Washington City Paper has been covering a story about D.C.’s Certified Business Enterprise (CBE) contracting system and today responded to Mayor Gray’s statement that he’ll soon announce “a number of reform efforts” to the CBE. Gray has not provided details about those reforms, though they might involve additional staffing at the Department of Small and Local Business Development, which currently has no employees dedicated to investigating fraud in the CBE program, despite perceptions of fraud.
Where should they look for expertise on how to fix the program? UMBC political science professor George R. LaNoue told the paper, “I don’t know of anybody who has looked at the D.C. program.” Expressing concern over the dearth of data he continued, “These are very complicated issues, and for the most part people haven’t studied them.”