A St. Louis City alderman is trying to pass a bill regarding bidding on construction contracts that has local African-American leaders saying, “Here we go again.”
The bill mimics legislation that passed in St. Louis County in 2012, which enraged the African-American community and essentially caused black Democratic legislators to split off and form a new political party that opposed Democrat Steve Stenger in the election of St. Louis County Executive.
The city’s bill, sponsored by Alderman Joe Vaccaro, was largely written by an attorney who works with the labor unions. It mirrors the county bill’s #289, which St. Louis County Councilwoman Hazel Erby vehemently opposed because it limits minority businesses from bidding on county government contracts.
The county legislation states that bidders on contracts $25,000 or more must “maintain their own Department of Labor-approved apprentice program.” Union contractors are often the only ones that meet this requirement.
“By saying every contract has to have an apprenticeship program, that means nobody but union contractors can bid,” said Mike Jones, one of the architects of the Fannie Lou Hamer political organization that opposed Stenger. “It was [county councilman] Mike O’Mara’s way of making sure only union contractors could qualify for county jobs.”
Restricting non-union contractors from bidding on county projects also restricts minority-owned general or prime contractors, he said. Additionally, the bill forbids independent contractors from county construction worksites, specifically those who are self-employed. Most African-American truckers who own their own trucks operate as “independent contractors” and thus are forbidden from working on county worksites.
The city bill includes all of the same language that Erby and the St. Louis County African-American legislators pushed against. However, former county executive Charlie Dooley altered the controversial bill when he signed his executive order on minority participation in June. Now only the apprenticeship program requirement only applies to construction projects of $2 million or more.
On Wednesday, the city bill passed out of the Ways and Means committee. Aldermen Chris Carter and Antonio French were the only ones to vote against it, and both encouraged the committee to wait until minority advocacy groups could testify. French said he was not aware that the city’s bill was a replica of the county legislation that caused such division in the Democratic Party and offended the African-American community.
And if more minority advocacy groups were at the committee hearing, they would have told the aldermen this, he said.
“People are aware of it now,” he said, “and I will be fight to make sure it does not pass in its current form.”
Vaccaro said he knows he doesn’t have enough votes for the bill to pass and claims he did not know about the issues behind the county bill. On Friday, minority leaders attended the Board of Aldermen meeting, demanding to know why they were not invited to early conversations about this bill.
“Why, at this point in time, would [Vaccaro] introduce that bill and not contact any of the experts in the minority community that would have an opinion of what that bill would impact?” said Adolphus Pruitt, president of the St. Louis City NAACP.
Vaccaro spoke with several minority leaders on Friday and told them that they are invited to a meeting this coming week to talk about the bill. He said he is willing to work together to get the bill in a shape that could benefit the minority community.
However, Pruitt said he is not interested in “taking bad legislation and trying to make it good. Why is it needed?”
In an interview with the St. Louis American, Vaccaro said that there have been instances where the work on city construction projects was not up to standard. Hence, the bill would address that by making sure all workers had the same training. Pruitt said quality of work is a management issue that the Board of Public Service needs to address – not legislators.
“This move by Vaccaro is straw that broke the camel’s back,” Pruitt said, “and I’m prepared to take on the biggest, longest battle against labor on diversity that they’ve ever see in this state. I’m done with all this little stuff. It’s time to quit playing these games.”
Pruitt supports State Rep. Courtney Curtis’ right-to-work bill, which targets the construction trades exclusively. The idea is to make the union requirement in construction an option, not a prerequisite, Jones said, and it would trump city or county legislation.
President of the Board of Alderman Lewis Reed is a co-sponsor on Vaccaro’s bill, and he voted on Wednesday to push the bill out of committee.
When asked if he was aware how divisive this bill was in the county, he said, “This is not the county bill. Joe understands the changes we want to make.”
He said he feels they can work together to come up with a bill that will benefit the minority community, unlike in the county.
When asked if he feels it’s important to reach out to the minority community to discuss the legislation, he said, “It’s absolutely important.”
Asked if his office reached out to minority groups, he said, “This is not my board bill. We have a ton of other things that we are working on at the same time.”
Yaphett El-Amin, executive director of the minority construction advocacy group MOKAN, said she found out about the committee hearing two days before, but she was not able to attend. She contacted the committee chairman Steve Conway and asked him not to bring it to a vote. But he did not adhere to her request.
“We’re not going to relent off of this bill until we see that it represents inclusion and not another exclusionary hurdle that’s set up to keep us out,” El-Amin said. “Times are too critical.”
El-Amin said she was disappointed that Reed did not support the request to wait to hear from the minority community in committee.
In response to El-Amin’s disapproval, Reed said, “If Yaphett wants to scream and swing from the rafters, let her scream and swing from the rafters. At the end of the day, I’m going to deliver what minority contractors need from contractors, so people don’t get screwed.”
