The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) established goals and methodologies for the participation of disadvantaged business enterprises (DBE) in Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) assisted contracts. Every three years, NYSDOT establishes an overall agency goal. The DBE goal set by NYSDOT for FFY 2023 through 2025 is 18.37% on FHWA contracts.

According to the regulations, recipients must establish broad objectives based on concrete proof of the availability of DBEs who can compete for contracts with the DOT. NYSDOT employed the Census Data and DBE directory method to arrive at their base availability figure. In step two, NYSDOT calculated the median past DBE participation to determine if the base value needed to be adjusted upward or downward. 

The median rate of participation in race-neutral DBEs was 0.86%. For the Federal fiscal years 2023-2025, the Department anticipates using race-neutral strategies to reach at least 0.86% of the overall objective. 

NYSDOT opposes switching from a race-conscious and race-neutral strategy for goal achievement to a race-neutral strategy alone. However, the Department wants to use race and gender-neutral methods to achieve the goal as much as possible. As a result, the Department will accomplish the 14.98?justed-based figure goal as follows:

• Race-neutral projections: 0.86%
• Race-conscious projections: 14.12%

NYSDOT will access the goal attainment reports at the end of FFY 2024 to determine how to best achieve goals in FFY 2025.