Reforms to Spread Contract Wealth
| AR Articles on Non-White Pressure Groups |
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| Pushing Out Whitey (Mar. 2000) |
| Malicious Intent: Two White Cops Sacrificed (Oct. 2000) |
| Chavis Chagrined (Sep. 1994) |
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It’s not every day in St. Paul that leaders from City Hall, the black community, minority- and women-owned business groups, neighborhood coalitions and large general contractors can crowd into a room and applaud each other.
But that was the scene Thursday morning inside the meeting room of Selby-Dale Community Development Corp., as Mayor Chris Coleman rolled out a series of reforms aimed at spreading more money—via city-controlled jobs and contracts—among groups often left out of the equation.
The fact that so many varied and often competing interests were represented—from Kraus Anderson general contractors to BL Electric Supply Inc. to civil rights groups like the St. Paul NAACP—was as much the news as the reforms themselves; a broad spectrum had convened and agreed on a plan to right a wrong.
The focus is to create a system that solicits and embraces minority- and women-owned businesses underrepresented for years in the city’s spending.
Its most important and immediate change: create a Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity and expand the Human Rights Commission. The new department will have broad control over various aspects of city contracting that previously had been spread among numerous departments, none of whose primary goals was economic justice.
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City Council Member Melvin Carter III, the only black elected city official, described the reforms as the “most significant expansion of our city’s commitment to human rights in over 40 years.”
Coleman directed Choi to get cracking on a plan after an independent audit, performed at the request of the city, concluded that in 2007, less than 7 percent of $220 million in city contracts went to companies owned by women or minorities and 0.3 percent went to firms owned by blacks. The audit did not conclude that the city was discriminating intentionally but rather that the bureaucracy lacked an effective structure to enforce its own goal of giving minority contractors a bigger piece of the pie.
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Many of the reforms are free but will require bureaucratic flexibility not easily found in large cities. Civil-rights enforcement, contract analysis and procurement, contract investigation and enforcement all will be brought under the control of the new department. Currently, those disciplines are the scattered domains of Planning and Economic Development, Safety and Inspections, Human Rights and Finance, as well as the city attorney’s office and the Human Rights Commission.
But some will cost money. The most obvious is the hiring of someone to head the new department. The process, to include a “community-based hiring committee,” will be similar to hiring a police or fire chief, Coleman said. The position carries a three-year term, and the director will answer to the mayor, but the Human Rights Commission also would have oversight. The position would be insulated from political whim through a checks-and-balance system involving the City Council.
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Another yet-uncalculated cost of the reforms will be building a database of minority- and women-owned contractors. Officials hope the effort will become regional, involving Ramsey and Hennepin counties and Minneapolis at least. Supporters hope such a system will boost the prevalence of such contractors throughout the region.
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Email Dave Orrick at dorrick@pioneerpress.com.
(Posted on June 9, 2008)
Comments
No big deal here. They’ve been doing this dance for years and it doesn’t mean anything. Companies just form dummy minority companies to get the woman/minority contracts. Many times, they have an employee sitting at a separate desk in their office that handles all of those minority/female bids.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron at 6:41 PM on June 9
White countries are getting it from many fronts. They are getting the Russian revolution treatment along with the muggabe treatment,and then theres the mexican treatment. Is there any question that a coup was successful in the govenment many years ago? Maybe the real advancing starting in 1965,even though 1913/federal reserve would be more accurate.
Posted by Billy at 7:20 PM on June 9
Didn’t knkow where to put this but I found it interesting.
THIS JUST IN:::::::
The commission aims for a full accounting of wartime atrocities. It doesn’t have the power to charge perpetrators with crimes, but can recommend prosecutions, reparations and policy changes to the Liberian government. Verdier said the ultimate goal is to prepare the ground for a lasting peace.
So all of the Liberians are going to be staying on a little longer ya think? The key word I think will be “repartions” somehow I think that will come out of the U.S. taxpayers instead of Liberias huge, economic surplus.It was on Yahoo news as a larger article.
Posted by Skip at 7:27 AM on June 10
What if I don’t like the products/services that the black or women-owned companies are selling? Why should my money go to support that? What if those black and women owned business are disciiminating against whites males? Why should I, as a white man, be forced to support that? Oh! Wait. I already do that. Never mind, nothing us white men thinks matters. Disregard everything I just wrote
Posted by at 9:21 AM on June 10
The original racial set-aside program began with Richard Nixon. It has since constantly expanded and will be sure to see its most dramatic increase under our present to be, Obama. None of this, however, makes it constitutional regardless of what the judicial cabal on the supreme court may say. After all, they have been distorting and misinterpreting the US constitution systematically since Brown and there is no reason to expect that they will suddenly realize that the constitution, not their personal visions of the “living constitution”, is the supreme law of the land.
So we can expect still more anti-white discrimination. There is nothing new in that. As far as why one should buy anything from such favored groups, you will not have the choice since they will be the recipients of government contracts for projects over which ordinary citizens have no control.
Posted by at 10:38 AM on June 10
Whenever you hear “civil rights” or “human rights” you know white men are about to be ripped off,cheated,shafted and spat upon. You also know that 2 faced women,the aptly named Weaker Sex,will happily join in the trashing of their own race,because some of the ill gotten goods go to people who happen to be white women. The racial spoils system is a travesty,its got to die!!
Posted by at 2:50 PM on June 11