunity to talk to us, to show us their goods and i 4 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1 2 1 3 14 15 1 6 17 18 19 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 2 5 services and we want them to benefit from having a l l of us here. And then after   and we" l do that for quite some time. i walked through last night and had an opportunity to meet them and many of them had a lot of good products and services,

would do the same. I may call your name to see how many cards you got and who you met, so keep that in mind. so I'm hopeful that you all And then this afternoon, we" 1 come back,

I would like for the states to talk to the businessesa and discuss about opportunities that are also availabl within the state, so that you can talk to them and direct them in terms of how would one go about doing business in your state. So what we will probably do is, we will leave here today and go sit in the audience, and then have each region come up with some of the state reps to talk about whatds available in your state and how one would go about doing business with the state. is there anything else? Okay. Have you completed your form, yet, or do you need more time? Give you a few more minutes. Pass them this way. You go this way so they all end up with Dr.

Ramsey. Did everyone complete one? i Again, you can get your comments in to us on the draft rule by 31 of April   August. We will 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 5 16 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 2 6 have another draft, a second draft on the proposed rule, depending on the comments, depending on how long it will take us to get it out. But I would hope that it would be out before October, or by sometime in October, if not sooner. Ken gave me an okay, ABP right MS. WHITE: Thank you, Jeanette. As Jeanette said, I'm the OSDBU rep at the state department. Many people don't think of the state department as a potential market in the federal government. Our mission is the conduct   people just don't think we buy anything but, in fact, we spend about a billion dollars a year in goods and services to support our mission. And the kind of things we buy are from everything from common usage items that you would think of as overhead items to support an office like paper and schedules, thing for construction, architect and engineer services, and renovation of our some 2 5 0 American embassies and consulates around the world;

physical and technical security in the aftermath of the bombings in   there has been an increase in security,

and we're looking for, you know, innovative things that can be used to enhance the physical and security of embassies abroad.

We buy a significant amount of information 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 PI.

12 13 1 4 1 5 1 6 17 18 1 9 2 0 2 1 22 23 2 4 25 27 technology, support services, facilities maintenance,

local guard services to, to sort of   what was the word I was looking for3   to back up the Marine Security Guard Services at our embassies abroad and many other things. So we have an excellent track record. We did about 23 percent of domestic contracts with 8 A firms last year. We did 8.3 percent with women and 52 percent with small businesses.

We will be having a HUB Zone goal beginning in October. We were not one of the agencies that were part of the pilot program, but all the other federal agencies signed on as of October f of this year, so I believe the goal is going to be 2 percent across the board beginning October. And we will also have a veteran owned business goal beginning in October. So I encourage anybody who is, who has a product or service that fits in with some of the things I just described to stop by my booth. It's right next to the EPA booth in the kind of supplemental room over there ~

And most of our requirements are either in Washington DC or abroad.

offices in the US, so you do have to be able to do business in Washington or abroad to consider us as a potential market. But I encourage you to stop by and We don't have regional 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 3 1 4 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 2 3 2 4 25 28 talk to us. This is our booklet, and it goes in a little more detail, and I hope to see you sometime this morning or this afternoon. Thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. I guess we finished a little sooner than expected, I think we can take a break, and let's go   let's not take a break.

Let's everybody just go back here and visit the vendors and talk to them about what they have, what they are serving. We will be back in here after lunch at 1: 00.

( Morning session concluded.)

( Afternoon session convened.)

MADAM CHAIR: Hello. Any more folk outside? In this part of the conference we want to share with you opportunities that are available at the federal level, still, and also at the state level. Do I have regions   Regions 1 and 2 is here. I will start with some of the things that we are doing at EPA.

I dondt know if we had a chance to visit,

 but all the federal agencies in direct procurement have tried to put out a forecast of the procurement opportunities. This forecast is available on the web site and covers the fiscal years 2000 and 2001, This update is the second quarter update as of April 2000,

and it will give you an item description, size or z i p code number, a brief description, the type of 1 2 3 2 4 4 2 5 2 9 requirement we are looking for, whether or not it's going to be a small business, 8 A, competitive. And when we say that, that's usually large, multiple awards,

estimated dollar range and also the office small business set aside and that gives you an from which itls corning from.

It gives you an indication as to the issuance date of the solicitation,

date, and then a point of contact in the Office of Acquisition Management, probably the person or someone working the person who would be the contract point of contact. This information is, again, on the web site.

You can also find a lot of information of the solicitation themselves posted to the web site. A lot of what we do is electronic, so if you are a business seeking to do business with EPA,

have access to the internet,

your best interest because a lot of our solicitations go up on the internet. the target award if you don, t that's going to be not in We do the questions and answers on the internet.

area of small purchases, I think a lot of the awards are made, bids are submitted via the internet, awards are made, and that's it. We do not turn around   is that right, Rosemarie? The tech   down on the internet, and in the Rosemarie Nance in the back is the agency advocate. If have you any concerns on competitive,

we've been   I think we are up to about 9 6 percent of we are, we have" gotten away from a lot of the sole sources. We still have a few, but it's limited. I So again, I would strongly encourage you MS. ROSEMARIE NANCE: My phone number?

MADAM CHAIR: Yes. 202

MS. ROSEMARIE NANCE: 202 564 4321.

MADAM CHAIR: 202 564 4321. One of the different. There are some under the 8 A statutes, you 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 17 18 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 331 amounts without competition.

You can't do that with any other minority group, and that is something that they have there. And we are strongly encouraging and pushing to   with the tribally owned firms and/ or tribes, Alaska native corporations, SO I would ask you to take a look at this. This may be something that you can take a look at. I'm not sure how you all do business back home in your states, et cetera, but this may be something that would help you,

I'm also told to inform you that, when our web site is available,

very soon, you will be able to reach us at WWW. EPA. GOV/ OSDBU.

your web site addresses as I requested. I'm hoping that you did. For those of you all who also have web sites, I think it would a be a good tool and resource for the small business community link. So if we haven't taken care of that, let's do that. We are trying to do as much, and this is throughout the federal government, one stop shopping, so when you go to one web site, you find a lot of information that links you to other places.

encourage you to take us up on that as well. I'm also told we have the   these are ready, then? and I'm hoping that's got to be I don't know if you all provided us So I would strongly 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 5 1 6 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 3 2 MR. GORDON: Yes.

MADAM CHAIR: We have the synopsis of the major elements of the EPA DBE rule, draft rule and preamble   still doesn't say grant   oh, staff draft as of June 19, This is available; and we will give this to all of you all so you can take this back. It will summarize what Mark went over to better assist you in explaining what we covered here or how it` s going to impact you or what you need to be concerned with, so we do have that.

MR. GORDON: It's available now. Itrs available in a box   sorry for pointing   itls available at the front table on the other side of the wall. There should be enough copies for everyone and they are in a box.

MADAM CHAIR: We will get them to you.

What I would like to do is, MBE WBE coordinators to come up, along with the state reps, and you a11 can talk about opportunities. And then we can start with Region 1. And I ask that, too, Sharon, we do have to take an important call at quarter of, Sharon, and I will leave out and then come back, if you don't mind.

MS. SHARON MOLDEN: Region 1 is Boston,

Massachusetts, and we cover six New England states,

Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 3 3 Maine and Massachusetts.

Opportunities, current opportunities we have, we are still in the process of awarding a contract for an 8 A set aside remedial project. It's valued at $ 3 million. We have a number of brown field projects going on in the states of Connecticut,

Massachusetts and Vermont. We have over $ 175 million out in our SRF programs, and in all six of our New England states.

If you are interested in doing business in the New England area, you may reach me on   I will give you my telephone number, but there` s also a web page as well. My telephone number is area code 617 918 1062. That's area code 617 918 1062. You can also view our information on our web page,

WWW. EPA. GOV/ REGION P.

That pretty much sums, if you have other questions regarding specific opportunities for your particular standard of industrial class or types of work that you might be interested in doing in the New England area,

over the next day and a half. Thank you. I would be more than happy to talk to you MR. OTTO SALAMON: Dan, you want to come up? I'm Otto Salamon and I cover Region 2, and I` m the WWB coordinator for New York University, Puerto Rico t 1 1 9 10 11 12 13 14 17 18 2 0 34 and the Virgin Islands. We too have given out quite a few grants for brown fields and S R F programs, like Sharon mentioned. 1 just want to point out to you that all of our programs for all of EPA you can find in the Catalogue of Federal Domestic Assistance in the 6600 series, and itrs on the internet, so all of them are described, what the programs are, and you all know Jeanette mentioned that 96 percent are competitive, the other 4 percent are non competitive,

We will also give out grants for unique ideas. Just briefly, we a had a grantee who came in with the idea of getting rid of computers, instead of getting rid of computers, of reconstituting them and giving them away. So a lot of companies, they just discard the computers, and we have that problem with computers just like they have problems with tires. So we have   many, many of those computers are just discarded, and what they said to us is that, slWe can

we will rebuild them and we will give them away, and what we need is some money for the pilot idea."

This went under the Solid Waste Management Assistance Program, 66.808 on the CFDA, and so we

even though that is a competitive program, we gave them, I think it was something like $ 15,000, and they \

rewrote those computers and they showed us this program I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I O 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 3 5 worked and now it's a viable idea, So we do entertain unique ideas you have if you come to us.

