Geography · Multi-state certifications
The real regional DBE certification clusters — and the ones that aren't what they seem
Published May 25, 2026 · ~8 minute read
When a certified firm holds DBE certifications from multiple state programs at once, that's a sign they've decided multiple state contracting markets are worth pursuing in parallel. Aggregated across thousands of firms, the patterns reveal which state markets natural "belong" together in the eyes of practitioners.
We pulled every state-issued certification in the DBE Source database — 217,546 of them, after excluding national programs like SBA 8(a) — and grouped them by company. 79,151 distinct companies hold at least one state cert. Of those, 9,300 hold certs in two or more states. The dataset gives us 844 distinct state-pair co-occurrences to examine.
For each state pair, we computed a liftstatistic: how often the pair occurs together compared to what independent state choices would predict. A lift of 1.0 means firms hold the two state certs no more often than chance. Above 1.0 means co-occurrence is overrepresented (some shared force is pulling firms toward both). Below 1.0 means the pair is rarer than chance (firms picking one state actively don't pick the other).
Where the strongest cluster arcs land on the US map
Each arc connects a pair of states whose DBE certifications co-occur unusually often (lift ≥ 4x, with at least 100 firms holding both). Darker arcs = stronger lift. Thicker arcs = more firms. By default the view excludes certs from multi-state authorities so what you see is firms separately pursuing each state's program.
New England jumps out as a tight knot of arcs in the upper right of the map; the Ohio Valley cluster threads through Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, and the Plains; the Mid-Atlantic corridor shows in the Delaware-Pennsylvania arc and its connections northward. The West Coast is conspicuously empty — no strong arcs originate from California, Oregon, or Washington beyond the modest OR-WA pairing.
The 51×51 reference matrix
For the underlying numbers behind every state pair, the heatmap below is the full reference. Rows and columns are grouped by region so clusters appear as bright diagonal blocks. Use the "Expand to full view" button for a larger, more readable version.
Real regional clusters (high lift, separate state DOTs)
1. New England — the tightest cluster in the data
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont form the tightest set of co-occurring state certifications in the database. Connecticut-Vermont firms co-occur at 41.4x the chance rate (116 firms), Connecticut-Rhode Island at 28.7x (247 firms), Massachusetts-Rhode Island at 26.1x (310 firms), and Massachusetts-Vermont at 25.9x (100 firms). Connecticut-Massachusetts comes in at 19.9x.
None of this is driven by a multi-state authority. There is no New England equivalent of WMATA. These firms are separately pursuing Connecticut DOT certifications, Rhode Island DOT certifications, Massachusetts DOT or UCP certifications, and Vermont UCP certifications — and a meaningful share of them are pursuing all of those at once. The New England contracting market behaves, in this respect, like a single integrated market with multiple separate certification gates.
2. Ohio Valley / Midwest — a quieter but consistent cluster
Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Tennessee form a real but lower-volume regional cluster. Missouri-Nebraska firms co-occur at 20.0x the chance rate, Kentucky-Ohio at 14.3x, Kansas-Missouri at 13.7x, Kentucky-Missouri at 10.0x, Missouri-Oklahoma at 9.9x, and Kentucky-Tennessee at 8.7x.
These pairs all reflect cross-border metro economies — the Kansas City and St. Louis metros straddle MO-KS state lines, the Cincinnati-Northern-Kentucky region spans KY-OH, and Memphis sits at the corner of TN-MS-AR. State DOT certification is the workhorse mechanism here, no bi-state compact agencies involved.
3. Mid-Atlantic — Delaware-Pennsylvania, and Delaware as a hub
Delaware-Pennsylvania firms co-occur at 15.7x the chance rate (414 firms), the strongest non-New England real cluster. Delaware then appears repeatedly in adjacent pairs: Delaware-Connecticut at 21.3x, Delaware-Rhode Island at 16.3x, Delaware-Massachusettsat 10.3x. Delaware is functionally a Northeast-corridor hub for multi-state cert holders, even though it isn't formally part of the New England compact area.
4. Plains: Colorado-Oklahoma
Smaller in volume but real: Colorado-Oklahoma at 11.0x (125 firms). Pennsylvania-Utah at 9.3x is also in this band, though the underlying geography is less obvious.
Structural pseudo-clusters: high volume, but driven by multi-state authorities
The two highest-volume cross-state pairings in the raw data are NJ-NY (2,280 firms) and DC-MD (1,055 firms). Both shrink dramatically when you filter out certifications from multi-state authorities.
NJ-NY: 94% Port Authority
Of the 2,280 firms holding both NJ and NY state-tagged certifications, 2,134 (93.6%)hold a Port Authority of NY & NJ cert. Once PANYNJ is removed, only 148 firms have separate NJ DOT + NY State DOT certs. The apparent NJ-NY cluster is overwhelmingly the bi-state authority operating exactly as chartered. We covered PANYNJ specifically in our regional transit authorities analysis.
DC-MD: 59% WMATA
Of the 1,055 firms holding both DC and MD certifications, 627 (59.4%) hold a WMATA cert and another 116 (11.0%)hold an MWAA cert. The DMV cluster is partly real (~428 firms separately pursue DC and Maryland programs) and partly structural. Maryland-Virginia, by contrast, isn't a strong cluster at all — the MD-VA pair actually sits below the baseline lift of 1.0x. Firms certified in Maryland aren't especially likely to also be certified in Virginia.
Where there is no cluster
The West Coast doesn't cluster
California-Oregon firms co-occur at 0.53x the chance rate — they're less common than independent state choice would predict. California-Washington is 1.9x, modestly above baseline. Oregon-Washington is 3.3x, the strongest West Coast pair but still well below New England or the Ohio Valley.
