Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center: feature/92662

Comment on this article \| View comments \| Email this Feature
News :: Civil & Human Rights
Reallocate Racial Disparity Study Money to Remodeling Projects? Champaign County Board to Vote on Issue Thursday	Current rating: 0
by Kimberlie Kranich Email: kakranich (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!)	17 Aug 2005
The Champaign County Board will decide tomorrow night if it wants to reallocate money previously appropriated for a disparity study towards remodeling office space at the Brookens Administrative Center that some say could ultimately involve hiring female and minority-owned contractors.
“I expect this money to be controversial,” said Steve Beckett, chair of the facilities committee of the County Board. The facilities committee voted unanimously at its August second meeting to approve a remodeling project at Brookens. In June, committee members were shown the areas at Brookens to be remodeled. The project involves creating office space for the State’s Attorney Support Enforcement Division to move to Brookens. “I don’t recall them saying that disparity study money would be used for remodeling,” said Lorraine Cowart, a member of the facilities committee who voted in favor of the remodeling effort. “There was no discussion of where the money would come from,” Mr. Beckett confirmed. “It is not unusual that no one asks where the money is coming from.” The next day, at the August third meeting of the finance committee chaired by Brendan McGinty, members voted unanimously to allocate $75,500 for the remodeling project at Brookens. Most of this money, $54,145, is a reallocation of funds originally appropriated for the disparity study. The board will decide on Thursday to accept or reject the facilities and finance committees’ recommendations. The proposed disparity study would have looked at barriers that may prevent minority and female-owned businesses from being competitive in the Champaign County bidding process. Late last year, the County Board voted 14-13 to approve funds for the disparity study. New Board members were elected in November and when these new members took office in January, the disparity study was debated again. On April 21, the Board voted 15-12 to kill the disparity study “I would rather have the disparity money sit there because I am still in favor of the disparity study,” Ms. Cowart said. “It is something that needs to be done. We need to recognize the problem before we can fix it.” “The disparity study money is sitting there doing nothing,” Mr. Beckett said. “In my mind, it should be used to achieve a goal and to employ minority business enterprises and female business enterprises who have not been able to work for the county in the past.” “I can’t see where $54,000 is a real lot of money,” Ms. Cowart said. “We’re talking about hiring one or two vendors to do a couple of jobs and the county does not have a good track record of hiring minorities.” “If I look backwards,” Mr. Beckett said, “the record is terrible. This is the first opportunity to put our money where our mouth is. This is a small step towards that goal.” “Without a study, there are all kinds of ways of getting around hiring minority-owned businesses,” Ms. Cowart said. But just how could the reallocation of disparity study money for remodeling projects at Brookens lead to the possible hiring of minority and female-owned businesses as contractors? “The premise of the proposed projects is the work will be completed under the newly created Preferred Vendor program,” according to an August 2 memo from County Administrator Denny Inman to county facilities committee members. The Preferred Vendor program refers to Ordinance 744 passed by the County Board April 21, 2005. This ordinance amends the Champaign County Purchasing Ordinance to allow for procedures to “pre-qualify” vendors for work with the county on certain projects under $20,000. But the ordinance says nothing specifically about women or minority-owned businesses. County Board member Patricia Avery, who initiated the push for a disparity study, said “This is not at all how I would like the disparity money spent.” “We cannot specifically set aside money for contracts for female and minority owned businesses,” Ms. Avery continued. “The ordinance doesn’t exclude any group from pre-qualifying for the list. There is no guarantee that we are going to award contracts to minority businesses under this ordinance.” Ms. Avery is concerned that if the disparity study money is reallocated into the public properties fund as proposed, that it will just be used to hire internal contractors who do most of the remodeling projects at the Brookens Center. Nothing much has happened since Ordinance 744 was passed. The ordinance directs the county purchasing agent to make available to the public at the Brookens Center and on the County’s website (http://www.co.champaign.il.us) a pre-qualified