Let me give you my e mail address, if you need it, S a 1 a m o n, sometimes people call me Sullivan. SALAMON. OTTO@ EPAMAIL. EPA. COM. Now what I would like to do is introduce to you Ken Shider from New York State who is going to talk a little bit to you about the MBE WBE program that he does so well. Thank you

MR, KEN SHIDER: Thank you, Otto. We are the Ne\ York State Environmental Facilities Corporation in New York. We currently manage a combined $ 5 billion clean water and drinking water SRF program. The program started up with one person back in 1 9 9 6 , and now it has a complete staff of four people.

The way our program works is, we have an intended use plan in which people who want to do a project will sign up by engineers. They will look at it, and the engineers will assign them a score.

Depending upon the color, if they are reachable on that list, then they get put into a pool and then we finance that pool for the upcoming projects.

During < the past four years we have been very successful in getting compliance in our programs because of the way we do things. We believe in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 3 6 creating win win situations in which the community can win, the contracts can win, and MBEs and WBEs can win.

How we do this is we go out in the field and we train these individuals who have been assigned or designated MBD officers,

led to believe, because the contractors are usually the same bunch of characters you run into over and over again because of the special nature of the projects. and it's not as difficult as people are Our biggest hurdles are internal, and those battles are very difficult to win because what YOU have to do, you have to conv nce those people to give us the support, the resources, you know, we need to run the program, to be effective, and sometimes when you work with people but don't have an idea of what you` re trying to do, they` re not in tune with your vision. As I said, it can be difficult.

So once you convince your internal staff,

our manager and the supporters this is a good program,

it works for business, you know, economic values,

program,

can run an effective program. Historically all the programs have been understaffed since its inception,

and I'm sure that you all have been in my situation before, you know, in which there is only one or two'

people, not counting the secretary, that you have to and then they give you the resources so you 3 I 10 11 share with somebody else.

But when you have the resources, you have 1 to get very creative as to what it is you want to do and how you are going to accomplish your objectives.

And the best way to do that is to show these individuals at the higher echelon that believe, first of all, in the program. You have to believe in the opportunities afforded them, M WBE, and you also have to convince them that,

makes you look good. [ I   you have to " This program I always say my job is to make my boss 12 1 look good. That's the bottom line. So if there are no I 13 17 1% problems and no questions from EPA and we are doing a good j o b , he or she has nothing to worry about. But a successful program begins and ends with, first of all,

support from the top. If you don! t have support from the top,

running, itBs not going to be successful. We canrt do it by ourselves. We need those resources available to us. We need that   to run the program the way it should be run, and we also need staff, you know, that's the reality. And without those components, hey, you're going to be struggling. 1 don't care what kind of program youBre Right now I ' m going to turn it over to one of my assistants, Franklin Whitson, who will explain a L 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 a 9 10 11 12 13 a 4 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 2 2 2 3 24 2 5 3 8 little bit about our MB technical training page in which the staff

MR, FRANKLIN WHITSON: First thing, we meet with a municipality, meet with their designated MBE officer. That is the first thing I try to do is to get them to understand the importance of the program,

and before we get started in the paperwork, I have to ask them all to understand one little principle.

NOW, a l l o f you got your notes, write this down. " He or she that gives the gold rules. If We give the gold. EPA gives us the gold with rules. We give the gold to municipalities with rules.

They give the gold to the contractors with rules, The golden rule,

EPA says, " We are going to follow those rules ~ Is We say to them, " You are going to follow those rules. And you, the municipality will make sure the contractors follow the rules. Is Our package consists of, first, a description of what the duties of MBE officers are.

And then we go into how to get on the internet to the directory of M and WBE, our state agency does the certification, so they learn how to use that directory.

Then there's a sample utilization plan. A utilization plan has to be turned in ten days after a I L c 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 16 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 39 contract has been let by th6 contractor listing all of your M and WBE, what you plan to pay them, what they are going to do, and what time frame you are going to use them. And also their EEO goals are on that same form.

In the package there are sample monthly reports that the contractor has to fill out. We give them three sample monthly reports, one for January,

February and March. That corresponds to the quarterly reports that the municipality has to fill out. Again,

that is a sample of that as well as the blank forms.

Along with that we talk about how they have to get certain things, canceled checks, front and back. Talk to them about doing the follow up, early.

Do not wait until the contract is over to ask for documentation. Most of the places in our state, now they require the contractor to turn in their monthly report with their payment requests. No monthly report,

payment request will not be processed. And most of them are working in that way which helps us a great deal.

When we get through with the whole process, we hand them training notes for them to refer back to. We develop a set of notes that covers all the stuff that we talk about in that process. We try and 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1%

19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 4 0 arrange to be at their @ rebid meeting. The prebid meeting is very important for us to be there, whenever possible, so that way when we talk to all the respective contractors, that's when 1 say to them,

" One, we do not have goals or   we have goals. We don't have I hear quotas all the time. No,

we donft have quotas; we have goals.

The level playing field happens to be the bid document. What makes the playing field unlevel is the contractor that submits as his utilization and says he is going to use the M and WBEs and doesn't. So your fellow contractor was making that state unlevel, it's not us.

It's a basic requirement' of any '

contractor. If I contract someone to cut my grass and I want to cut three inches in the front, and four inches in the back, thatus the condition of that contract. If you decide to cut it five inches all over, you have broken the contract. That's the way we treat the goals a We also assist and say, " If you need help in finding M and WBEs, feel free to contact the office." Some communities, lots of communities are now putting the directions on how to use   enter our directory into the bid document. This makes it a lot L a 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 15 1 6 17 18 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 41 easier for the contractor, and we have fewer and fewer situations where they are not meeting the goals.

Some communities, they like the package so well that they call and ask permission to use our reporting forms for other projects they have, not from our funding, because it works for them. The other thing to stress to your communities that we stress in the training program is that, if a contractor reneges or lies to you, that is, does not follow through on the use of the M and WBEs, they are also going to mess up someplace along the way, instead of using three inch pipe they might use two. So all of this stuff helps them to understand that, if they enforce our program,

it cuts down the hassles in other parts of their project, and we've gotten pretty good cooperation lately.

We have had a couple of areas where we had one particular community where the mayor refused to pay anybody, and we had to go say, " Look, we've got an $ 80,000 contract. There's only two people there. Give the man his money. si But other than that, it works quite well,

the communities is, " Thank you for showing us how to fill out the forms. Thank you for showing us how these forms can help us avoid falling into traps." And by and what we hear over and over again from

42 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 25 educating them and then letting them know we are available to assist them, we've gotten much better cooperation and very few tough situations, so to say.

MR. KEN SHIDER: Thank you, Franklin.

Just one final comment, also   comments. The reason why the staff encouraged me to put these forma together, I remember when I first came on board a group of us went to Oswego, New York, which is way upstate,

and we went there for an application meeting to go over the S R F requirements, and as soon as we sat down fn the room, the mayor stood up and said,

you right now, if we have to do M WBE, I'm not IIIrm going to tell interested So everyone in my group looked at me and I said, !' Heyg I ' m not the man who's talking about it."

So he explained that, through another funding source,

that they received a grant for another project. The language and policies were very vague and ambiguous,

and they had a heck of a time trying to get some guidance on what they were supposed to do.

So I looked at the mayor and I said,

IIWell, Mr. Mayor, I don't know what happened the last time, but I can assure you that's not going to happen this time." They were very, very skeptical. Well, to make a long story short, to date we have given that 1 9 10 11 12 a3 17 18 a 22 23 24 25 community or loaned them seven loans in excess of $ 25 million and, out of those seven loans or seven projects, they only met the goals on one, but they exceeded t h e goals in the other six.

And if you know where Oswego, New York,

is, it's not a place that has a large minority community, but somehow those contractors were able to seek MBE firms from the Syracuse area to come in and perform at a rapid pace, and they were very impressed.

So that's the type of cooperation we need from everyone to make the program successful.

If you have any questions or comments our telephone is area code 518 457 3858. Our fax number is 518 457 9200 and you can e mail us at SHIER, S h i e r,

k3NYFNYC. 4.

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSCN: Yes, sir.

MR. DAVID BURKE: None of Lhose questions are   what is New York State's negotiated fair share of EPA?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSCN: We have two goals.

Because the state is so large, it consists of 62 counties. Our upstate goals are 6 6, respectively, for MBE WBE. Our downstate goals are 21.7 and 13.8.

MR. DAVID BURKE: For instance, within the upstate, let's say, do you geographically make it any 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 4 4 more specific for

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: At times, yes.

NR. DAVID BURKE:   goals?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: We do we take a look at every project in the business because every project, every contract is not alike. Sometimes you have special equipment. Sometimes you have specialty work that has to be performed. The problem may be in a very remote area and we just can{ t do anything with that, so we will exclude certain portions of the contract to make it more practical and feasible to include M WBErs participation.

MR. DAVID BURKE: Who calls the shot on that? Do you call the shot or does the local government?

' MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: We work with the local governments in establishing a coordinated effort.

I will advise them and give them guidance along with my staff on those projects on how to proceed, but itBs not, you know, I say, " This is the goals, we would like to have their input. But since we are more specialized, you know, in this area I believe we can give them better'!

