Time may be running out for minority-owned construction firms to secure a fair share of contracts on the new Mississippi River Bridge Project.
In February, Missouri and Illinois state officials announced the $640 million-dollar, bi-state project to build a four-lane bridge, which will cross the river one mile north of the Martin Luther King Bridge.
In mid-October, the state transportation departments are scheduled to begin awarding contracts for the main span of the bridge, officials said.
Advocacy groups believe minority-owned construction firms would have a better shot at getting contracts if a federal law regarding Disadvantaged Business Enterprises is waived.
By federal law, minority- and women-owned businesses are lumped together as Disadvantaged Business Enterprises.
In order to receive federal money for transportation projects, the State must include these enterprises in the projects. However, numbers from the recent federal stimulus package show a disparity in how the funding was divided among DBEs.
Statistics from the Missouri Department of Transportation showed that out of the $198 million spent in stimulus-funded projects, $2.7 million went to minority-owned firms. Women-owned firms were awarded $15.3 million.
The disparity in Missouri’s funding distribution with construction projects makes a waiver even more necessary with the bridge project, said Eric E. Vickers, spokesperson for the Minority Inclusion Alliance.
However, Vickers doubts the waiver application will be completed before October, when the main bidding begins.
“If MODOT proceeds with the October bid, then all that has gone into the waiver process thus far will have been for naught,” Vickers said.
Vickers said the alliance will take action to prevent the bid from taking place, including filing an injunction.
Waiver application
The waiver application requires assembling documents and records of discrimination and getting public input. The U.S. Department of Transportation then reviews the information and determines if there is a case of discrimination.
Both the Missouri and Illinois departments of transportation have hired consultants and attorneys to get the documents together. Missouri is working with Mason Tillman Associates, a public policy research and public relations company located in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Gregory Horn, MoDOT’s project director for the bridge plan, said the information-gathering process is taking longer than the two state agencies anticipated, but they are “working rapidly” and believe they are pretty close to completion.
If the application is submitted and approved after the October bidding, then the waiver will not apply to contracts established at that time.
“We can’t tell the companies to change their teams” after the contracts are awarded, Horn said.
However, the project team will let 30 jobs over the next four years, he said, and the waiver would apply to future contracts.
Vickers said the alliance insisted that the project team hire Anthony Robinson, president of the Minority Business Enterprise Legal Defense and Education Fund based in Washington, D.C., to help with the application process.
However, Colette Holt, an attorney whom both state departments have hired to advise several current and past projects, does not impress the alliance.
“There are lawyers like Anthony Robinson who have a reputation for siding with the minorities in pushing for separate minority goals,” Vickers said, “and then there are attorneys like Colette Holt, whose reputation in this area is as someone who is more on the side of the white contractors than the minorities.”
Horn said Holt is not directly involved in the waiver application process.
Vickers emailed Lester Woods, director of MoDOT’s newly created external Civil Rights division, asking if the department will wait to put out bids until after the waiver process is complete.
Vickers has received no reply.
Pros and cons
This summer, project leaders held roundtable meetings to involve stakeholders in the project’s planning process. One of the topics was the separation of DBE goals. In a presentation given at these meetings, MoDOT reported the “pros” would be to separate goals according to availability numbers.
MoDOTS’s 2004 availability study showed that there are 65 percent women-owned construction firms, 20.3 percent African American-owned firms, 7.7 percent Hispanic-owned, 3.7 Native American-owned firms and 2.4 percent Asian-American firms.
On the other hand, MoDOT reported that professional opinions said that separating the goals does not necessarily mean more opportunity for each minority group. The Colorado Department of Transportation attempted to get a waiver for Hispanic-owned firms because a disparity study showed discrimination of Hispanic-owned businesses in highway construction.
According to CoDOT, when the goals were separated, the minority businesses did not participate in full capacity to meet the goal, so Colorado reverted back to the original DBE structure.
Horn said the department is not aware of many states that have separated goals for women and minorities in the DBE category. “It’s breaking new ground,” he said.
‘A competitive environment’
MoDOT conducts a statewide supportive services program to assist DBE businesses, including minority-owned, with business plans, bidding, estimating and networking with other contractors.
“We make every effort to assist minority contractors with bidding on projects,” said MoDOT Director Pete Rahn. “Ultimately, however, it is a competitive environment where the work goes to the lowest bidder.”
However, advocacy groups are not sure if it’s a fair market. On August 11, the NAACP requested a federal investigation of MoDOT’s stimulus spending.
Rahn responded, “We appreciate the frustration of the NAACP, but MoDOT is performing exactly as required by the federal regulations established for the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program.”
On Sept. 5, MOKAN, an advocacy group representing minority contractors in the greater St. Louis metropolitan area, held a rally, where about 30 people stuck it through the rain to pick up petitions and collect signatures over the Labor Day weekend.
“At this point what the Mississippi River Bridge Project represents is not a promise of a better future,” MOKAN Executive Director Yaphett El Amin said at the rally.
It’s just “business as usual when it comes to minority contractors,” she said.