May 6-12, 2004

city beat

Gale Warning

by Daryl Gale

The 4 Percent Solution

A lot has been said and written this past week about the level of minority participation in city contracts. Last year the city of Philadelphia contracted Atlanta-based consultants D.J. Miller and Associates to look at how Philadelphia doles out money and contracts, particularly as it pertains to how much of that money goes to minority-owned firms.

What Miller’s disparity study concluded was potentially embarrassing to Mayor John Street; an especially shameful legacy considering the mayor is a former small minority business owner himself.

Of the $2.78 billion in city contracts awarded for construction, goods and services from 1998 through 2003, 96 percent went to companies owned by white males, according to a report in the Inquirer. Almost half the remaining 4 percent went to companies owned by women, leaving a lousy 2.3 percent of the pie for minority-owned businesses.

When the report was leaked last week, the result was a level of anger and frustration from the black community, the likes of which I haven’t seen in quite some time. Here we had the second African-American mayor in the city’s history, swept into a second term by a massive turnout of African-American voters who, incidentally, the mayor’s campaign had whipped into a frenzy with charges of racism and a vast right-wing conspiracy designed to oust him.

Those same voters stood firmly by the same mayor a couple of years before, when at a NAACP meeting in Baltimore he spoke (or misspoke) the most famous line of his first term, "The brothers and sisters are running the city." That line, the mayor explained later, was meant as a pep-rally cheer designed to inspire pride in the accomplishments of African-Americans in Philly. If that was the intended result, it fell far short. The phrase was seized upon, and repeated endlessly, by the mayor’s detractors, stung by what they perceived as the mayor’s own racist attitudes.

Well, those folks can finally rest easy now.

If the disparity study is even close to accurate, it certainly gives lie to the mayor’s "brothers and sisters" line. With a 96-to-4 advantage, it looks like the same people are running the city who’ve always run it -- old white guys.

The city’s black business leaders were understandably up in arms. Fresh on the heels of their vocal disapproval of Street’s choice of attorney Michael Williams to head the Minority Business Enterprise Council (MBEC), the leaking of the disparity study only helped serve to further alienate the mayor from the very people who championed him for years.

A week ago City Councilman Michael Nutter introduced a resolution authorizing council to hold public hearings to investigate the findings and recommendations of the disparity study. