C. LAWRENCE CRUMP
COUNCILMAN-AT-LARGE
CITY OF NEWARK, NEW JERSEY

Press Release
Newark, New Jersey
At the May 22, 2024 Newark Municipal Council meeting, Councilman-at-Large C. Lawrence Crump sponsors resolution to urge the Governor, State Senate and State Assembly to act upon the New Jersey Disparity Study’s findings of the egregious inequities in the State Procurement Process.
In 2020, Governor Phil Murphy authorized the Department of Treasury to perform a Disparity Study on the State procurement process. Organizations such as the New Jersey Legislative Black Caucus, the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, the Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the State Veterans Chamber of Commerce, the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and others, urged and encouraged the State to complete the Disparity Study. The findings of the Study were finally released on January 12, 2024. The Study analyzed more than two hundred forty-thousand (240,000) awarded contracts involving more than sixty (60) different state agencies from 2015 to 2020. The contracts reviewed were Construction, Professional Services and Goods and Services.
The Disparity Study revealed what many of us already knew…. The inequities and exclusion of public contract opportunities for minority, veteran and women-owned businesses in New Jersey are egregiously significant. The substantial majority of state-awarded contracts go to businesses owned by white men.
Black-owned companies in New Jersey represent 9.19% of the available construction businesses, but they receive only .014% of the dollars of awarded construction contracts. Nearly 28% of construction firms in the state are minority-owned, but they received just 3.47% of state-awarded funds for prime construction contracts valued up to $5.7 million. Women-owned businesses comprised nearly 38% of all professional services firms, but received less than 10% of contracts.
Newark Municipal Councilman-at-Large C. Lawrence Crump, with input from the New Jersey African American Chamber of Commerce and Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, prepared and sponsored a resolution that urges the Governor, State Senate and State Assembly to:
1. Adopt the necessary race and gender conscious programs to provide solutions for the unacceptable disparities among state-issued contracts.

2. Monitor state procurement contracts and provide semi-annual, comprehensive reports on the progress and effectiveness of the race and gender conscious programs.
3. Conduct training for all state procurement professionals on defining the good-faith effort and small & diverse utilization.
Councilman Crump also urges other municipalities around the state to follow suit and adopt resolutions urging the Governor, State Senate and State Assembly to promote equitable and inclusive state procurement policies and practices to ultimately resolve the overwhelming disparities that exist.