Caltrans Proposes Halving the DBE Goal for 2027–28 — Public Comment Closes August 31

Caltrans rewrote its DBE pages this week, and the change is substantial enough that anyone who read them even three days ago is now working from stale information. The sentence that had defined the last several months — that during the reevaluation period recipients may not set DBE contract goals nor count DBE participation toward goals — is gone. So are the statements that new applications would be processed only after the reevaluation finished, and that out-of-state firms remained ineligible until then.

In their place, Caltrans states the position directly: “The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program is restarting.”

The proposed goals are far lower

For federal fiscal years 2027 through 2028, Caltrans proposes:

A note on that second figure. We have printed it exactly as Caltrans wrote it. A drop from 6.7 percent to eight-hundredths of a percent would be close to eliminating the FTA goal altogether, which is a striking thing to publish without comment, and it is possible the page means 0.8 percent. We are not going to guess at an agency's intent and publish the guess. If you work on transit contracts, this is worth asking about during the comment period.

The stated reason: there are far fewer certified firms now

Caltrans attributes the reduction to “updated federal regulations and the new — significantly smaller — pool of re-certified firms.” That is the clearest official acknowledgement so far of what the October 2025 Interim Final Rule did to the California DBE roster. The rule abolished the group-based presumption of disadvantage and required every owner to prove disadvantage individually through a Personal Narrative; Caltrans was reevaluating more than 6,000 firms against that standard. The proposed goal is, in effect, a measurement of how many came through.

Goals have not actually resumed yet

It would be easy to read “restarting” as “back to normal.” It is not, and the distinction matters if you are pricing work. Caltrans sets out the sequence itself, and receiving FHWA and FTA acknowledgement of the Goal and Methodology reports comes before resuming contract goals. The order is: collect public comments, submit the reports to FHWA and FTA, submit an updated DBE Program Plan, receive acknowledgement, and only then resume contract goals. Caltrans says it expects the new goals to restart in the 2026–27 federal fiscal year.

So the two-part test that has governed this all year still applies — the certification program finishes its reevaluation, and the recipient adopts a goal the federal agencies accept. What changed this week is that the second part now has a published path and a date, where before it had neither. Our status tracker follows it.

Certification is open, and Caltrans is asking firms to apply

One line on the rewritten page deserves attention from anyone who has been waiting: Caltrans “continually welcomes new DBE applications” and encourages small businesses to pursue certification — adding, pointedly, that doing so helps raise future participation goals. Read alongside the proposed cut, that is an agency saying the goal fell because the pool shrank, and the way back up is more certified firms.

Firms that have not yet submitted reevaluation materials are still able to: Caltrans asks previously certified firms who have not applied to upload a Personal Narrative, a Personal Net Worth Statement and supporting documents. Firms that are not certified are not eligible to participate until Caltrans receives and approves those materials.

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