MR. DAVID BURKE: Do they get to determine what the goal will be on a special project? b 1 9 1 0 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 15 1 6 17 1%

1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 MR. ITSON: No, no, we set the goals, and sometimes we can, you know, you lower the goals and do other things to make it more feasible, as I said, for the contractors to meet the goals.

MR. DAVID BURKE: How many MBE officers do you have?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Statewide?

MR. DAVID BURKE: Yes.

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Well, maybe 150.

MR. DAVID BURKE: Is that right? Wow.

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: I mean, you have to realize New York State is a big state. We are mounting

a $ 5 billion program with three people, and we travel all throughout the state, you know, training these particular MBE officers.

MR. DAVID BURKE: Do the MBE officers have other functions, such as your project engineers and they cover this function, or is that what they're all about 3 MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: There's a whole gamut. We have village clerks, mayors, town supervisors, some are engineers, very few are actually MBE officers. Only in the larger communities, such as Syracuse, New York, Nassau County, Westchester, Buffalo and Rochester, we have established MBE officers. Other i I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 4 6 than that it's, people doing other functions.

MR. DAVID BURKE: Am I correct that you are the chief MBE officer for the state?

MR, FRANKLIN WHITSON: No,

MR. DAVID BURKE: Director?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Only for this program e MR. DAVID BURKE: Who do you report to?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: EPA.

MR. DAVID BURKE: So you don't report to the SRF program?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: NO.

MR. DAVID BURKE: Who gives you you your marching orders within the state government?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Within the state government?

MR. DAVID BURKE: Uh huh.

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Who do I report to,

my boss? My boss is director of Finance and Administration for New York State Environment and Sewage Corporation, in which we work, in turn, with Empire State Development Corporation, which is, quote unquote, the lead agency for the MBE WBE program. They do all the certifications.

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Yes, sir. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 1 7 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 4 7 MR. WALTER PEARSON: Walter Pearson,

Natural Resources, Did the state of New York do a disparity study t o establish that

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Yes, we did it in I992

MS. MARY KATHERINE BROWN: Repeat the question,

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Did the state of New York do a disparity study to establish its goal,

and the answer is, yes, it was conducted in 1992.

MR. WALTER PEARSON: At some point was there a   are YOU going on the same study from 1992,

or did you go and update the study or are you using the same data you used in 1992 based on the year 2000?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: What we are doing,

we are extracting data from that study and making it applicable to our program. See, one of the problems is you have to be careful when you conduct these studies because have to realize, in SRF we deal in a very specialized nature of work. It# s not like we are building houses where we have minorities and women involved in that field and the area of waste facilities, sewer landfill, you know, the numbers are very limited. So we have to extract from that study and take a look at every project and then, you know, 9 10 11 12 13 17 I 1%

4 l9 I I) 20 23 24 4 8 place the goal there.

MR. DAVID BURKE: One other question.

MR, FRANKLIN WHITSON: Go ahead.

MR, DAVID BURKE: Does your SRF ever make any loans that donJt involve a federal grant, in other words, either from bond proceeds, from the set bonds,

the repayment of loans?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: No.

MR. DAVID BURKE: So you've never been faced with a situation of, if there is no EPA money involved, whether there is any MBE programs.

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: No, If there is any additional bond moniesd that would be with the Department of Conservation through the bond thing, they are a separate office.

MR. DAVID BURKE: But do they make S R P loans?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: No. No. Being a public authority, you know, we are different than a,

quote unquote, state agency, you know. We can incur debt. States agencies can't do that, so we are basically the financing agents for Department of Conservation and Department of Health, so when we receive the capitalization grant from EPA, we take that money and give it as loans. ! b l 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 49 MR. DAVID BURKE: I spoke to you briefly the other day, but does New York State have an MBE program that would apply to loan proceeds that wouldn't involve federal money? In other words, Pet's say the feds cut us off, we don't get a federal grant and all we can do is make loans from repayments of loans or bond proceeds, et cetera. Is there a place in New York State and MBE requirements for loans made by the state agency?

MR. FRANKLIN WHITSON: Other state agencies cannot make loans because they can not incur debt. That's the Paw. They can't do that. Only public authorities have that ability to do that. Now,

we do have other agencies, as I mentioned, Department of Conservation offered to help do 8 A money, and then they have their own M WBE programs, but not loans.

DR. RAMSEY: Let` s move on, move on to Region 3. And again, we want to emphasize anticipated contract opportunities to give the business community an opportunity to understand the kind of contracts which are awarded by the states. Region 3?

( No response. )

DR. RAMSEY: In the interest of getting through all of the regions, we need to try to move it along with about ten minutes per region because we have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 23 2 4 2 5 5 0 yet to hear from the Howard University on their program. Ready Region 3 ? Your state is going to describe you.

ROMONA McQUEEN: Good afternoon. My name f s Romona McQueen, and I'm the program manager for small disadvantaged utilization in EPA Region 3, and that is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The states that we cover are Delaware, Maryland, Virginia,

Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. And my position at the region is that I ' m the business or I ' m the liaison, I should say, to the business community for our region.

And most of   or not most, but anything that is forecast in our opportunities for 2000 2001 is,

basically the way is that you would talk to one of the contracting officers that is listed, and if you did get a copy of that forecast, that opportunities listing,

that's the most direct way to talk about contracting opportunities.

However, if you would like to talk to me directly, I am available, I will give you my e mail address, if you are interested in opportunities in one of the states listed for our region, my e mail is MCQUEEN. ROMONA@ EPA. GOV. What I will also ask you to do is to possibly send me a capability statement because, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 51 even though you will talk with maybe one of the contracting officers, I can facilitate sending your capability statement to some of our program offices and sort of introduce them Lo you and give your number if you want to talk with someone more specifically about your particular interests,

Our region is in the middle of designing a web page that is going to be able to ink into OSDBU and that will give you an opportunity to learn more about the specifics about our program offices and other technical people and maybe assess the kinds of needs that they have and match them with the kinds of services that you are able to provide.

In October we are planning to have a fair similar to this one in which there will be an opportunity for all of our program offices to meet with any contractors that are available and interested in our region, but we don't have that   as of now, we are just talking about it, but hopefully it will be taking place in October.

So please feel free to send me an e mail or you can call me. My number is area code 215 814 5155. I will just acknowledge that we do have representatives of two of our state agencies that are here, and that is West Virginia. Rosalie Brodersen is 1 Y 9 PO 11 5 2 OUT SRF manager there. She Bas brought along three of her staff people   I have it all wrong   and since I don't have their names and titles, IIm not going even going to attempt, but Rosalie is here, in the event we do have questions, about the SRF program. And also for Maryland, we have Wallace Baker who is the director of Fair Practices and Kay Bee who directs the SRF program.

And also there are   Terry is here as well   I I m sorry a MR. DAVID BURKE: David Burke.

M S . RQMONA McQUEEN:   and David Burke.

12 I Thank YOU. Unless you have any questions

13 18 19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Is it true the contracting opportunities

MS. ROMONA McQUEEN: I would like to get

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thank YOU. I know that since all of the oddness everybody has the web site as requesting information to be sent on line and communicate on line and bidding on line, how much of the programs   I mean, a lot of things are physical contracts that require   and remediation and so on,

how much of the business is conducted on line?   just the general business of contracts on line. Because we have a service that's only on line, so we're not on the 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 5 3 ground with equipment, and we want to try and find a way to create opportunities to be and interface on line. Are there any opportunities in your contracting that are simply on line opportunities for MBE or WBEs to perform on line opportunities, meetings, for example?

M S , RQMONA McQUEEN: I'm not sure, but I don't think that we have advanced to that point that we have everything on Pine.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well, I was thinking, like New York, they were suggesting people could propose creative ideasd and are you open to creative ideas for funding?

MS. ROMQNA McQUEEN: Region 3 is always open to that, and so that I can better answer you if we can. talk a little later and exchange some addresses and I can give you a full answer.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thank YOU,

DR. RAMSEY: Rafael is not here at this time, but Mary Katherine, you'll tell us something about contracting opportunities in the state of Mississippi for the types of work that is occurring in your state. Thank you.

MS. MARY KATHERINE BROWN: Okay, before I talk to you about the state of Mississippi, for those t 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 22 2 3 2 4 25 54 of you who are perhaps interested in doing business with EPA Region 4, there are two contact persons that could kelp you with EPW direct procurement, Matt Robson,

Award Division Grant Management EPA Region 4 Office Atlanta, Georgia, and Rafael Samora, who is the MBE WBE coordinator out of Region 4. Both of those people will be able to assist you and give you more specific information on doing business and contracting through EPA Region 4.

NOW, to talk about Mississippi.

Mississippi is under a central procurement System, so for those persons who want to do business with the state of Mississippi in the are of goods and services,

your contact would be through the Office of Finance and Administration. Mr, Gary Anderson the Walter Sills Building, 1800 High Street, Jackson, Mississippi, 39209 would be the zip code.

Now, I encourage you, if you are a person who is providing services and goods to follow up with this contact because the state of Mississippi's current director of finance and administration is a minority gentleman who has expressed interest in getting more minorities and WBEs into our state procurement system.

