Doyle unveils MBE initiative

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Kapur & Associates CEO Ramesh Kapur (right) receives the 2006 Excellence in State Procurement award from Wisconsin Department of Commerce Secretary Mary Burke and Godwin Amegashie, director of the state Minority Business Program. Milwaukee-based Manutec Inc. won the Governor’s Entrepreneurial Excellence Award. Manutec won the $1.7 million contract to produce decorative rails and fencing on the Marquette Interchange reconstruction.

Daily Reporter Photo/Sean Ryan

Gov. Jim Doyle Wednesday rolled out a new minority business development plan
that includes loans for startup and expanding businesses and streamlining the
state certification process.

“Anybody who steps back and says it’s all done, we have met all of
our goals, is going to fail,” Doyle said.

The plan, dubbed “Get Started, Get Growing,” includes creating a
Business Opportunity Advisory Commission, which would have as chairmen state
Sen. Spencer Coggs and Milwaukee Urban League President and CEO Ralph Hollmon.
Its task is to find ways for the state to contract more often with minority
businesses. Wisconsin has increased the amount of contract dollars going to
minority companies by 14 percent since 2003.

Doyle also charged Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton with the job of streamlining the
application process for companies seeking state certification as a minority-owned
business. That suggestion got a round of applause from Doyle’s audience
at the 25th annual Governor’s Conference on Minority Business Development.

Doyle laid out two new loan initiatives. The first, Get Started, would allow
starting minority businesses to get $5,000 loans from the state at 2 percent
interest. No collateral would be required, and the principal could be deferred
for three years.

The second, Get Growing, is aimed at helping expanding businesses get $100,000
loans. The state Department of Commerce would loan out half the money, and a
second lender would handle the rest.

“We are going to help people get off the ground, and we are going to help
them make the next step as well,” Doyle said.

Advice available

The plan would also expand the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Network and set up an
outreach specialist in Milwaukee that would advise new business owners.

The last component of the plan has the Commerce Department providing scholarships
to cover 75 percent of the $1,500 bill to take the Wisconsin Small Business
Development Center’s PeerSpectives training. The program sets up roundtables
of eight to 12 business owners that would meet 10 times a year to share notes
and experiences on running a small business. A facilitator from Michigan’s
nonprofit Edward Lowe Foundation would lead each meeting.

Doyle also held up two examples of success in state minority contracting: the
Marquette Interchange reconstruction and Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development
Authority projects.

“We’re going to see one of the finest road projects in the United
States, and it shows you what can get done when we work together,” Doyle
said.

The Department of Transportation reported this month that disadvantaged business
enterprises have been awarded $115.8 million of the $607.3 million contracted
out on the Marquette. Of the 1.1 million man-hours of work performed up to July
31, minority workers have done 241,180.