| Governor's Minority Business Awards Fulfilling the purpose of government by Jonathan Gramling |
| As the federal government's deficit continues to balloon out of control and state governments face pressures to scale back services to make their budgets balance, efficiency and cost cutting oftentimes take center stage to the detriment of the other roles that state government fulfills. Government is charged with providing for the general welfare, while economic efficiency may provide more for the general welfare of a few. |
| Strategic sourcing is the newest tool that state governments have been looking at to trim state expenditures. In essence, it seeks to create economies of scale by entering into large contracts with a limited number of suppliers of goods and services. But that may not always be in the best interest of minority-owned businesses that tend to have fewer capital |
| Godwin Amegashie, the director of the state's Minority Business Procurement Office, spoke about these sometimes competing state interests at the Governor's Special Minority Business Award ceremony held in the Governor's Conference Room in the state Capitol May 22. "We recognize that the paradigm for public contracting is changing," Amegashie observed. "Wisconsin is among many states whose focus now is strategic sourcing. I have a feeling that government can and should never be unmindful of its broader purpose. I soundly believe that government is not and should not operate as a business entity because it is just |
| One of those long-term rewards for state government is achieving a balanced workforce that reflects Wisconsin's population at large to the promotion of the development of minority-owned businesses. One method of achieving that goal is setting a target for Wisconsin departments and agencies to purchase, at minimum, 5% of their goods and services from minority-owned firms. At the awards ceremony, 15 state entities were honored for exceeding that goal. |
| Stephen Bablitch, secretary of the Wis. Dept. of Administration, also feels that it is important for the state to spur the development of minority-owned businesses. "I don't think you can overstate how important it is for minority businesses to provide goods and services to the state," Bablitch said after the ceremony. "The Wisconsin workforce needs to reflect the workforce at large. That's one of the things we try to encourage by setting this goal. The goal, to me, is the bottom. What we need to do is be more like some of these agencies that are coming through with 10% to 20% [in purchasing with minority-owned businesses]. They are really knocking the ball out of the park. That's what we are trying to get agencies to do. And it is so important that agencies keep working at this to make sure we are actually reflecting the workforce and the population in general." |
| Bablitch also feels that minority-owned businesses are important to the long-term health of Wisconsin's economy. "This is part of the governor's overall economic development agenda, Grow Wisconsin, to make sure that the economy in Wisconsin remains vibrant, that we are creating really good jobs," Bablitch said. "In the last three years, we have seen 140,000 new jobs created. That's what really drives the economy in this state: good jobs with good benefits. That's what the governor really wants. It's important for everybody. We want to make sure these jobs are being created across a broad spectrum. That includes the entire workforce, which means it needs to be diverse." |
| Promoting minority-owned business makes good business sense. |
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| Shaleta Dunn, WHEDA (23.4%) |
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| TOP AWARDEES |
| David Nixon, UW-Washington County (25.41%) |
| Eric Buccholz, Rhiannon Friedel, and David Mills, Wisconsin Investment Board (14.95%) |
| Jeff Spence, Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District (14.17%) |
| WI-DOA officials Jo-Anne Moore, Secretary Stephen Bablitch, and Godwin Amegashie |
| resources and are smaller in size. |
| different. Government is a very unique enterprise. And those people who work for government are very privileged to be doing very good work. We have a very different mission. Our role is to really focus on the long-term and not immediate rewards as the measure of our profit as we see on Wall Street." |
| Kirbie Mack, Wis. Dept. of Revenue (5.49%) |
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