So it would be an opportune time to contact and share information about your businesses and the goods and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 la 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 5 5 services that you can provide to the state of Mississippi,

NOW, in terms of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, which is the agency which I work for,. which is a state agency,

though we procure most of our goods through the state procurement system, we do contract out for quite a few services. And the contact person in my department for services that you wish to provide our department would be John Fouls. He is the director of our Support Division. His address is Post Office B o x 10385,

Jackson, Mississippi, 39289. He also can be reached by phone at area code 601 961 5171. He handles a l l of our direct procurement, all of our contracting needs.

We have contracting needs in the area of consulting in environment   various environmental issues. We have contracting needs in terms of management training. We have technical needs in the research area. It varies, and John is the person who knows what we are contract   what we are looking for at various times, so this is your point of contact.

NOW, in terms of the SRF program and providing any services under the SRF program, the MBE WBE, our program is construction only. We have an MBE and WBE directory that we publish and provide to L 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 5 6 our loan recipients. If you are a firm that offers services in the construction field or construction

related areas, your point of contact is Mary Katherine Brown, Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality,

Post Office Box 1 0 3 8 5 , Jackson, Mississippi, 3 9 2 8 9 .

Now, what I usually am looking for to place a business in our directory is, I need. a description of your services that you provide, a copy of your current certification and a contact person within your agency that does your quoting and/ or either does your development of proposals. That is the information I need before I can place you in a directory that we provide to all of our loan recipients,

Basically we put approximately $ 3 2 million each year out for bid through our loan recipients, but it is all construction and construction related money,

so it's a nice pot, and we do provide them with the MBEs and WBEs that they are to contact and try and contract with. They can use someone that is not in our directory, but they must submit that MBE and WBE for our approval. Okay, thank you.

DR. RAMSEY: Region 5, who is going to tell us about contracting officers in region? Any states here to participate with you? 57 MS. DARLENE HAINER: Hello, everybody, how are we doing? My name is Darlene Hainer, I ` m not the MBE WBE coordinator for the region,

analyst on the staff sf acquisition and assistance.

Our MBE WBE coordinator is Robert Richardson. Re is not here at the moment.

would like to ask Bob, you can get ahold of him by e mailing RICHARDSON. RQBERT@ EPA. GOV.

questions you would like to ask, send me,

HAPNER. DARLENE@ EPA. GOV. Our addresses at EPA are the same,

ahold of them. I ` m the procurement If you have any questions you If you have any so if YOU get somebody's name, that's how you get I can't talk too much about the assistance program, I` m still learn being that; however, in direct procurement, we have, we have joined as a partnership with QUI superfunded vision to identify requirements that we have been getting from the large remedial contractors and also from other removal contractors and we've been splitting out some of those requirements that have been separable and been awarding those to 8 A contractors.

We have done things like the engineering environmental cost assessments for removal projects,

title searches f o r the big remedial. projects. We` re doing community involvement   for somebody to do a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 11 1 2 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 25 k 1 . Y 9 B O 11 12 1 3 17 1%

2 5 5 8 logistic for that, but the remedial program, we have some transactional databases, which I havenIt been able to figure out what it is that they want so   but we have formed a partnership with superfunds to do that,

We have a few other requirements that we have set aside for % A. We have a hazardous waste deposit which is transportation   of hazardous waste from OUT central regional laboratory and also from our research vessel Lake Guardian, which   to Lake Michigan and other Great Lakes collecting scientific data. So you can contact me about any of that, contact Bob about his assistance.

We do have a listing available of our prime contractors that you can contact for subcontracting opportunities, and we also have a listing available of our state contacts, points of contacts in the states who you can contact for assistance opportunities and procurements under assistance.

If you just send me an e mail or send Bob an e mail, I will make sure we get them into the e mail if you provide your address.

on the web site, but I'm currently trying to do that and 50,000 other things at the same time, so it's going We will be posting them i 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 5 9 MS. DEBQRA BRADFORD: Hi, I'm Debora. I ' m the region   MBE WBE coordinator for Region 6 in Dallas, Texas, and the states that I am involved with are Arkansasl Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. I I m just going to   in other regions we have an information package that we give out to potential vendors and colleagues at trade shows. We have an information packet, and in that packet we have a

this is a one pager, and it has a lot of the internet sites that we thought might be useful to vendors.

I do encourage vendors, if you're going to do business and you're goin@ to do business in the state, make sure you get state certified because a lot of the state agencies, theyfre going to tell you they can't do anything with you unless you're certified with the state. So if you are going to do business in a particular state, make sure you are on their certification list because, if you're not, you are not going to be in the business, you are not known, it's better'to not suffer than not to know nothing at all,

There are databases that we encourage vendors to make sure that they go to and make sure their company is listed. All it takes is a few minutes to go ProNet and make sure your company is there, to go to that Phoenix database, they call it MBDA, make sure I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 %

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1%

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 6 8 your company is listed because, when they come to me, I refer them to those databases, so it's to your advantage to make sure your company is in there.

Also, I learned about GSA certification.

I believe it's on line. You can go out there and check out GSA because GSA does a lot of procurement for the federal government depending on type of services so,

you know, you have to check out GSA. And on this particular page I list the state finance offices,

agency, because they do have central information agents And. then we have a web site as well, but I do a lot of connection to OSDBU because OSDBU is the agency over all   the are the machine that facilitates all the regions, and we have a lot more information. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Kathy Robbins who is with TNRCC, and she is one of the lead environmental agencies within the state. A lot of OUT grants go to TNRCC, and Patricia Loving, Texas Water Development Board. She's in SRF development and they have the SRF program e And I do want to say, when you're putting your information on ProNet and or MBD, the registration database, be as thorough as you can because, when I was looking for some procurement this week and I was going 1 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 IO 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1%

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 61 through ProNet, and you all may have the zip code down there, but you don` t tell me that, don` t tell me nothing, really. I mean, go ahead, you know, tell me a little bit about your company, A lot of you all may even just leave it blank, so then that means that I` m going to go right on by you because you're not telling me what I'm looking for, So I encourage you all, when you go in and register on the database, to be specific on the type of services and goods that you provide.

Right now I` ll turn it to Kathy Robbins.

MS. KATHY ROBBINS: I am Kathy Robbins,

Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. I want to expand a little bit on what Debora was just saying.

We do have a central procurement system in Texas; it's the General Services Commission. However, a lot of the purchasing is , delegated back to the agencies depending on dollar thresholds.

We had some legislation passed at this last session, it` s just now come into effect June 1.

It is now law that every contract which is   which receives $ 100,000 must contain a subcontracting plan and that, if the agency determines there are subcontracting opportunities and they have added a little teeth to our program they we call the Historically Underutilized Business Program in that if p" t 9 10 11 12 1 3 17 18 2 0 2 2 2 3 2 4 6 2 a vendor submits a bid and they do not submit that plan back with their, with their bid, or if they don't justify. why they are not subcontracting, or they have not certified that they can do all the work themselves, then their bid i s considered nonresponsive.

And also, it's also in that legislation that the agencies will track all the subcontracting.

As we heard this morning, a lot of vendors have learned to play the game. They assure, will do 30 percent,"

and they do zero. Well, now we have legislation that says that we track that. The vendor has to justify why they are not using their subcontractors. If we are not satisfied with the justification, we can cancel that contract and they can be debarred from doing other contracts with our agency. So it has, like I sayd a little teeth to it now.

One more thing also that came out this past session, General Services Commission is also our HUB certifying agency; however, though the legislation this year said, to be a HUB, for us to get credit, the principal place of business must be in Texas and the owner must reside in Texas, so we are going to see how that's going to affect other programs.

Just one other thing, the state of Texas,

any contract over $ 100,000 must be posted to the Texas 63 marketplace, and that web site is through our Texas Department of Economic Development. That web site is WWW. TDED. STATE. TX. US and, like I say, every state agency must post their bids out there in that marketplace. I will go ahead and let Patricia speak and then we'll answer questions.

MS. PATRICIA LOVING: As a follow up to Kathy, I want to mention that the GSC, if you want to the get on the state procurement certification, their web site is WWW. GSC. STATE, TX. US. I'm responsible for the SRF programs at the Water Development Board and also for the clean air waste water treatment programs,

which are specific programs for the   down in the border area. They also have to follow water procurement requirements, and our program is basically what you heard from New York, that we have intended use ,

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 16 1 7 18 19 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 plans you have to be on, and when we publish those intended use plans, they are available for   you may ask for one of those as an engineer and then you can find out the entities with whom we were considering contracting with or if they want to come in and get an:

kind of loan monies.

Our requirements, we have, we have goals set that were set with EPA in construction services,

equipment, and supplies, so we have eight different 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 6 4 goals that we put in our contracting for our drinking water plans and clean water programs, and thatfs basically it.

M S . DEBORA BRADFORD: Any questions? If not, Region 7 .

MR. ANTHONY LEMASTER: My name is Anthony LeMaster. 1 8 m located in Region 7, Kansas City,

Kansas. And we serve the states of Missouri, Kansas Iowa and Nebraska. My roll is to locate MBE and WBE firms on the direct procurement side of the house, and as Romona mentioned earlier, a list of contract opportunities can be found on OSDBU's home page showing who the point of contacts are for each contract that is listed.

I am going to, at this time, ask that my grant specialist Sabre Whitt, who I don't see now,

speak on SRF and other grant related issues.