Looking at California's top lift partners reveals something interesting: its strongest co-occurrences are with Utah (6.0x), Nebraska (5.4x), and Vermont (4.5x) — not its geographic neighbors. This is the signature of national-firm portfolios: large California-based firms that have certifications in scattered states for contract-specific reasons. There isn't a regional West Coast contracting market the way there is in New England.
The Southeast clusters weaker than expected
Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina all have substantial DBE certification programs, but they don't bundle the way New England does. South Carolina-North Carolina is the strongest Southeast pair at 4.9x lift (104 firms). Georgia-Alabama is at 5.8x (389 firms — large but lower lift). Georgia-Florida sits essentially at baseline (1.0x). The Southeast contracting market has volume but not the integrated cross-state pursuit pattern New England shows.
Methodology
- Data
- DBE Source database, May 2026 snapshot. 278,151 certification records linked to 132,698 companies. Restricted to the 217,546 certifications whose certifying state is one of the 50 states or DC (excluding 60,340 national-program certifications and 1,357 records tagged Puerto Rico). 79,151 distinct companies have at least one qualifying state cert; 9,300 have two or more.
- Lift calculation
- For each ordered state pair (A, B), lift = P(both A and B) / [P(A) × P(B)], with probabilities taken over the 79,151-company population. A lift of 2.0 means firms hold A and B certs together at twice the rate independent choices would produce. Pairs with fewer than 25 co-occurring firms are not colored in the heatmap to avoid the small-denominator inflation that would otherwise produce visually dominant noise.
- Multi-state authority filter
- Five agencies operate across state lines by charter: WMATA (DC/MD/VA), the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (NY/NJ), the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (DC/VA), and the North Central and South Central Texas Regional Certification Agencies (multi-county Texas). With the toggle on, certifications from these five agencies are excluded so the matrix reflects what firms do when they have to pursue each state's separate program. With the toggle off, you see the full co-occurrence including those structural ties.
- Reproducibility
- The full analysis script is open-source. It joins certifications to companies, builds the per-company set of state certifications, computes pairwise co-occurrence with and without multi-state agency filtering, and dumps the matrix as JSON used to render this page.
Frequently asked questions
Which state DBE certifications are most commonly held together?
By raw count, the New Jersey + New York pair leads with 2,280 firms — but this is almost entirely driven by the bi-state Port Authority of NY & NJ. Excluding multi-state authorities, the strongest pairs are Delaware-Pennsylvania (414 firms), Massachusetts-Rhode Island (310), Connecticut-Massachusetts (295), Connecticut-Rhode Island (247), and Connecticut- Delaware (185). By lift (over-representation vs. chance), Connecticut-Vermont leads at 41.4x.
Is there a regional reciprocity arrangement among New England DBE programs?
Not formally — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont each run their own DBE certification programs with their own applications. The clustering in our data comes from firms separately pursuing each state's certification, not from a shared certificate. That said, the New England states do have informal information-sharing practices that make cross-state applications more tractable in practice than between, say, California and Texas.
Why don't California-Oregon DBE firms cluster?
The data suggests California's contractor economy is large enough to operate internally without significant cross-border DBE certification flow. Caltrans (California's DOT) certifies 9,962 firms in our database, and California-based DBEs predominantly stay certified in California. Oregon and Washington run separate, smaller DBE programs that haven't integrated with California's in the way Massachusetts and Rhode Island programs have integrated.
Is the DC-Maryland-Virginia "DMV" a single DBE market?
Partly yes, but the apparent integration is heavily mediated by two multi-state authorities: WMATA and MWAA. Of firms holding both DC and Maryland state-tagged certs, 59% hold a WMATA cert and another 11% hold an MWAA cert. Once those authorities are filtered out, the DC-MD co-occurrence is still substantial (about 428 firms) but no longer dominant. Maryland-Virginia, notably, is belowbaseline co-occurrence — firms certifying in Maryland aren't especially likely to also certify in Virginia despite the geographic adjacency.
What is lift, and why use it instead of raw counts?
Raw counts answer "how many firms have both certs." Lift answers "how surprising is that co-occurrence, given how many firms have each cert individually." A pair like NJ-NY with 2,280 firms looks huge by count, but both NJ and NY have lots of firms, so a substantial co-occurrence is expected. The lift statistic strips out that "both states are big" effect and tells you whether the pairing is more frequent than independence would predict. Lift makes small-state clusters like Connecticut-Vermont visible (only 116 firms, but 41x more than expected).
Caveats
The lift statistic is sensitive to small denominators. When both states have small certification counts, even a few shared firms can produce a high lift value. We exclude pairs with fewer than 25 co-occurring firms from the heatmap coloring for this reason, and rely on the 100+ threshold for most of the named claims in the narrative above.
The multi-state authority filter is a judgment call about which agencies' certifications are "automatic" cross-state pairings versus genuine separate state choices. We've treated WMATA, the Port Authority of NY & NJ, MWAA, and the two Texas regional agencies as multi-state. Other agencies could be argued for or against — toggle the filter off to see all five agencies' effect together.
Our database tags certifications by the certifying agency's home jurisdiction. A firm with a single WMATA cert appears in our DC bucket, even though that cert is operationally valid across DC, MD, and VA. This is why the "DC-MD" co-occurrence includes WMATA firms in the first place: they don't have separate state-tagged DC and Maryland certs, but the WMATA cert shows up under both states in our cross- state count by virtue of how regional authorities interact with our taxonomy.
Data snapshot: May 25, 2026. Companion analyses: regional transit authorities, the most welcoming state DOTs, and DBE density by state.