ONLY ON 6: Business recertified as ‘woman-owned’ after CBS 6 report

RENSSELAER COUNTY, N.Y. (WRGB) – After our initial report, a Rensselaer County woman says her paving business has finally been recertified as “woman-owned,” but not before she says she faced a grilling by the state.

LAST MONTH, Kathleen Trong worried that a back-and-forth with the state was going to hurt The Asphalt Doctor, the paving business she owns, as she fought to get recertified by the state as a woman-owned business (WBE).

Kathleen Trong founded The Asphalt Doctor in 1992. Based in Troy, the company’s site boasts an “A+” rating with the Better Business Bureau 15 years running. The BBB site lists Kathy as proprietor of the corporation, and she says her husband, an experienced paver, is an employee.

For years now, she says the state’s Empire State Development corporation (ESD) has certified her paving business as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE).

The state’s website shows The Asphalt Doctor is a certified WBE with Trong listed as the owner.

However, for months as she tried to get recertified, Kathleen says officials kept trying to say that because she wasn’t doing the actual physical labor she couldn’t possibly be the business owner.

She also says ESD regulations changed in 2020 so that administrative duties don’t count towards the recertification process.

The designation is important; Kathleen says companies need to meet state quotas and work with a certain percentage of minority, women or veteran owned businesses.

While grateful to put this nine month saga behind her, Kathleen says the recertification victory feels a little bit hollow:

“To say that somebody that’s running their company, that’s doing everything except the physical labor does not own a company is outrageous, and I know there are a lot of women out there that are going through the same thing – They kept asking me things like, ‘how did I obtain my business?’ I didn’t obtain my business. I started my business. ‘Well then, how were you able to obtain it?’ They kept asking me the same thing over and over. It’s like, I didn’t obtain it. I created it,” Trong tells CBS 6.

The full Certification Eligibility Requirements from Empire State Development can be found here.