MS, SABRE WHITT: . Hello, everyone. I` m just going to speak briefly about our assistance agreements in Region 7 . Approximately 8 0 percent of our assistance agreements funding goes to our four

state region. As far as state revolving loan funds, I donJt have any specific information for you at this time. My e mail address is EPA. WHITT. SABRE@ EPA. GOV.

What I will do, however, is I'm going to rely on Tom 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 6 5 Lamberson from Nebraska to give you an example of what procurement opportunities exist in his state. Thank you D MR. TOM LAMBERSON: I` m Tom Lamberson. 1 am with the Department of Environmental Quality in the state of Nebraska and am responsible for all of the procurement of forest services in Nebraska, as well as some of the other states. I've heard, as a central purchasing bureau for commodities, if you're interested in getting on the, on the bidder's list for commodities, you need to contact t e state of Nebraska Department of Administrative Services, Materials Division, and I apologize, I donlt have their address,

So if you would like to get ahold sf me, P will give you my phone number later. I will be glad to get you in touch with them.

Our department contracts for a significant number of activities mostly in the technical area. We,

like a lot of other states, are looking at hiring freezes and staff freezes and staffing reductions and our contracting opportunities are only going to increase. Our goal is for its ample staffing, it` s a 5 percent reduction in staff from what I am now until July 1 of 2001, I will have 5 percent less folks, which just increases the opportunity to look at outside ti 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 24 25 6 6 services a As examples of what we utilize outside services for, we utilize laboratory services for both chemical and biological activities. We utilize consulting firms for sampling remediation type activities. We use outside consultants f o r facilitation technical writing types of activities. As an example, we are in the process of revamping a91 our and reviewing all our permitting processes. We are using outside consultants to walk our programs through those or will be using outside consultants to walk our programs through all of those activities so we can look at making them more efficient, and then developing

the consultants will then develop the protocols and do the training of staff to complete the loop.

We use outside consultants for permit writing both in our all air programs and in our water programs. We hire almost all of our   all of our computer programming activities come from the outside.

They generally come, however, from state contracts, so you would have to be a state contract to use those, We also hire a number of data entry individuals and companies.

All of our training, virtually all our training, both management technological, health and i I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 6 7 safety is contracted for as those are examples of the types of services that we look outside for. We, if we have commodity or service items ' over $ 25,0QQ, unless there's an emergency or, or another significant reason to sole source, those are all put out as RPs or bid documents. Under $ 2 5 , 0 0 0 we need to get a minimum of three bids either in writing, small contracts we can do telephone bids.

Nebraska, particularly, is a very rural state, particularly from Lincoln, west. We simply do not hare a, have a huge minority of a women's business pool. We are very interested in expanding the pool. I will give you my name and phone number, address, et cetera, and look forward to any of the vendors here to fit into one of the categories I've described. And if you do utilize commodities or have commodities, I will pass that information along to the proper people.

Again, my name is Tom Lamberson L a m b e r s o n. My address is Box 9 8 9 2 2 , Lincoln,

Nebraska, 6 8 5 0 9 . My fax is 4 0 2  4 7 1  2 9 0 9 . And my telephone number, direct number, is 4 0 2  4 7 1  4 2 3 5 . And I look forward to visiting with that business, with the number of vendors   I visited with a number of the vendors earlier. I look forward to you contacting me.

Walter, did you want to talk a little bit? Ijw B 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 1 0 11 1 2 13 14 1 5 16 17 1 8 E 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 6 8 While Walter is coming up, I would mention that we put on the internet all of our RPs, and we also do public notices on the internet through the state of Nebraska, Department of Administrative Services, and so if you would look on the state web page, you could find any RP that we put out and most other states put out.

MR. WALTER PEARSON: Again, my name is Walter Pearson, and I am the director of Business and Urban Affairs for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, but before I start to tell you about the opportunities that the state of Missouri has for women and minorities, I want to give you, kind of give you a little bit of background, just briefly.

Prior to coming on as a director for me in Department of Natural Resource in the area of business development, it was decided my other life was deputy director for Missouri Department of Economic Development. And in doing so, in 1988 there was some legislation passed as a result of the Richmond and Croson case, so after the legislation was passed, it was one of the unfunded legislation.

In 93 we received the appropriation to do a disparity study, and fortunately enough I had the responsibility of doing the statewide disparity studies. For those of you who have done disparity, you 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 %

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 1 7 1%

1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 which is Dr.

Ramsey prior the outset, 6 9 know they can range from a $ 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 up to a million dollars, depending on the size of the state. While having that responsibility and not knowing anything about MBE and WBE, particularly coming from corporate America, I put together a group of state government,

and the consultants that we hired to do the statebs disparity study is the facilitator for this program,

Ramsey I can say that I had a meeting with Dr.

to conducting the study and I told her at hat, that I needed to have direct contact with her from beginning to end because either this would hurt my career or make my career better. And I can say that we did, Dr. Ramsey produced an excellent product, and one of the assuring things we did, and I had asked her that this must,

and WBE program, that it must withstand scrutiny, and it must stand in a court of law, in other words, it must be a defensible document, particularly if we have an MBE WBE program. if we implement an MBE Prior to Dr. Ramsey coming on board we had included in that executive order an affirmative action plan, we included a procurement plan, a procurement goal, which is 5 percent across the board, 5 percent for women, 5 percent for MBEs as well. After the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 If 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 7 0 study, we were put in a position   I say we were put in a position, but after the study, we established some rules, new rules, and race conscious programs at that point went from 5 percent across the board to a 10 percent executive order and for MBEs and 5 percent for WBEs. The reason being, even though the study showed a higher disparity in terms of those categories in terms of construction procurement and the lottery, the lottery being the statutory goal of 10 percent, is that the government felt that, it's difficult to try and pass legislation.

So what the governor did was j u s t to, to have a PO percent, even though there was a 20 percent desire goal, we decided   the governor decided that we would just do a 10 percent and a 5 percent for WBE, but it was a desired goal for 20 p rcent.

Well, in the state of Missouri, in terms of what we have in terms is of central procurement, I notice some of you talk about the central procurement,

and I guess we are no different than any other state,

but what we found out is that, before we went into a certification process, it was a, just a good faith registration. It was, if you say you were MBE, you registered. If you say you were WBE, you registered.

So our database was like 3,000. I guess it was over 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 I1 12 13 14 15 16 I7 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 71 3, QQO. After the study was done and there was a time period where you have to 3,000 down to 200.

NOW, let me have goods and services,

but we also have a divis be certified, it went from explain. What happened is we and through state government,

on which is design and construction, so the study that we did, we didn't even study all the state procurement because it would have cost us millions of dollars, so there was three areas we studied, central purchasing, design and construction and also the lottery, the lottery, well, having a goal of ten percent, so it was even.

Because t h a t was part of Lhe goal for the legislation, in doing so, when the certification became an implementation program, it really hurt us as an agency because we knew, in order for us to get credit of doing business with women and minorities, we needed a much larger pool to select from, so it really hurt us as agencies in the state government. But now we have a much larger pool to select from because, in order for us to get credit, you must be certified.

Having said that, the state of Missouri is working very diligently to try to, in areas of, in terms of how we can increase minority participation and a lot of things we are doing in terms of outreach, and P 1 9 10 11 12 13 17 18 2 5 I I 7 2 I think one of the things in my own mind is that the bottom line is that the objective is to help small businesses grow.

We run into all kinds of barriers. We run into all kinds of situations,

that,

they brought me from economic development over to DNR,

well, itls difficult to   some of you who are engineers, you do a certain thing for so long,

try to make, you know, have a much broader perspective in terms of fairness, it's a job. It's a job.

Educating is a job, training individuals in terms of how to be more equitable and fair. and one of the things in talking with the legislators and governors,

and to But one of the things, i would challenge you to continue to try to educate, you know, youfre constituents.

grantee because I'm sure that, for the most part, there are some of us, I call them the dinosaurs, these are people who have been there for so long and they just haven't learned there is a new way of doing business.

And we get out of the framework to make them start doing it because things change and I think,

most part, you will probably start seeing a

Let me end by saying that, in the Try to educate your recipients and your for the certification process is that the general purchasing, e:

t . 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1%

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 73 we have a way to   because accounting system goes through general purchasing there is based upon the object codes, there is a flag it identifies if this company's MBE and WBE on all purchases, even in contracts. SO I get a report, a quality report and,

well, not a report but a summary, because 1 can't deal with them reports, itls too   but I deal with a summary, but I can tell exactly from that report that I get on how many MBEs, in terms of dollars, that the actual dollars that were paid and who the MBEs and WBEs were. And I think, for'the most part, when this information is disseminated and you as leaders begin to look at this report   I think that I applaud New York because I think that people like New York and other people who look at it that way in terms of the actual reports and what can we do as administrators to try to make the program more successful, I think the outcome is we move to the 21st century.

I think, for the most part, we will probably start seeing a lot of things change in terms of new rules but, for the most part, I think that you will see that there are companies out there that will be willing and able to do the job and there are opportunities, and I don't want anybody to be missing the opportunities. i. f B P 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 9 4 But if you will see me, and I will give you my business card! you can look up the state of Missouri and see exactly what we are doing becaused not only is it, is it that we're looking for the procurement and MBEs and WBEs, but we've also included a scholarship program that will help minority students but, for the most part, there aren, t a lot in my state of minority students who are majoring in the natural sciences and in the state capital of Missouri, even though you do recruit them, for the most part, they donft want to move to Jefferson City Missouri. But there are other things we are trying to do to improve opportunities, not only from the procurement aspect,

but also from the education as well. Thank you.

