Spectrum Paint Applicator Corp., at 95 Evergreen Ave., is the only locally based business to win significant federal contract dollars, while the bulk of “local” spending went to multinationals. — Photo by Diego Cupolo

The government spends a lot of money. Millions of federal dollars have been spent in Bushwick over the last decade, and though officials encourage bureaucracies to spend their budgets with small businesses, most of these millions went to large corporations who merely do business in the Bushwick vicinity. To find out how much was paid out to whom, BushwickBK sifted through the government’s recently expanded transparency database. All it took was a bit of patience and a high tolerance for statistics jargon.

The database was launched last May as data.gov, and until a couple of weeks ago, the site hosted approximately 47 sets of data for curious citizens to dig through, each provided by federal executive agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Dept. of Agriculture. But on Jan. 22 of this year, the number rocketed to 169,000 discrete data sets. Patent records, census information, defense contracts, White House visitor records, federal employee salary information — large swaths of information that were previously unavailable without a Freedom of Information Act Request.

For this you can thank a recent executive branch memorandum, entitled "Transparency and Open Government," which required federal agencies to post at least three sets of "high value" data on their respective web sites. Broadly defined [pdf], "high value" is data which helps citizens understand the operation of a federal agency, as opposed to raw information which may be interesting but not especially illuminating.

The data are mostly in the form of surveys or searchable fields, and provide a wealth of knowledge, both trivial and crucial (see the results on national arts participation [pdf], or Medicare data). 

Bushwick’s zip codes: 11206, 11207, 11221, and 11237.

What does all this mean for Bushwick? Though regional governing bodies are beginning to toe the line on transparency*, so far, the state and local data sets on the data.gov aggregator are few. Taking the cue of WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, we entered the four zip codes that make up Bushwick – 11206, 11207, 11221, and 11237 — into the General Services Administration’s (GSA) database on federal contract spending. We found most local funding went towards prisons, paint, and uniform manufacturing.

Overall, federal spending was highest in zipcode 11206, which radiates outward from the Broadway-Flushing intersection, encompassing parts of Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and South and East Williamsburg. The zip code is home to two entities who regularly win the largest government contracts in Bushwick. Over the course of ten years, the federal government has awarded $35,509,849 to The Geo Group and $5,955,840 to Carter Industries.

The Geo Group, a multinational correctional and detention management company which is headquartered in Boca Raton, FL, operates the Brooklyn Community Correctional Center at 988 Myrtle Avenue.

"It is a facility that is under contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to provide residential and reentry services to federal offenders," said Peter Brustman, manager for New York City’s Community Corrections. "It’s commonly referred to as a halfway house. The facility at 988 Myrtle serves Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and all of Long Island."

Representatives at Geo Group would not comment on the facility.

The Carter Industries specializes in manufacturing military clothing and insignia, and though it has a mailing address at 59 Scholes Street, it is headquartered in Kentucky. At press time, calls to Carter had not been returned.

The majority of the remaining contracts in Bushwick were given to businesses based in Bushwick or in the vicinity. Spectrum Paint Applicator Corp., headquartered at 95 Evergreen Avenue, came in third place with $3,312,152 in contracts over the course of ten years. The company manufactures industrial-sized paint brushes, which the GSA would ostensibly use to paint public works. Representatives at Spectrum did not return multiple calls or emails.

Rep. Nydia Velázquez has a record of advocating for federal spending with small business.

Taking all four zip codes into account, the services provided most in the Bushwick area are for the Bureau of Prisons — 61 percent of the funds for local federal contracts go to "social rehabilitation." The remaining contracts are for goods like uniforms, paint supplies, and office supplies. The agency spending the second highest amount in our neighborhood is the Defense Logistics Agency, which accounts for 23 percent of federal funding in Bushwick, the second most requested service or product being "special purpose clothing," at 10 percent of funds.

Bushwick’s congressional Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY, Dist. 12), chairwoman of the House Committee on Small Business, has a record of advocating federal contracts to local businesses.

"When small businesses receive federal contracts it is a win-win – taxpayers benefit as the government receives quality services, while small firms are able to grow their enterprises and hire more workers," Velázquez said. "Tools like USASpending.gov can help to push federal agencies to do a better job of using small businesses for their procurement needs."

But as it stands, the majority of federal contract dollars spent within the Bushwick zip codes went to two massive multinationals, The Geo Group and Carter Industries, which, nationwide, have been awarded $192,496,660 and  $210,537,209 in federal contracts respectively over the past ten years.