WGBH News' New England Center for Investigative Reporting latest series: The Color of Public Money showed that the number of public contracts that went to minority- and black-owned businesses in Massachusetts in 2018 was less than it was 20 years ago.
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Investigative reporter Christopher Burrell joined Boston Public Radio Thursday to go behind the headlines of the report contextualizes state officials' claims that they are doing better on diversity and equity in public money.
"I went over to the Statehouse, I went to the library and started to pull paper documents because these old documents are not online anymore. And I saw the report, they call it the 'Affirmative Market Report' ... and saw that number was — you have to adjust for inflation — ut that was a bigger number in '98 than it was in 2018," said Burrell. "So, you see the year to year reports, it makes it look like everything's great, then you see something like that and you're like, 'Wait a second, where are we going over the past 20 years?'"
