PROVIDENCE — A daughter of one of the principals in the Rosciti construction family has won the state certification required to qualify for a slice of the tens of millions of contract dollars set aside on most big public works projects for companies owned by “socially and economically disadvantaged” minorities.

For Christina Rosciti, it was no easy task.

Facing obstacles in her first aborted attempt, she acquired a 49-percent interest in Wallace Construction, a company owned by a black man that was already certified as a minority-owned business enterprise [MBE].

In the year and a half that followed, her father and uncle helped keep Wallace Construction busy by giving it a share of the work, reserved for minority-owned businesses, on contracts the Narragansett Bay Commission and, more recently, the state Department of Transportation had given their own company: Rosciti Construction.

That helping hand positioned the company to receive upwards of $780,921 from the bay commission alone for work on its massive project to capture and treat sewage overflows in rain storms.

But then André Wallace died in November 2008, throwing his company’s “minority” status into question when the time came for recertification. His death also opened the company to sharp questioning by the chief investigator for the state’s Minority Business Enterprise Compliance Office.

The clouds dispersed, however, and the doors to new contracts flew open a week and a half ago, when a state committee voted 2-to-1 to recertify the company as a minority-owned business enterprise, with André Wallace’s widow, Kimberly, and Christina Rosciti, 34, at the helm.

Kimberly Wallace, a full-time employee at New England Tech, is the president; Rosciti, the vice-president.

The stakes were high. For example, $14.9 million of the $101.2 million in new contracts awarded by DOT last year went to minority-owned businesses.

Each federally assisted project has a minority hiring target. The list includes those who are black, Hispanic, American Indian, Asian, Portuguese and women, as long as they can demonstrate they control the company, have the required “capability, knowledge and experience” to run it, made a “substantial” investment in it, and fall within net-worth limits..

The guidelines caution that evidence of an “extremely dependent relationship” with a non-minority firm is considered “an irrefutable presumption that the owners do not have control of the business that is applying for certification.”

The significance of the April 8 vote by the MBE Certification Review Committee was hammered home by Christina Rosciti’s lawyer, former House Speaker Joseph DeAngelis, in this exchange: “Ms. Rosciti, do you expect that with some of the economic stimulus moneys coming to Rhode Island that there will be contracts becoming available when the weather breaks?”

Her reply: “Oh, absolutely.”

It was not an open-and-shut case. Dorinda L. Keene, compliance officer for the certification review committee, had raised numerous issues of concern about the legitimacy of the company’s MBE status after André Wallace’s death.

Among them: the company’s “extremely dependent relationship” with a network of family-owned companies; the presence of the same 15 employees on the Wallace and Rosciti Construction payrolls “during the same period of time,” and an unpaid $149,701 bill from a heavy-equipment rental company co-owned by Christina’s brother, Anthony Rosciti.

Taking Rosciti at her word that she didn’t earn enough money in recent years to necessitate the filing of tax returns, Keene’s report also questioned where she got the $30,000 to buy into the company in November 2007.

Keene recommended a hearing to give Rosciti and her new partner — Wallace’s widow, Kimberly — a chance to address “issues of ownership, control, economic disadvantage, size standards, dependency and affiliation [with] non minority firms.” The saga began in 2007 when Christina and her then-22-year-old cousin Jennifer Rosciti sought certification of their year-old King Philip Corporation as a minority-owned business, specializing in heavy construction, utilities and equipment rental.

At the time, Jennifer Rosciti lived at home with her parents; Christina Rosciti, a former clothing store owner with an associate’s degree in fashion merchandising, lived in a condo purchased by her father. Neither had paid federal taxes the previous three years.

Among the “issues of concern” cited then by Keene: the swapping back and forth of employees between King Philip and other family-owned entities. Asked to address “issues of control,” affiliation with non-minority firms, “and the appearance that the firm was created solely to participate” in the MBE program, the cousins withdrew their application in September 2007.

Soon after the withdrawal, Christina forged a partnership with André Wallace, who had been in the construction business for 20 years. That October, he leased space on King Philip Street, a few doors down from Rosciti Construction, her dormant King Philip Corporation and her brother’s Castle Equipment. A month later, they signed an agreement to do business together.

Christina said they were brought together by a mutual friend named “Frank,” who knew “André wasn’t doing much business” and “King Philip wasn’t doing that well.”

She purchased a 49-percent interest in the company for $30,000. For a while, they thrived. But then, in November 2008, he died.

Much of the attention at the recent recertification hearing centered on how — after years of not filing any tax returns and then reporting no income in 2007 — she came up with the money.

She said one-third was a gift from her father; the other $20,000 came from the King Philip Corporation. “I believe it was a return of investments,” DeAngelis elaborated.

She was also asked who had done the company’s cost-estimating when the company was up for a job, after Wallace’s death. Christina’s answer: “Typically, the general contractor … They give us — tell us — what they need for us to do, give us the price. We usually agree to it because we’re hungry for work.” Her response prompted committee member Denise Correy, a design and construction specialist for Rhode Island Housing, to say that normally “the general contractor will solicit bids from different subcontractors. They normally do not give them a dollar value.”

Asked how she staffs her company, which had only three employees, including her, at the time of the hearing, she said: “I call the union hall.” Equipment? She often rents from her brother’s Castle Equipment, next door. Contracts? While other companies occasionally hired Wallace, Rosciti Construction was a reliable source of business.

As for why 15 workers ended up on both the Wallace and Rosciti payrolls, she guessed they worked more than one job. After a hearing spanning two days, Charles Newton, chairman of the certification review committee, made a motion to deny the recertification. Getting no second, he moved for approval, setting the stage for the 2-to-1 vote by the five member committee.

Newton voted yea alongside Olayinka Y. Oredugba, the equal employment opportunity officer for the City of Providence. Associate state controller Louise Anderson voted no. Correy abstained; a fifth member was absent. Explaining his turnabout, Newton said that when a vote is “very close, we err on the side of inclusion.”

Asked later why she abstained, Correy said she was troubled by some of Rosciti’s answers. “We’re here,” she said, “to certify minority contractors … not to fill a requirement for their parent’s company, their father’s company, their family’s company or whoever.”

But this was DeAngelis’ answer when asked what the public should make of the Rosciti case: “Anybody getting started in business, they typically would hope to get work from people that they know, whether those people are neighbors or friends or whatever. And then hopefully … move on.”

kgregg@projo.com