DR. RAMSEY: Can you share with us opportun ties in the state of Kansas?

MR. TQMMIE SMITH: How much time do we have, two minutes? Given the fact that I was just told about a minute ago that I J m supposed to do this, I think that probably the best I can do is to give you my name and address, and in the state Kansas mostly everything is done through the Division of Environment,

so if you could write this down, T. Smith is my web.

My e mail address TSMITH@ KDHE. STATE. KS. US. My address is Kansas Department of Health and Environment, 9 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 If 1 2 1 3 1 4 15 16 1 7 1 8 19 2 0 2 1 22 2 3 24 25 7 5 Southwest Jackson, Suite 965, Topeka, Kansas, 66612.

Phone number is 785 296 1997.

One thing I put together the last year was a thing regarding the four categories for the Division of Environment and what it does is list all of the SIC codes or NAICS codes by supplier, construction equipment, and whatfs the other. one?   and services.

So if any of you want a copy of that, I can give you a copy of that, any of the vendors, that way you know about the things we do in the state of Kansas.

But I think, right now the fiscal year is closing, so I didn't get a chance to get the awards.

We do have a rule in Kansas where they cut down all of the business by the second weekend in May so you don't have a chance to buy anything in terms of bidding stuff Pike after May 15. So anyway, get in touch with me and I will get you the information. Thank you.

DR. RAMSESI: LetIs have Region 8.

MR. MAURICE VELASQUEZ: For those of you,

Maurice Velasquez, Region 8 program for minority and women businesses in the states of Colorado, Montana,

Wyoming, Utah and North and South Dakota. And as you all probably are aware, these are rural states, for the most part. The populations are largest in the states of Utah and Colorado, so we focus a lot of efforts in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 76 those two states. We have very low goals. The other states in Region 8, we buy all the types of goods and services like are listed in the Doing Business With EPA books. In commodities you will find pretty much the same stuff that is purchased in our region that youflll find listed in that document.

I deal primarily with two people. In the small purchase office it's Virginia Burns,

Kayman in the superfunds contracts area, and Mark and he also assists in identifying 8 A contracts in other programs.

And those people can be found on our web page under their CABA. MARK@ EPA. . I and Virginia Burns,

BURNS. VA@ EPA . . .

Like a lot of the have central purchasing states a litt other states, Region 8 processes, and so that's e bit difficult sometim s for minority businesses to penetrate and get involved in those kinds of processes.

time to do some focused outreach. We are going to do a couple of sessions in, one on the eastern slope and then one on the western slope, and so we are looking at assisting the state with their Office of Economic Development to do a better job of outreach. We are working with Colorado at this The Colorado representative had to leave early, so she isn't here, but we Just were discussing 1 2 3 4'

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 17 18 25 this a week ago, and I think this is going to be of great benefit to the businesses, primarily in the state of Colorado and maybe northern New Mexico and Utah and any other states that have   or businesses, you know,

representing other agencies and have an interest in doing business in our region, so thatIs something that we are going to be doing now,

We've also done quite a lot in outreach efforts toward Indian businesses, so I think we are realizing some good benefits as far as thatBs concerned. So it's a new area and we are forming some new partnerships here with some of the people represented that are going to assist us in that regard.

EPA and the Superfund program gives considerable money through interagency agreements to the Department of Interior, and so sometimes people donJt understand that doing business with EPA may be dealing with recipients, it may be a college,

university, it may be an Indian tribe or a state government, and so when people understand the way EPA does business, then I think they can see the business opportunities may exist for their firms in some of those organizations that I mentioned.

In Region 8 we have an organization of environmental businesses that we are real happy with, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 I3 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 98 and it doesn't represent a31 of the businesses in the I I regionl there are about 150 firms now that are on our list, and there are approximately 250 in the region.

Therers a few more that we need to include, and we are going t~ be producing a CD RQM that   hopefully we will be producing CD RQMs that we will send to all of you that will give you a listing of all the firms that are available in our region that may be of interest to you c The brown field program is one that I think people should take an interest in. We mentioned earlier in the program that that's an area of development in terms of EPA programs and some direction, so that is, you know, webre talking in terms of funding activities, so it's good to get into programs when they are starting out and YOU establish yourself in that area and you create a nitch f o r yourself, and so you see that happening in Region 8.

I think, at the present time, we have about seven brown field grants, and two of them are to tribal governments and the rest of them are municipalities and region. We do seminars in the region for our firms as often as we can, and we like to consider ail the partners that we have in the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 18 11 1 2 13 14 1 5 1 6 1 7 18 1 9 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 7 9 some other agency that has environmental mission that we partner with and provide information to the firms in our region so that they can learn how E o do business there.

EPA puts out a publication called " While Doing Business With EPA," and we also have a forecast and it its an annual forecast, it's updated annually,

and you should look in that for opportunities, look at the Commerce Business daily because a lot of our procurements are posted in that.

Our labs, we have a lab in Region % , an(

they procure materials. I think itns through   is it RTP, or is it   the labs? The regional labs have their needs satisfied through RTP, research and development.

r UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes, the research and development is now done out of RTP North Atlanta.

MR. MAURICE VELASQUEZ: So if any firms here have, Region 7, Region 8, North Carolina, EPA is the one that handles those kinds of thing, too. I think that's it.

DR. RAMSEY: Thanks very much, Maurice.

Joe from Region 9 . Do you have any of your states with you, Joe?

MR. JOE OCHAB: I know at least one state 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 that will be joining.

DR. RAMSEY: Okay, great, please join,

Region 9.

MR, JOE QCHAB: Good afternoon, I'm Joe Ochab with US Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9 , I f m the womenfs small business advocate for that region, and in Region 9 we serve, work with the four states of Arizona, California, Nevada and Hawaii, as well as the Pacific trust territories, Guam, North

I would like to provide some general information about how we do business in Region 9 on the direct procurement side and how we have advertised opportunities and how you can identify those opportunities,

little bit about their   and how they consider small business minority owned businesses. and then we invite our states to speak a In our region, EPA provides a fax sheet called " Locating Business Opportunities with US EPA, A Source List for Small Disadvantaged Businesses in EPA Region 9," and I would be happy to provide you this fax sheet using   if you contact me at the e mail address that I put on the sheet over here on my right.

This list focuses on one of the electronic tools that you can use or ways you can find out about opportunities, many of which have been previously 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 18 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 7 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 81 mentioned, the OEM web site, as well as region, as well as other national office ties and forecast opportunities.

We do a lot of, of course, simplified acquisition which is set aside for small businessesa and we,

procurement, therefore, have used quite a bit of the small small purchase electronic data and,

therefore, we recommend highly that businesses get a VIN number and hook up with that system.

The Commerce Business Daily was mentioned.

ThatIs electronic as well as in hard copy. We also have prime contractors in Region 9 . We highly recommend that you contact them. On the reverse side of the sheet we have our Region 9 Superfund prime contractors.

We do look at ProNet and, and the MBD opportunities database. In terms of   I also might mention the GSA schedules. It's very important that you consider getting on the GSA schedule.

up a lot of the businesses that way and post our procurement opportunities. We do pick Under the financial assistance agreements,

that area is actually the largest amount of procurement in Region 9, EPA Region 9. We   I am presently updating our list of state minority women business 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 enterprise contacts ment offices. I would be happy to forward you that list to any businesses by contacting me at this address, and that will give you,

of course, the biggest opportunity to find, find out what the states under other EPA systems are purchasing.

I know in general states should get on the states   excuse me   the vendors should get on the state's builders, lists, and thatBs a good situation for you, but please contact me at this e mail address if you have any, if youBre interested in getting copies of this fax sheet. If there is a potential match, I` m very interested in getting your statement of qualification. I made some contacts today. I enjoyed meeting you at the various booths and I look forward to assisting you in the future. Thank you.

MR. BILLY BISHOP: My name is Bill Bishop.

My address is Arizona Department of Environment Quality. EPQ is the lead agency for MBE WBE issues with EPA, and what that meansf as a practical matter to you is, as a vendor there is 15 agencies I'm speaking for right now, some of which get millions of dollars worth of grants, one of which gets a thousand dollar grant, so we are all over the place.

So how do we get in touch with these folks? The way you want to do that is to register with B 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 $ 3 the state procurement office.

ways you can do that.

number is 602 542 5511, and theyIre also on the web and you can   they have vendor registration materials there. They have kind of a strange web address.

HTTP:// and then, no WWW, just SPORAS. AD, STATE. AZ. US. There is a couple of You can give them a call, their It is Once YOU are registered on that list,

you'll not only be hearing about opportunities from EPQ and other agencies that receive federal money, but all state agencies that have formal procurements which are procurements about $ 25,000 need to use that lift.

Recently Governor Hall put into effect an executive order that, for all procurements below $ 25,000,

business, so that's another reason it's very important to be ora our staters vendors# list because we need that, among other sources, like MBDA and ProNet to find those kinds of businesses so that we can make sure we are including them on some of these smaller solicitations. we need to solicit a minority or women owned I have a letter here that kind of introduces our agency and what kind of goods and services we have, as well as talking to you about the state procurement office and the opportunity there is,

I will leave a couple of copies on the front table or, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 BB 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 16 1 7 18 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 if you can't find one there, just please do come up and ask me for one.

