STATE AUDITOR Diana DiZoglio said the Massachusetts Office of Business Development failed to follow through on pledges to encourage under-represented populations to apply for special tax credits offered by the agency and to track progress toward that goal.
An audit released on Tuesday by DiZoglio’s office said the business development agency, part of the Executive Office of Business Development, set a goal in 2020 of encouraging “minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned, and disabled-owned businesses” to apply for tax credits under two of the agency’s programs.
Despite that goal and a separate pledge to track progress toward that goal, the audit said the agency made no effort from November 1, 2020, to June 30, 2022, to encourage under-represented people to apply for the tax credits and adopted no metrics for evaluating the success or failure of the effort.
“If we are serious about expanding opportunities for underrepresented populations, we must do better,” DiZoglio said in a statement. “I strongly urge the Office of Business Development to adopt our recommendations.”
The audit includes a response from the office. “In its response, the Massachusetts Office of Business Development indicates that it is not required to meet the goals it sets for itself and publishes in its reports.”
The Massachusetts Office of Business Development, according to the audit, acknowledged that it doesn’t do outreach to individual businesses, but instead encourages municipalities it works with to seek out businesses owned by people from minority groups and urge them to take advantage of the tax credits.
According to the audit, the Massachusetts Office of Business Development said it cannot track diversity-related information from applicants for its tax credits without prior approval from the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination or several other state agencies. The audit said the agency never sought that permission.
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