New York, NY —

The city and state granted billions of dollars in contracts in the past decade as unprecedented building and development took off. Left out of much of that boom, however, were minority and women owned businesses because of city and state initiatives to aid them were shunted. But under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the new Spitzer administration, they've become a major priority. WNYC's Elaine Rivera reports.

REPORTER: It's the first of its kind: a city procurement fair a few weeks ago where women and minorities who run their own companies could meet with representatives from more than a dozen city agencies who want to do business with them. Paul Maloney, president of Moor Metals, a Massachusetts-based multi-metal distributor, can't believe his eyes.

MALONEY: This is an opportunity today with all of these agencies here I wouldn't see this many people in six months as a small company you don't get out of the office a great deal so this is an opportunity to come down and see these agencies face to face with people this is truly fish in the barrel.

REPORTER: Maloney, who is African American, says he tried to do business with the city in the late 1990s when Rudolph Giuliani was mayor. Maloney says it was clear to him there was no interest and he gave up.

MALONEY: I thought it was too difficult because I made phone calls and got the run around and everyone said we're all set right now and that's a catch phrase for they're not calling you - they're not interested, they have their people they're doing business with and have been doing business with and they're not going to change.

REPORTER: Maloney's hunch may not have been wrong. One Giuliani campaign promise was to get rid of the city's minority and women owned business enterprise initiatives - commonly referred to as MWBEs. One of his first mayoral actions he took was to do away with the executive order that the city's first black mayor David Dinkins had established which would give more access to such businesses. And at the same time at the state level, Governor George Pataki was ignoring comparable initiatives as well.

At the time, Giuliani's reasoning was that set-aside programs were "bad social policy." Also, a federal court ruling made set-aside programs unconstitutional. Rudy Washington, who headed the Department of Business Services under Giuliani, said they instead created a bid match program. He says the program broke down big contracts to make it easier and faster for women and minority-owned businesses to get city contracts.

WASHINGTON: We broke it down into smaller packages made so smaller firms could compete against each other, created a level playing field and we began to create infrastructure within the minority community.

REPORTER: But the Bloomberg administration and Governor Eliot Spitzer - along with his lieutenant governor David Paterson- have contended it wasn't nearly enough to level the playing field for women and minorities who historically have not had the access, capital, nor education to get lucrative city and state contracts.

They decided to change that. The Bloomberg administration signed a number of executive orders and passed legislation - known as local law 129 - to remedy the disparities.

And during the 2006 governor's race, Paterson made it a cornerstone of the campaign. He referred to the miniscule number of contracts going to women and minority owned businesses as a national embarrassment.

He recently attended the awards dinner for the Women Builders, Council. Paterson, the first black lieutenant governor in New York state history, says he always knew that there was discrimination in awarding state contracts to minorities. But he was stunned when he learned of the exclusion against women.

PATERSON: When I found out women were 51.8 percent of the population and got 2.6 percent of the executive discretionary contracts in, I'm trying to figure out what kind of government feels comfortable systematically discriminating against half the human race

REPORTER: Sandra Wilkin, president of the Council, says there were many reasons why they didn't get state contracts. But she says there was another big factor as well.

WILKIN: It was on the back burner - it was not a priority for the previous administrations but it surely is here and it is now.

REPORTER: Maureen Fritch, a general contractor and one of the founders of the Women's Builders Council, puts it more bluntly.

FRITCH: It's always been a good ol' boys club.

REPORTER: The statistics bear Fritch's statement out. A 2005 study showed that of the $6 billion in contracts involving construction, slightly more than 7 percent went to minority-owned businesses and nearly 7 percent to white, women owned businesses. More than 80 percent went to white male contracting firms.

Robert Walsh, commissioner for the city's Department of Small Business Services, says it won't be an easy task to rectify that disparity. One obstacle is the certification process. Minority and women owned businesses have to go through a complex certification procedure. Many do not have the financial capital or experience to work through the bureaucratic maze.

WALSH: It's one thing to certify a company as a minority and women owned business. It's another to go that extra step and turn over the rocks and see where you can end up helping the company grow and be a bigger company and a better company where they can compete.

REPORTER: When he first took over, his department did not have resources to re-launch the initiative. Here now here are some of the things Walsh says his department is doing.

WALSH: Today we have close to 30 people working on this issue working on the marketing working on the technical assistance working on a online directory of all of the minority and women owned businesses working with all of the different city agencies finding out where there are opportunities with the different agencies.

REPORTER: Cheryl McKissack, president of the McKissack Group - a design and construction firm which was founded by her great grandfather - is starting to feel the impact. Her construction company was granted a $280 million contract to work on the Atlantic Yards development project in Brooklyn.

Elizabeth King is a project accountant there. She says the MWBE initiatives are crucial for women and minority owned firms.

KING: It's very important because e minority and especially women in construction it's been a very hard struggle to get in the field itself because it's a male dominated industry.

REPORTER: And McKissack says:

McKISSACK: It's taken 100 years to be an overnight success it's been incredibly hard now the awareness is there are women and minorities that are in high level positions that afford opportunities to companies like ours. The fight is not what it used to be - I'm very pleased to see the amount of opportunity it's like an in to be an MWBE now,

REPORTER: McKissack and others who run the MWBEs say they are keeping their fingers crossed that there will be a consistent political commitment to rectify what they see as historical exclusion from economic opportunities. And they hope one day such initiatives won't even be necessary for them to compete. For WNYC, I'm Elaine Rivera