The state procurement office web site is also good for finding out about opportunities in terms of formal procurement and smaller ones. We also have a fax on demand system that you can call up from time to time and find out about opportunities. The number for that is 6 0 2  5 4 2  2 0 5 0 , and it` s a mini driven system.

It will walk you through how to get a list of contracts which you can go to for subcontractor opportunities and a list of current procurement opportunities. Thank you a MR. GALEN DENIO: Good afternoon. Galen Denio,

Nevada. Nevada has a central procurement process. The Department of Administration, Purchasing Division, is responsible for that. You can find the, the information for them and make the contacts through the state web page and I believe it` s WWW. STATE. MW. US in the drinking water safety revolving funds. supervisor of the drinking water program in As other revolving funds, we do have and intended use plan where we specify the use of the monies. Included in that intended use plan is a project priority list which identifies all the projects. The IUP is important because it sets forth 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 the amounts of money and types of projects that we are going to do in each of the set aside projects.

The set asides in the drinking water program are used to accomplish specific purposes. We use it, the 4 percent set aside is used for administration purpose, and we do some contracting there. The 2 percent set aside is used for technical,

small water systems. AB1 of that money is contracted out. And then we provide technical assistance and technical managerial and financial areas. They are the 10 percent set aside and 15 percent set aside.

We do capacity development for water systems, education, public information programs and source of water protection programs. Clean water SRF has a 4 percent set aside which is used for administration, and the rest of it is used for loaning money to public water systems or public waste water systems I should mention, and it hasnrt really been clear, Nevada loans money both to privately owned and publicly owned systems. Privately owned systems present a bit of a challenge because we don't go through the traditional review that public systems do.

It's a state mandated requirement for public systems,

so that may present some opportunities for some 9 10 11 1 2 13 1 4 1 5 16 17 18 L 4q 19 4 21 2 0 2 2 ~

financial management areas I Other agencies that u s e procurement are

Division of Nevada. Department of Transportation obviously has a huge program, has a variety of needs,

~ as you can imagine. We are working with t h e Small 1 Business Development Center which has a number of areas around the state to do outreach to provide opportunities for the small businesses throughout the state.

I should mention kind of in closing that that is a very diverse state. Most of our population,

probably 80 or 90 percent of it lives in highly urbanized areas. The remaining 10 percent lives in the rest of the state, and Nevada, I think, is the fifth or sixth largest state in the union, so providing opportunities in those rural areas is very difficult.

As I recall, Nevada has a 5 percent preference for Nevada businesses. I can give you an example. A business opportunity that became available for a huge construction project in southern Nevada was successfully bid by an Arkansas firm. They bought out a construction company in Nevada that had the correction licenses to do that, so have you to look at

each state in order to make sure that that's not

that's not going to be a problem. Business licenses t P 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 10 1 2 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 87 and professional certification licenses may be very important and you have to check with respective boards in order to make sure you qualify. Thank you.

DR. RAMSEY: Region IO?

MR. MIKE LETOURNEAU: My name is Mike Letourneau, Region 10 in Seattle, Washington. I'm a coordinator for the minority business women enterprise Program. I'm not in the direct procurement office.

Y o u provide me with information, I will get it to those folks there, so I'm not speaking to procurement opportunities.

E mail address is LETOURNEAU. MIKE@ EPA, GOV,

My telephone is 206 553 1687. One of the things that I would also encourage folks to do, like Debora did, is get registered on ProNet as detailed as possible.

Also, in doing work in the Seattle area, in particular the SBA office is very helpful. Also contact them or contact me and I will get you contacts for the office.

One of the things in meeting here in the last couple of days that our state folks have encountered, and we are interested in hearing back fr m you this afternoon or talking to us directly or through e mail, is areas where there are contract agreements in place and agencies have to use the contracted firms in order to procure supplies and services. I, 1 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 8 8 What this does is ends up preventing the use of minority business enterprises. I get a lot of reports that have zeros on them while there are some cases, in particular, in Oregonr Boise, Cascade, where they provide a catalogue for identifying minority business enterprises. We still don't have enough information to get the number of dollars going to those firms, so any other agencies that are dealing with these with similar issues, if you can let us know how we might be able to work within that system to get more minority business enterprises, that be appreciated.

I will turn it over to Washington and Oregon. I would also like to recognize Lucy Alinson who came from Juneau, Alaska, to be here today.

MR. JOHN NISPEL: Good afternoon. My name is John Nispel. I am with the Washington State Department of Ecology. Like many other states Washington state has a central procurement agency, the Department of General Administration, that purchases the majority of the goods and commodities for the state of Washington.

Minority firms are encouraged to participate, although about a year and a half ago our state passed an initiative which required or

prohibited the state from using race or gender as a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 %

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 8 9 preference in purchasing, so we still have an outreach program, but we are no longer able, in this state,

unless itjs part of a federal program and required as part of the funding for the federal program to grant preference to minority and women businesses, But there are still many opportunities for minority and women owned businesses in Washington state to do business.

Our state has its own certification agency. The Office of Minority and Women Business Enterprises. Cathy Canorro was here earlier.

Apparently she is no longer with us this afternoon,

but in order for our state agencies to get credit for participation of minorities, the firm needs to be certified with your state agency.

I believe the main web site for the state of Washington is WWW. ACCESSWASHINGTON. GOV, but I can't promise that that's what it is. So if someone wants to give me an e mail or a call, my phone number is area code 360 407 7031. And my e mail address is 3NIS461@ ECY. WA. COM, and I will be here to get you the e mail or web site address. Thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes, I am the last of the afternoon. I will be brief. As pointed out,

Oregon has a very rigid central procurement system. t f B 2 3 4 5 d a 8 9 1 0 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 16 17 1 8 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 9 0 Itrs difficult to break into and itds difficult for us to report because we donlt know how much of the money that we spend with one of our big two or three vendors eventually makes its way down to the minority or women owned businesses.

What sorts of opportunities do arise for minorities of women owned businesses tends to be s o r t of idiosyncratic. We have an orphan site program. We have a contaminated piece of land, and when it becomes a high enough priority that it really needs to be investigated and remediated and cleaned up, we, first of a l l , have to go through and see if there" s anybody in the string of owners and lessees and operators that has deep enough pockets that we can get enough money other than for that.

Then, if that doesn't happen, then we look for some state money to pay for it. And usually all of this occurs before we can actually get around to the important thing of getting the nasty stuff out of the ground. So opportunities crop up from time to time,

and it` s useful to be registered with our central state office of minority and women owned businesses.

It will do no harm at all to get in touch directly with the Oregon Department of EnVirQnmental Quality and let our contract officer or somebody know e 1 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 2 0 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 91 of your capabilities. It will mean that, you know,

rather than just seeing a notice somewhere, you will probably get a hard copy of an RFP to respond to.

One overall theme I've noticed coming out of the last three days, and that was made particularly specific by Mr. Pearson's comments earlier, that we appear to be having an entire new relationship between $& e areas of environmental quality and economic development. I started this   I'm surprised to find out how many here did work in economic development, and when I did that, the line was absolutely rich on this side of the people, paved   and on this side was the people who want to save the estuary and they don't talk.

And now we do   brown fields is an economic development activity and, I think, the activity   and I think that a Pot of us, there is a lot sf outreach to the disadvantaged business enterprises comes sometimes purely informally over economic development arts. Sometimes even the money flows in Oregon, the drilling water SRF money flows from EPA to our health department and then out to economic development who have more familiarity with the bonding and construction of things of that nature.

The finance drones and the Department of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 1%

19 20 21 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 92 Environmental QualityB I think we all come from economic development. Tom Beacher runs the state SRF programs as another one, so that"! that's really an area that we want to investigate. 1 know that the Oregon Association of Minority Entrepreneurs, DEQ has pathetically little contact with them, but we can always go through our economic development people who are in regularly and have ongoing contact,

So no, we donPt always have them as our allies, but maybe in some cases our State Department of Economic Development aren't j u s t there to support the greed and paving over wetlands and whatnot, they can provide some useful services to those of us who used to be the other side, but now are partners. Good night.

DR. RAMSEY: All right. The last of our presenters on contracting opportunities will give us an overview of the kind of purchases made in the national buying office in Cincinatti, Ohio.

MR. NORM WHITE: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Many of you I have spoken to at the individual booths, and what I'm going to say is probably going to be redundant. I am Norm White. I'm from the Contracts Division in Cincinatti, Ohio, one of the three national buying offices we have in the EPA,

the first one is Washington, DC. L. 1 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 a 0 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 16 1 7 1 8 19 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 93 And what they specialize in pretty much is Superfund clean up, in addition to also the training needs for leads for the agency, also the ADP procurements, hardware, software, those types of IT work that would be on a national buy in research,

Triangle Park, North Carolina, They are sort of a backup when it comes to the land work, the IT work, the computer work.

About two and a half years ago we reorganized in the EPA under direct procurement and, in Cincinatti, we used to do a1 of the research and development contracts agencywide. But due to a, I guess maybe a consolidation, we took the research and development work and laboratories, and they developed into what they call two mega labs, and those mega labs, each one had a director.

