 |
(6) Tennessee thru Wyoming: City Contractors suffer "reverse discrimination" due to racial set-asides and racial quotas! |
 |
| Site Index:  |
(6) Tennessee thru Wyoming |
Back: City Set-Asides MAIN Index |
| By State and City: Texas (Austin): Texas (Dallas): "Council member Don Hicks said arena developers should award contracts based primarily on geography, not race. He said Dallas business owners of all races are helping pay the city's $125 million contribution to the arena and deserve first crack at contracts. "I'm more concerned about an Anglo in North Dallas than I am about a minority in Fort Worth," Mr. Hicks said. "Under the city's analysis, nearly $16 million in contracts went to Dallas companies. Of that money, minority- and women-owned firms are getting $2.9 million, or 18.4 percent." Dallas has set a series of complex "racial setaside goals" or "targets" which vary by the type of contracting work being performed. This makes it more difficult for Caucasian firms who have been denied contracts to file lawsuits for reverse discrimination.
Interestingly, the Dallas quota rules do not allow a contractor to count minorities or
minority firms who live outside of Dallas! Dallas only wants their quota programs to
encourage hiring of local minorities. (The Dallas Morning News 04/14/99 by
Robert Ingrassia) Texas (Dallas): "In the largest category, construction contracts, the city surpassed its goal. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the city awarded $71.5 million to Dallas firms. Of that, more than 31 percent went to minority- and women-owned firms in Dallas, surpassing the 25 percent goal. "But members of the council's Municipal and Minority Affairs Committee were particularly upset that the city fell short in contracting for professional services, which includes such things as consulting and legal work. The minority contracts granted reached 18 percent. The goal was 36 percent.
"They noted that such contracts don't require hiring the lowest bidder.
(!!!)" (Dallas Morning News, 02/10/99, by Robert Ingrassia) Texas (Dallas): "The minority-hiring percentages are set out in agreements Hillwood signed in late 1996 with the city and minority leaders. In those deals, Hillwood promised to try in good faith to hire certain percentages of Dallas-based minority firms for various types of work on the $230 million arena project.
"Several minority leaders endorsed the arena project only after Hillwood made those
promises. Last January, voters in predominantly minority districts in the city's southern
half overwhelmingly supported the arena plan, which passed 50.7 percent to 49.3
percent." (Dallas Morning News, 01/11/99, by Robert Ingrassia) Texas (Dallas -
Fort Worth): Texas (Houston): [Houston Chronicle: Contractor wants end to program -- Affirmative action suit in mediation, city says] "A local sod and erosion control contractor has again asked a federal judge to halt the city of Houston's affirmative action program, saying efforts to mediate a lawsuit he filed four years ago have failed. "Robert Kossman filed the lawsuit in 1996, alleging the city program violates the 14th Amendment because it gives preference to businesses owned by women and minorities in the awarding of contracts." Mr. Kossman has the misfortune of being the white, male 51% owner of his business, Kossman Contracting. His race and gender have repeatedly disqualified him from Houston subcontracts even when his bid was the lowest. Mr. Kossman rightly believes that the Houston policy which restricts his business opportunities based on race, ethnicity and gender have prevented him from winning three significant contracts this year alone. Kossman has been involved in dead-end mediation efforts with Houston which, in part, have focused on Houston's insistence that Kossman hire more racially-correct employees and subcontractors if he wants to qualify for city business. "In a motion delivered Wednesday to U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, Kossman said he is in danger of losing out on other contracts to be awarded in coming weeks. He is asking [Judge] Hughes to issue a temporary restraining order and set a date for a preliminary injunction hearing." Houston last year made several superficial changes in its racial quota requirements for contractors which the city hopes will insulate it from constitutional challenges such as Mr. Kossman's. For example, Houston instituted "minority firm graduation requirements" which stipulate that once a racial or gender minority firm becomes "financially successful" it will no longer receive racial preferences in city contract awards. That is understandably not good enough for Mr. Kossman, whose firm still stands to lose tens of thousands of dollars due to his skin color and his gender. An attorney for Mr. Kossman, Mr. Corbin Van Arsdale, indicated that Houston's racial contracting requirements still disproportionately harm small, white-male-owned firms such as Kossman's. The sod business in Houston is dominated by small firms of limited means, and Van Arsdale noted that the minority business owners in this line of work "will never pass those [financial success] ceilings" for "success" defined by Houston's minority graduation requirement. "In court documents, attorney Van Arsdale maintains that his client, Kossman, was low bidder on three subcontracts awarded in June and July, but lost each because of the city's preferential treatment to businesses owned by women and minorities." "Tom Fitzhugh, another of Kossman's attorneys, said taxpayers are losing out, too. In court documents, he maintains the city spent nearly $500,000 more on the three projects Kossman lost to higher bidders." (Based on the 07/27/00 Houston Chronicle article
