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News :: Civil & Human Rights |
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Reallocate Racial Disparity Study Money to Remodeling Projects? Champaign County Board to Vote on Issue Thursday |
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by Kimberlie Kranich
Email: kakranich (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!) |
17 Aug 2005
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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 14-13 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 |
