Two days after Mayor Vince Gray told reporters at a news conference that he was unhappy with the pace of efforts to reform the embattled Certified Business Enterprise set-aside program, his administration announced the departure of the head of the department responsible for overseeing that program.
Harold Pettigrew Jr., the head of the Department of Small [...]

Mayor Vince Gray has been seeking reforms to the embattled Certified Business Enterprise program for nearly nine months now and so far has precious little to show for it.
The beefed-up enforcement of CBE rules and regulations by the Department of Small and Local Business Development that Gray announced in October? The department is still staffing [...]

Earlier this year, Councilmember Vincent Orange was upset that his committee staff had to move offices. The relocation was prompted by new committee assignments, and several other councilmembers’ staffers also had to move. But Orange, according to several Wilson Building aides, was adamantly opposed to the game of musical offices.
How opposed? In one heated meeting [...]

Yesterday, D.C. Councilmember David Catania forced his colleagues to show where their true loyalties lie when it comes to the city's broken Certified Business Enterprise program. It wasn't pretty.
The program gives preference to the small fraction of D.C.-based companies that sign up to be CBEs when bidding on city contracts. The city also requires that [...]

Look out, violators of the city's Certified Business Enterprise program rules: Mayor Vince Gray says he's determined to fix the much-maligned contracting preference program and make fraudsters and cheaters pay.
Gray says he wants companies caught gaming the CBE system to face fines big enough "to get people's attention" and deter other would-be wrongdoers.
The tough talk [...]

David Forrester, the president of a Rockville-based construction company that bears his family name, had a chance today to explain to the D.C. Council what exactly happened during the construction of Anacostia Senior High School.
By now you all know that LL has previously written how Forrester allegedly used an allegedly local company as a [...]

Mayor Vince Gray said today on Newstalk with Bruce DePuyt that he'll soon be announcing "a number of reform efforts" to the Certified Business Enterprise, the troubled contracting system LL chronicled in a recent cover story.
Not that LL is taking credit for said forthcoming reforms. Gray tasked Harold Pettigrew, the director of the Deparment [...]

There are few ideas more sacred in District government than the notion that as much public spending as possible should wind up in the pockets of District contractors.
“I’d rather pay a little bit more for service from a D.C.-based company that’s hiring D.C. residents,” was Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry’s rather tidy summation of longstanding [...]