usiness As Usual For Minority Contractors
ky
J ymes L. P osey
Every time a city agency, or
any other public contracting
body, mismanages a contract
ing bid. it extracts blood from
an already anemic m inority
contracting program.
I'his issue was raised again several
weeks ago in the Willamette Week
newspaper when the Portland Devel
opment Commission rejected Walsh
Construction’s hid on the Rothehild
projeet.
The incident points out in vivid
detail the chaotic nature of how mi
nority contracting programs are run,
not only by the City of Portland, but
throughout the state. In this case,
PDC threw out the low bidder be
cause Walsh did not completely fol
low administrative procedures in its
effort to obtain minority contractor
participation.
On the one hand. PDC should be
applauded for ensuring that prime
contractors correctly apply estab
lished affirmative action guidelines.
But on the other hand. PDC was short
the biggest barrier to the success of
minority contracting programs is the
unwillingness of governmental bod
ies to move beyond meeting artificial
goals. It appears as if all parties want
At ------ ------------------------------------------------
This fixation on goals and procedural tyranny reflects
PDC's infantile awareness and lack of appreciation for
the complexity of minority business issues.
sighted in not understanding that re
gardless of administrative procedure,
the rejected contractor has proven to
be more capable of building authen
tic minority business capacity than
the one selected.
Disadvantage business programs
continue to fail in part because agen
cies insist on stressing quantity over
quality. And as if it's crazy to do
business with minorities, they insist
on a straight-jacket approach. Clearly,
to fill in the squares with the minority
numbers just in order to obtain the
contract and get the project started.
After that, who cares?
This fixation on goals and pro
cedural tyranny reflects PDC's in
fantile aw areness and lack of appre
ciation for the complexity of minor
ity business issues. And when pro
gram owners like PDC fail to apply
consistent, well throughout policy in
concert with other city agencies and
SBA Minority Small I business
Person Of The Year Named
Mae Wu, President of FEI
America, Inc. of Lake Oswego, Or
egon has been selected to receive the
Small Business Adm inistration's
1994 Minority Small Business Per
son of the Year Award for the Port
land District Office, according to
John L. Gilman, SBA District Direc
tor,
Each year the SB A honors an
o u tstan d in g m inority business
person, whose selection for this
award is based on successful busi
ness developm ent and com m u
nity service.
“FEI America, Inc. is an excel
lent firm whose successful growth
and development over the past five
years is a result of Ms. Wu's capable
management", said Gilman. "This is
a classic story of an immigrant to the
U.S. achieving success through hard
work and a dedication to her employ
ees and customers”.
FEI America. Inc. was estab
lished in 1989 as a manufacturer and
dealer of personal computers and PC
related products. Ms. Wu started her
business with limited capital and in
five years has achieved sales of over
$4 million. In 1993, the firm's sales
surged by 80%, necessitating the
firm’s recent expansion to new fa
cilities in Lake Oswego. The firm
employs 11 people and projects 19
employees by the end of the year.
In the past year, the firm has
received recognition for their suc
cess including the award of the
Governor’s 1994 Economic Devel
opment Award for the State of Or
egon, the Portland Cham ber of
Commerce's 1993 Top Ten Growth
Award, and the Portland Federal
Executive Board's 1993 Minority
Contractor of the Year Award. In
addition, the firm was a finalist for
the 1994 Northwest Entrepreneur of
the Year Award.
Ms. Wu is actively involved in
the Portland Chamber of Commerce,
the Oregon Association of Minority
Entrepreneurs, and the World T rade
Center and the Portland Economic
Policy Committee.
Ms Wu will be honored at
the Annual M inority E nterprise
D evelopm ent W eek Awards L un
cheon in P ortland on O ctober
11th at the O regon C onvention
C enter. This event is held an n u
ally to recognize the outstanding
achievem ents and contributions
of our n atio n ’s m inority b u si
nesses. T ickets for the luncheon
can be obtained through Im pact
B usiness C onsultants, Inc., (503)
245-9253.
/i
prevent, black self-sufficiency. At
the time the District of Columbia ban
an bootblack stands was adopted,
virtually all such stands were oper
ated by blacks. Yet, more than 80
years later, the law lived on.
Mr. Brown challenged the law
as racist and unconstitutional under
the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment. In a major
legal victory for what the Institute for
Justice's Clint Bolickcalls “economic
liberty." U.S. District Court Judge
John Pratt ruled the ban on bootblack
stands to be unconstitutional.