It so happened each director lived in North Carolina, so they wanted to contract support in North Carolina, so we did a flip flop. Instead of a mission research and development, we became risk reduction in Cincinatti, and now the research and development labs like Oregon, Las Vegas, Athens Georgia, Florida, they are all contracted out of Cincinnati   I mean   I'm sorry   out of RTP North Carolina e a 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 9 4 In Cincinatti where Ifm from we still do all the engineering contracts across the agency, across the nation. We do all the construction for the labs,

and we do the services related to some of the labs that we still support, like in Oklahoma, we are doing water programs. In fact, we do all of the water programs for the Office of Water apd for the Environmental Protection Agency. They come from Cincinatti.

We, we're also supporting some of the air programs in Ann Arbor, programs, the emissions,

two cycle four cycle engines up there working with the automotive industry. We are doing work in Edison, New Jersey, where they have oil and water separation type contracts, and in Cincinatti we have several labs there that we` re doing. Also in RTP they are doing some radiation type contracts. They also do health effects in WTP,

Each one of the national buying laboratories has a sub which is a small disadvantaged business organization officer like myself. I am from Cincfnatti. Again, my name is Norm White. Phone number is 513 487 2024. We have Jerry Dotson that's in research, Triangle Park, North Carolina. His number is 919 541 2249. And in Washington we have a lady, Trina Porter. She recently moved from Crystal City t o o , over a 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 95 to Washington. I don't have her direct number, but she works in our director's office, Jeanette Brown, so you can get her through there.

Also you can find us on the EPA OSDBU web page, WWW. EPA. GOV/ OSDBU. Once you get into that screen, you can find a map that will indicate all the regions and you click on any one of them and you will get the coordinator for that particular region, the phone number and address and so forth. We also have on the web site, our forecast, contract forecast, and in that forecast it covers the regions, as well as the three national buying offices.

You can look at those contracts, most of them are renewable contracts, you can look at them.

You can see who the incumbent contractor is. You can J see when it's supposed to come out again on the solicitation and how we` re going to procure it through $ A small business open competition and what have you.

It's there.

I might caution YOU, when you look at the forecast, sometimes the title is a little misleading.

Sometimes if you not familiar with the jargon on the VPA, so if you see a title of a contract and you think you might be interested in it, what I would ask YOU to do is, or suggest that do you is maybe go through the 1 2 3 4 5 6 a 8 9 10 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 16 17 18 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 9 6 prior year and ask for that scope of work that that contract entails, that way you will have a better understanding of what the contract is about, the disciplines that's required and the number of hours and so forth that we're looking for.

We also have a mentor protege program,

which is Jerry Dotson in research. Triangle Park is pretty much running that program. Of course, we all support that, but most of the agreements are going out to RTP for approval. What that program entails is that it's a five year program and the small business would make an agreement with a large firm, and they are able to stay in that program for five years.

And I believe we have waived the subcontracting or the competition rule for subcontracting and their mentor is allowed to give or to grant a sole source procurement under that program up to $ 1 million to the protege, So that.# s a pretty good program that we are utilizing now. There are several terms that have several proteges, but I think one protege can only have one mentor.

We also look at the subcontract program.

What I mean by that is it that, any contract that comes into Cincinnati or any one of the national buying offices in that program or   I mean, if a contract is 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 9%

over $ 580,000, there is going to be subcontracting,

then we have to approve the plan that the Barge firm puts in. They have to have a plan to utilize women minorities and small business and now HUB Zone,

We monitor that program and if the I contract is awarded, then the reports that are sent in to us indicate the accomplishments of those prime contractors, and we keep a record of those subcontracts. While we can't tell them who to subcontract with, we can see that they accomplish their goals that they have put forth to give the contract.

So that is another program we have, and I work pretty religiously with that in Cincinatti.

We also, let's see what else we might have, Okay, I have seen in the last few years, there's a trend for our agency to use a lot of the GSA type contracts, and it's a trend going that way. We have asked all of our 8 A firms to contact GSA and get on a GSA schedule because it's easier for the program offices to go that route. They don't have to award the contract, they don't have to administer, all they have to do is give money to it and issue a deliver order and the contract is already in place. So that's a good avenue and good opportunity for many of the 8 A firms,

any of the small business firms to get a GSA contract. We have the small purchase program which that, the 8 A program there as well. And we are now EPA. GOV.   . OAM and all of our solicitations are out The other thing, and maybe the last thing 12 13 17 18 2 0 2 2 4 2 3 a 2 4 contracts that are in the forecast or that have come up and they are indicated that they will be open competition, before we go out on open competition, we go out for source assault because, when we first awarded that contract maybe three or four years ago,

maybe we didn't have a small business available, but before we go out to competition, again we are going out for source assault, a synopsis for source assault, what I ' m looking f o r is a response from the small businesses, 8 A, women owned and that that may have an interest in that particular procurement, and we are asking for you to respond with the capability statement to us.

When I get that, we go back to the program B 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 0 11 12 1 3 1 4 1 5 16 17 1%

1 9 20 2 1 22 2 3 2 4 25 9 9 office, if we get enough, and let them know we have small businesses that are out there that we want to zone, We usually, when office, I'm asking them statement from the stan we go back to look at point of f look at for a small business set aside or 8  A or HUB to the program the capability rms doing at least 56, percent of that job with their own force, There's a clause in the contract that says they must do 50 percent of the labor with their own force, so other than that 50 percent, they are allowed to subcontract.

So that's basically all I have from Cincinatti. If you have any questions, I will be around for the rest of today and tomorrow, and feel free to give me a call at any time and IIll try to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. Next we have,

and I think after this we will have covered everything on our agenda, the next person we have to speak, and I prefer we do this and let him go through his presentation, and then we can wrap up, if that's okay with you all. We have Mr. Frank Carpenter with us who is the contractor from Howard University.

My office has entered into a contract with Howard. It's the first of its kind, the first one with a historically Black college minority institution. c i 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 IO 11 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 17 18 1 9 2 0 2 1 2 2 2 3 2 4 2 5 100 1 know it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in 2000,

but this is the first agency contract with HBCU, We have given a lot of grants, but never entered into a contract rule agreement.

Howard University has a small business development center. I know a Bot of you are familiar with that, but what we've done is entered into an agreement with Howard that they will come help us staff our Outreach Development Center and bring with them all the advantages that one would get at the small business development center, information on the score,

information on loan packages, information on the women business programs and all of that.

And then, in addition to that, they will also work with us in focusing in on the environment,

we are very elated and very pleased with what we've been able to carve out into terms of that agreement.

And with that, Howard also has a sub center with Hispanics and they are also working with a couple of other colleges and universities, University of the District of Columbia, so we are looking to see this expand and grow. so This was just one of my little ideas that we were able to put on paper and then bring it to the point where we are today. We did try to seek support t I, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 101 from a couple of the other schools, but many of them in the area did not have the same kind of setup that Howard did, and so what we're trying to do in the center, we have computers readily available for anybody that, the public coming in o f f the street wanting to find out bow to do business, they have access to the internet to get solicitations and other information.

We have packages that we put together on doing business with EPA, information on the various programsd et cetera e And SO at this time, and I didn# t mean to do a long introduction, Frank, but Frank is going to come forward and share just some of the things that we've been able to work on thus far. He is visiting because he is the one that is staffing   not staffing,

but will manage, aside from Howard, to work the outreach center, thank you.

MR. FRANK CARPENTER: Thank you, Jeanette.

And I wonder, will you all, would do me a favor,

because I haven't sat as along as you have this afternoon, I would want to stand for a few seconds,

Why don't you just stand up and rest your sacroiliac.

For four days we have gathered in the valley of the Sandia Mountains to try to communicate with one another about the vision of involving, 1 9 10 11 12 I3 17 18 4 l9 23 2 4 25 including and encouraging disadvantaged businesses to take advantage of what I understand this year is an expenditure of $ 500 billion, including federal, state,

county and local level cities.

My role this afternoon, at least as it is explained on the program, is to describe for you the outreach center and historically Black colleges and universities. We won't have time for me to give full treatment to that, thank God, we are such a tired audience, but I intend to at least lay a philosophical predicate with respect to all of that. What's the motivating factor behind this initiative that Jeanette Brown has created and now finds itself in the form of a contract between not only one of the historically Black colleges, but one of the greatest of historical Black colleges? You know what that is.

I want to start with establishing that predicate with a quote from Langston Hughes. Everybody familiar with Langston Hughes? And I ran across this a couple of weeks ago when I learned that I would be,

have the privilege, and I do consider it a privilege,

to speak to you, and I will tell you why I, before I get to that, why I consider it a proud privilege.

I have witnessed for four days a diverse group of people who are working hard at making the law 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 103 of the land work. I experienced and went through the Croson versus Richmond case as a direct minority development for Montgomery County. That was a tremendous transition in the way we think about these things. And then came the Adaran case, which specifically affected how the federal government was going t o deal with this social and economic issue.

I may be dating myself, but I can go back to the days of Penny Love and when that became an issue with respect to these programs at that time. I was with the US Department of Commerce at that time, and with the 20/ 20 vision, I can say to you that it was inevitable that we would come to such phrases as the compelling government interest, strict scrutiny,