On the eve of a much-anticipated public hearing about a $158 million tax incentive financing (TIF) deal in the city of St. Louis, Mayor Francis G. Slay extended the city’s workforce goals for inclusion to include all TIF projects in the city valued at $1 million or more.
Executive Order No. 46 expands the workforce diversity program previously established by a 2009 ordinance to cover TIF projects of scale, including the CORTEX development that was discussed Wednesday morning.
The workforce goals are for 25 percent of labor hours to be performed by minorities, 5 percent of labor hours to be performed by women, 20 percent of labor hours to be performed by city residents, and 15 percent of all hours to be performed by apprentices enrolled in an approved training program.
“My objective is to do everything we can to provide better opportunities for more people in the St. Louis area,” Slay told The American soon after signing the order.
“As a mayor who represents a diverse population of people, it is important that all people have an opportunity to take advantage and take part in whatever economic success we are able to achieve.”
Slay said the new goals will be applied to the CORTEX project, where project leaders have been negotiating with minority inclusion advocates about goals for workforce and contracting.
The city also has a $390 million TIF agreement for the Northside redevelopment that is held up in court, awaiting a Missouri Supreme Court ruling on an appeal to a lower court order that struck down the agreement. No inclusion goals have been publicly stated for Northside before now.
“I know minorities and women have been underrepresented in the skilled workforce in the construction industry and that underrepresentation is due to past discriminatory barriers,” Slay told The American. “Some kind of diversity program is needed to address that underrepresentation.”
Asked what enforcement teeth his executive order would have, Slay said the TIF diversity program would be implemented by the St. Louis Development Corporation and the St. Louis Area Agency on Training (SLATE).
“Up front, this is a condition for us to provide tax incentive financing,” Slay said. “If you don’t want to meet these goals, then we don’t have to provide you with the TIF you’re seeking.”
Slay admitted the workforce numbers are “goals” and as such all the city can ask is a “good faith effort.”
However, a new disparity study conduced by NERA Economic Consulting for the Missouri Department of Transportation found that diversity goals do produce diversity results, comparing state contracting, where no diversity goals are set, with federal contracts, which do set forth inclusion goals.
“It is clear that [minority] participation is substantially higher when goals are available for use, particularly in the case of construction,” the study reported (see Business, page B2).
According to Slay’s executive order, these goals are only interim goals, pending the results of the city’s own planned disparity study.
Slay said he hopes the city’s expansion of diversity workforce goals provides “an example.” He encouraged leaders in “the private sector and the suburbs” – St. Louis County and St. Charles County – to establish diversity programs.
Slay said, “These goals are things that others in the private and public sectors in our region can look at and build upon.”