vendor application. Pre-qualified vendors would get on a list. As contracts for projects under $20,000 become available, at least three vendors from the list would be contacted first. According to County Administrator Debra Busey, an application for pre-qualified vendors has not been completed and there is no list of local pre-qualified vendors. Mr. Inman, who is responsible for creating the application and local list , was unavailable for comment before the deadline for this story. “As far as I know, (the pre-qualified vendors ordinance) has not been used because there was no money budgeted for projects,” Mr. Beckett said. Carol Ammons, a founding member of CU Citizens for Peace and Justice, a local grassroots watchdog organization, supports the disparity study and is skeptical of the process that has occurred so far. “Why would we vote ‘yes’ as a county,” Ms. Ammons said, “ to take money from a disparity study that was to reveal where the loopholes are in the process and allocate it to a project that is supposed to involve minority businesses but there has not been a list developed to do so? Now that the disparity study has been effectively killed, what would Ms. Ammons propose to do with the $54,000 in funds? “Use the money to bring minorities and women in to train them how to do business with the county,” Ms. Ammons replied. “Use the money for educating them and showing them how the system works, not for providing a better comfort level for county employees who work at Brookens.” “My ultimate goal,” said Mr. Beckett, “is to have minority-owned-enterprises and female-owned-enterprises as prime contractors.” “This is small potatoes compared to the large contracts that we approve,” Ms. Avery said. “But people will say, ‘You’ve got to start somewhere,’ and I say, why does it always have to be on the bottom.” The County Board meets tomorrow night, Thursday, August 18 at 7pm in Meeting Room 1 at the Brookens Administrative Center, 1776 East Washington Street, Urbana.
This work is in the public domain.

Comments

Re: Reallocate Racial Disparity Study Money to Remodeling Projects? Champaign County Board to Vote on Issue Thursday
by Local Yocal (No verified email address)	Current rating: 0 17 Aug 2005
HERE'S SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON WHAT THE DISPARITY STUDY IS ABOUT: Contractor bias study on agenda Published Online Nov 15, 2004 By MIKE MONSON News-Gazette Staff Writer URBANA - The Champaign County Board will consider this Thursday whether to commission a $50,000 study to determine whether the county discriminated against minority and female contractors by not hiring them to work on county building projects. The proposed study also would suggest ways the county could improve its hiring of minority and female contractors on future construction projects, including the possibility of a set-aside, where a certain percentage of work would be reserved for women and minority contractors. The county board's Justice & Social Services Committee endorsed the study at its Nov. 3 committee meeting in a 5-2 vote. The full county board will consider the issue at its meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Brookens Administrative Center, 1776 E. Washington St., U. County board member Bob Kirchner, D-Urbana, said he is a strong supporter of the proposed study, which would be done over 18 months by the Mason Tillman Associates Ltd. of Oakland, Calif. "The county has spent $62 million the last 10 years on construction projects, and we've hired no minority or female contractors," said Kirchner. "The reality is we have shut out minority and female participation. It's public money and it's wrong." Justice Committee Chairwoman LaShunda Hambrick, D-Champaign, also sees a need for the study. "I have been on the county board for 10 years and I have witnessed the jail, the youth detention center, the nursing home, the renovation of Brookens and the courthouse projects, and the lack of minority participation for contractors is unbelievable," Hambrick said. "Something has to be done and this is what it takes to get the ball rolling," she said. But not all board Democrats, who hold a 16-11 majority, support the study. Steve Beckett, D-rural Urbana, said the Facilities Committee, which he chairs, has been considering a disparity study for several months. On Nov. 1, the committee heard from a University of Illinois professor who indicated such a study could be done with UI grad students, with oversight from professors, for just $5,000. "On Nov. 2, I get a copy of this (the Mason Tillman Associates proposal)," said Beckett. "The Facilities Committee has been dealing with this for literally two years. This is obviously a product of Mr. Kirchner's work. This must really be a special project coming from a committee with no jurisdiction over construction projects." Beckett said he will oppose the proposal, though he said he eventually expects his committee to recommend such a study. But