by Deborah Tedford) The City of Houston is continuing its bitter, divisive fight to retain race and gender quotas and preferences in its city contracting business. Not surprisingly, their ally in this effort is none other than the President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton. Following the lead of Bill Clinton, (see related story) Houston has unveiled new assistance programs for "disadvantaged" contractors which the city falsely alleges are race-neutral. According to the Houston Chronicle: "The first [Houston program] is a federally mandated program that will apply only to airport construction contracts funded in part by the U.S. Department of Transportation. "Under that program, which must be in place by Aug. 31, white male-owned firms will be eligible for certification as disadvantaged businesses, said John De Leon, director of the city's Affirmative Action Division. ... 'The main change is that the goal is going to be changed to make it a more race-neutral program', De Leon said." Note De Leon's use of the phrase "more race-neutral". He did NOT say "totally race-neutral"! We would ask Mr. De Leon if that is similar to being "more" pregnant vs. "less" pregnant? The really slick part of this newer race- and gender-based aid program, buried deep in the Houston Chronicle's glowing but misleading reportage, is that women and minority-owned businesses will still receive a substantial preference in Houston's contracting decisions! This is a new "kinder, gentler" quota scam based directly on Clinton's "moveable race/gender targets and goals" program which he announced in January 1999. (see related story) Since federal DOT funding is involved, Houston is "forced" (not too reluctantly, it seems) to implement these same moveable racial and gender targets and goals. There are several semantic tricks involved which Clinton and Houston both hope will fool opponents of quotas and preferences: (1) The program still heavily favors women-owned and minority owned-businesses, who -- under the terms of this program -- are automatically presumed to be "historically socially disadvantaged". (2) White, male-owned firms are eligible for assistance under this "more race-neutral" program only if they can prove they have been "historically socially disadvantaged". The test for proving historical social disadvantage is as vague as it is impossible to meet: White male-owned businesses must document some ongoing, mitigating environmental, social, or historic factor(s) which systematically have placed them at a disadvantage. Minorities and women face no such test under this program. [I look forward to the first successful test case where a white, male-owned business manages to qualify as "historically socially disadvantaged" due entirely to his exclusion from bidding opportunities under the terms of this racially-biased and gender-biased program!] (3) The third, and most masterful, part of the sham is that the program is not based upon fixed numerical racial and gender quotas but rather upon flexible "targets" and "goals" which are moveable, based upon the current, measured lingering effects of historic discrimination (which measures have, of course, been conducted by Clinton's agency heads)! Through this semantic sleight-of-hand, Clinton and Houston both hope to avoid judicial scrutiny for this kinder, gentler quota program. To give Bill Clinton and his Houston quota sycophants their due, they seem to have succeeded in making this kinder, gentler racial and gender quota program more difficult to challenge in a court of law. Plaintiffs (white guys) are now forced to assume the burden of proving that the specific subject industry does not suffer lingering effects of discrimination. Plaintiffs will also have to prove that the program specifically adversely affects white males -- a much trickier legal test since the program at least nominally (barely) includes white males! Legal costs for plaintiffs will thereby be much higher, thus strongly discouraging legal challenges, and also probably resulting in severely reduced awards of damages in the unlikely event an aggrieved white guy manages to win a case against Clinton's smoke and mirrors quota program. The really, truly frightening part of this saga is that the same "shifting quota program" is currently being implemented at the local level in hundreds of cities and thousands of localities across the U.S. Thus, Clinton has neatly passed the buck for defending these quota programs to hundreds, or even thousands, of local jurisdictions.
Ed Blum, chairman of the original Houston Civil Rights Initiative, which intended to allow
Houston voters to vote against such race and gender preferences, told the Houston
Chronicle: "The flaw with this program is its presumption that all women and
minorities are disadvantaged. What we have learned through the Prop A campaign
[Houston Civil Rights Initiative] and what information has come out from other cities and
states throughout the country is that there are many, many minority contracting firms and
women-owned contracting firms that are wildly successful. And to presume that they
should be put into a program merely because of their skin color or gender is
wrong." (Based on the Houston Chronicle story, 07/16/99, written by Matt
Schwartz)
Texas (Houston): In 1997, the ballot initiative was deliberately and illegally re-worded by then-Mayor Lanier so that it failed. Under Judge Wood's 1999 order, the original language prohibiting Houston from differential treatment of contractors based on race or sex was ordered restored, and a new ballot was ordered to be conducted.
This is a victory for honesty in the electoral process, and it is a victory for fair and
equal treatment under the law without regard to race or gender. For complete details
of the Houston Civil Rights Initiative, see Adversity.Net's Houston
Special Report. Washington State (Tacoma): Washington State
(Seattle): Wisconsin (Milwaukee): [John Bowles of the Minority Contractors Association] "held the news conference to praise a provision Sen. Gary George (D-Milwaukee) added to the state budget to require that 50% of the money spent on the building of neighborhood schools be set aside for minority firms. "Bowles founded Milwaukee First, a non-profit program to help minority businesses secure government contracts. His group came under fire in 1997 when he awarded contracts to several relatives. Bowles awarded subcontracts for $56,700 to Progressive Training Consultants, led by his brother, Richard, and for $16,000 to Creative Marketing Resources Inc., led by his wife, Jacqueline Moore.
"Lyle Balistreri, of the Building and Construction Trades Council, told legislators
last week the 50% requirement would be difficult to meet because of the large number of
public projects under way that are working to achieve minority hiring goals."
(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 10/11/99 by Joe Williams) End "City Set-Asides (6) Tennessee thru Wyoming" Page |
