Letter to the editor by Anthony Bond
The City of Irving has a Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises (MWBE) Policy that commits to Fair treatment of MWBE’s in the procurement process of doing business with the City. The City has contracted with the construction firm, Skanska , to build the 173 Million dollar Irving Music Factory (IMF), Project that is currently under construction. By both state and federal law, Skanska has to make a Good Faith effort to comply with the City of Irving’s MWBE policy and the City of Irving should see to it that they do, in all phases of their construction contract.
I am hearing disturbing reports that this ain’t happening. I have tried to contact the MWBE contact for Skanska given to me by the City to ascertain where we are in this project in meeting our MWBE goals with no response back. And, I have been told that even though Skanska has a main office here in Irving that their MWBE office is out of state somewhere. All of this concerns me a great deal because many of us have fought for and supported the IMF for nearly 10 years now.
We have no desire to fight against Skanska or the City of Irving on this issue. However, the question becomes; if the MWBE policy is not being adhered to in this multimillion dollar project what can and should be done about it? I know that lawsuits are one answer to force the City of Irving to finally do an Availability and Disparity Study.
Many cities and other governmental entities have had to be sued and ordered to do such a study when there has been a history of noninclusion of MWBE firms in the procurement process. I have plenty of proof that there has been a non-inclusion of MWBe’s in the procurement process historically here in the City of Irving. I hope that is not necessary to go the lawsuit route.
Look at these numbered steps below that I got off a US government website, that all cities and governmental entities must take when trying to adhere to their MWBE Policy. Here it speaks of Disadvantaged Business Enterprises or DBE’s, but you can just interchange MWBE where you see DBE, and they are the same in this regard. I hope we can have all contractors , who apply on the IMF project and are qualified, get their Fair Share in all phases of this project. If this does not happen, other remedies must be sought.
- Ensure DBEs are made aware of contracting opportunities to the fullest extent practicable through outreach and recruitment activities. For Indian tribal, state and local government recipients, this will include placing DBEs on solicitation lists and soliciting them whenever they’re potential sources.
- Make information on forthcoming opportunities available to DBEs and arrange time frames for contracts and establish delivery schedules, where the requirements permit, in a way that encourages and facilitates participation by DBEs in the competitive process. This includes, whenever possible, posting solicitations for bids or proposals for a minimum of 30 calendar days before the bid or proposal closing date.
- Consider in the contracting process whether firms were competing for large contracts could subcontract with DBEs. For Indian tribal, state and local government recipients, this will include dividing total requirements when economically feasible into smaller tasks or quantities to permit maximum participation by DBEs in the competitive process.
- Encourage contracting with a consortium of DBEs when a contract is too large for one of these firms to handle individually.
- Use the services and assistance of the federal Small Business Administration, Minority Business Development Agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the state Office of Minority, Women and Emerging Small Business.
- If the prime contractor awards subcontracts, require the prime contractor to take steps 1 through 5 above.
It’s good to make sure contracting programs are open to all, that bidding opportunities are widely publicized beforehand, and that no one gets discriminated against because of skin color, national origin, or sex. But that means no preferences because of skin color, etc. either–whether it’s labeled a “set-aside,” a “quota,” or a “goal,” since they all end up amounting to the same thing.
How would you like it if you owned a company and lost out on a bid because you were the wrong color or the wrong sex? Why do race, ethnicity, and sex need to be considered at all in deciding who gets awarded a contract?
Such discrimination is unfair and divisive; it breeds corruption and otherwise costs the taxpayers and businesses money to award a contract to someone other than the lowest bidder; and it’s almost always illegal—indeed, unconstitutional—to boot (see 42 U.S.C. section 1981 and this model brief: http://www.pacificlegal.org/document.doc?id=454 ). Those who insist on engaging in such discrimination deserve to be sued, and they will lose.
A “disparity study” is therefore a bad idea. It would be expensive, and the only reason for them is to try to justify the use of racial preferences — which are unjustifiable as a matter of law and, certainly, policy.
I find this article interesting because I know individuals who work on that project and clearly the writer has not done his homework. Skanska had a community outreach meeting back in October of last year at the Ranch before they started the project and they reached out to all of the different organizations for them to come out and learn how to do business with Skanska. Their MWBE coordinator who has her office in Irving has been instrumental in reaching out to subcontractors in DFW to work on that project. I have called her and spoken to her plenty of times when I have had questions about doing work for Skanska as a minority contractor.
The writer “claims” he is not trying to start anything with the city of Irving or Skanska but I believe there is two sides to every story and this story seems to be a bit loopsided. Also has the writer tried to reach out to the developer of the project to see if there are opportunities? Has the writer gone on the project to see the diversity of the employees that are working on the project? Has the writer spent time on the project or been on the job site to visit with Skanska to voice his concerns? I would challenge the writer if he felt so passionate about this that he visited Skanska at their office in Irving to find out what is going on. It sounds like to me that he talked to the corporate office and got generic information.