he said he can't see spending $50,000 if the work can be done locally for one-tenth of the cost. County board member Scott Tapley, R-Champaign, who opposed the study at the Justice Committee meeting earlier this month, said he's concerned because the county has not competitively bid the study and seems to be in a hurry to approve it. He also said the study could leave the county open to legal liability. The study would consist of five components, including a review and evaluation of the county's contracting and procurement history from 2002 to 2004. The study would also review the number of minority, women and disadvantaged business enterprises used by the county against the number of such firms ready willing and able to provide construction services. Additionally, in-depth interviews would be conducted with 35 business owners. A fourth part of the study would be to use statistical and quantitative methods to determine if a disparity exists and whether it was caused by unlawful race or gender discrimination, or whether other factors were at play. The fifth component of the study would be to prepare race and gender-neutral recommendations and, if evidence exists of a disparity, race and gender-specific remedies to eradicate any identified barriers to contracting. You can reach Mike Monson at (217) 351-5370 or via e-mail at mmonson@news-gazette.com. County contractor study OK'd Published Online Nov 19, 2004 By MIKE MONSON News-Gazette Staff Writer URBANA - A disparity study that will examine whether Champaign County possibly discriminated against minority and female contractors by failing to hire them to work on county building projects will go forward. Champaign County Board members, following a heated three-hour long debate, voted 13-11 Thursday night to spend $50,000 to hire Mason Tillman Associates Ltd. of Oakland, Calif., to conduct the study. The vote represented a parting victory for board members Robert Kirchner, D-Urbana, and LaShunda Hambrick, D-Champaign, who championed the proposal. Both Kirchner and Hambrick did not seek re-election, and Thursday was their last board meeting. "If the county board values it and follows through ... it will have a significant impact," said Kirchner, a Champaign attorney. "It will have the opportunity to change how the county does business." "I'm glad to see that we recognized the disparity (in hiring) on our construction projects," Hambrick said. "We are now taking the first step to try and correct the situation." Every county board Republican and Democrats Steve Beckett, D-rural Urbana, and Barbara Wysocki, D-Urbana, voted against the study, though several of the people voting 'no' said they support conducting a disparity study, but felt the current study was being rushed through and that study proponents didn't follow normal board procedures. The disparity study will consist of five components, including: - A review and an evaluation of the contracting and procurement history of the county from 2002 to 2004. - An analysis to determine if a disparity exists between the number of minority and female firms used by the county and the number of such firms that are ready, willing and able to provide construction services to the county. - In-depth interviews with 35 business owners to collect anecdotal information. - Statistical and mathematical methods will be used to determine if a racial and sexual disparity exists in hiring practices and whether it was caused by unlawful discrimination, or whether other factors came into play. - Race- and gender-neutral recommendations to improve county hiring practices to attract more women and minority contractors. If the evidence supports a finding of a disparity, race- and gender-specific remedies to eradicate barriers to contracting could be put forward, such as a set-aside, where a certain percentage of business would be reserved for women and minorities. Beckett, who chairs the Facilities Committee that oversees construction projects, said he, too, was disappointed by the lack of minority contractors and workers on the $27 million Champaign County Courthouse project. He said he and other board members vowed to do better on the pending Champaign County Nursing Home project, a $20 million project now under construction. Beckett said the county spent $40,000 on minority outreach for the nursing home project, efforts that included meetings with minority contractors and splitting the nursing home project into 17 smaller bid packages that might be more likely to attract minority and women-owned firms. While minority participation on the nursing home isn't what he'd like, Beckett said, there are several minority contractors working on the site. "I'm telling you Facilities worked hard and the (project) team worked hard to get these contractors," Beckett said. "You folks are going to believe who you believe. I'm telling you we made progress." Beckett's motion to defer the study back to the Facilities Committee failed 13-11.