While Judge Pratt's ruling in
Brown v. Barry establishes an im
portant legal precedent, the impact
of the legal victory is diminished by
the fact that government has nearly
unlimited resources to adopt, enforce
and defend its often burdensome regu
lations. Large corporations can de
fend themselves against the regula
tory onslaught through their influ
ence of the political and regulatory
processes. By contract, the citizens
and entrepreneurs w ho hold the great
est promise of empowering the Afri
can-American community are lease
capable of defending themselves
against crushing regulations.
All of this ultimately puts gov
ernment in the awkward position of
trying to get people off public assis
tance programs, while simultaneously
constricting economic activity that
would allow them to do so.
Continued from MED front
▲
stalling guardrails and other safety
items. Because the projects on which
his company worked were financed
by the federal government, Mr. Dash
was compelled to pay his workers
$19 an hour regardless of experi
ence, and fill out countless forms to
comply with the reporting require
ments of the act. The combined bur
den of high labor and administrative
costs forced T & S Construction into
bankruptcy in 1990.
Other casualties of Davis-Ba
con include residents of public hous
ing projects. The K enilw orth-
Parkside public housing community
in Washington, D.C was once a ha
ven for drug dealers, criminals and
other undesirables who found sane-
(¡Observer
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S-
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tuary in its deteriorating buildings
and grounds. Kenilworth-Parkside
began to look much brighter after the
residents gained management power
of the development and started im
proving the physical condition of the
development as well as the atmo
sphere.
For Kenilworth-Parkside resi
dents the awarding of an $ 18 million
renovation grant in the late 1980s
was a mixed blessing: While the grant
provided the capital to modernize
the development, because of Davis-
Bacon, not a single construction job
was filled by Kenilworth-Parkside
residents, many of whom were un
skilled and thus could not earn the
inflated, union-scale wage. The
Kenilworth-Parkside Resident Man
agement Corp., which represents the
development’s tenants, has joined in
the lawsuit challenging Davis-Ba
con.
Government is a double-edged
sword for the African-American com
munity. The success ofthe civil rights
movement made government a pow
erful ally in guaranteeing political
enfranchisement and equal opportu
nity to participate in the political
process. Yet, intrusive government
regulations, many of which are rem
nants of the Jim Crow era, continue
to constrict the economic develop
ment of the African-American com
munity.
(The preceding was by the Na
tional Center for Public Policy Re
search, a non-partisan, not-profit
educational organization in Wash
ington, D.C.)
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good faith efforts to obtain minority
participation. PDC should also un
derstand by now that the good faith
effort is only necessary when the
contractor has not been able to ac
complish the designated goals. Walsh
legally met the lowly goal The whole
issue would have been mute it PDC
had set reasonable goals in the first
place.
This entire experience ought to
be an object lesson to teach that it’s
not so much about goals and num
bers as it is about rewarding and
challenging prime contractors who
have really made efforts, demon
strated by results, to include minority
contractors. This is not rocket sci
ence stuff. And, we have to wonder
how long, Oh Lord, will it take for
responsible people to do the right
thing?
James Posey is a small business
owner with a background in social
work and community activism.
Government, A Double Edge Sword
ÄMCO
Construction Supportive Systems, Inc.
issue, PDC has yet to discern real
minority participation from the age
old scam of playing the numbers’
gam e.
A d m ittedly
W alsh
Construction’s participation was piti
ful. But if only PDC could under
stand that in the best interest of real
minority participation, it may have
been better to award Walsh the con
tract with 6.7% participation rather
than awarding it to a contractor who
in most folks’ opinion has only pro
vided token participation.
Disingenuous prime contractors
are notorious for playing the num
bers’ game. They’ll jump through all
kinds of affirmative action hoops in
order to get the contract on the front
end. But as many have testified, more
time than not the participating mi
nority contractor suffers on the back
end.
If you read the Willamette Week
article, you know that Walsh Con
struction failed to show documented
Davis-Bacon Called Poison To Minorities
Advertise In
Ollie' p o ttia n i»
Bureaucracy Versus
Economic Development
Continued from MED front
▲
supported by knowledgeable staff
and program resources, minority con
tractors lose. Even in the post-Croson
era, there is no substitute for well-
coordinated public policy as an ef
fective method for achieving results.
In spile of the PDC/Rothchild
debacle (and fortunately for minor
ity contractors), Mayor Katz seems
to be working tow ard straighten some
of this stuff out. Indeed, most observ
ers including the Willamette Week
should acknowledge that if Mayor
Katz has not accomplish one other
thing in fulfilling hercampaign prom
ise to help minority contractors, she
has already accomplished more than
.ill her predecessors combined. It has
taken time for her administration to
figure out that they are up against
formidable forces, including force
within her own city bureaucracy, not
to mention the private sector, non
minority contracting community.
As illustrated by the Rothehild
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