Black businesses want, deserve a piece of the pie

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - As the Commonwealth of Virginia is poised to spend more than $4 billion of the $787 billion stimulus money being spread across the U. S., Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, admits Virginia's record of spending with minority contractors has been pathetic and even worse with specifically Black-owned businesses and contracting firms."It is the case that the state has had an abysmal record in minority contracting. We're getting a lot better although we're not where we want to be yet," Kaine said in an interview with the NNPA News Service.

Based on a study of Virginia procurement commissioned by Kaine's predecessor Gov. John Warner, Kaine confirmed "the portion of our discretionary spending on contracts that went to minority firms was four tenths of one percent."

He said the percentage for minority business has increased from as low as 0.44 percent to as high as six percent under his administration. However, he added, when broken down by race, "the African-American portion is still in the kind of two percent range. We need to get better than we are, but we have been dramatically moving the numbers.We're probably behind others, but there are similar problems in other states," Kaine said.

He's correct about other states. In fact, Black contracting associations across the nation are deeply concerned that although the White House has promised that the stimulus money will be subject to federal anti-discrimination laws, monitoring on the state and local levels will simply not be enough to know where the money is actually going.

"The biggest fear that the African-American contractors have is that it will go to the majority contractors and they're going to divvy out a little bit of nothing to the smaller contractors,'' said Omar Sharef, president of the Chicago-based African-American Contractors Association which represents more than 1,200 Black-owned firms in 11 states, including Virginia. "Nepotism, cronyism and racism play a deep part in this. Nothing is going to done equally and fairly for the small businesses."

The Commonwealth of Virginia has been consistently under strong pressure from the Black-owned Richmond Free Press newspaper to increase dollars with Black businesses.

A 2004 editorial, by Editor/Publisher Ray Boone states, "The enormity of the economic injustice would not allow us to exaggerate the case ... It is simply in-your-face evidence that Virginia is not considering, indeed, is turning away minority-owned businesses who want to participate in the state's procurement process.''

Sources say members of the Congressional Black Caucus have also been deeply concerned about how Black businesses and contractors will fare. However, because of recent court decisions, there are few real mandates that can be made for Black participation and no set asides or even percentage goals are legal, said U. S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), a civil rights lawyer.

"There's language throughout the bill that encourages the use of minority contractors. But, unfortunately, the state of the law does not allow strong language that would require a reasonable portion of the funds to be spent with minority contractors," said Scott. "All we can do is require it."

Civil rights organizations are concerned and closely monitoring the situation as billions of dollars pass through communities that are predominately Black.

One of the intentions expressed by the Obama administration is that the money goes to communities that are hurting worse. Black unemployment is currently at 13.4 percent, nearly twice the rate of Whites.

However political observers say that once the money gets into the hands of state and local representatives, it will be incumbent upon Black businesses and contractors to strongly demand their fair share.

"If they do not fight for the distribution of these resources and demand that they get an equitable share of the resources in terms of these projects in terms of employment and Black businesses, it will not happen," said University of Maryland Political Scientist Ron Walters. "So, this is going to be a tremendous test of the viability of Black elected officials."

Kaine said he will meanwhile try to maximize participation where Virginia does it best.

The Department of Transportation, which has had the best record of minority business contracting, is expected to disseminate $800 million on infrastructure projects," Kaine said. "That's when you can really move the numbers when you're doing a lot of big construction projects. And we're doing a lot of big projects, so that's going to be our goal.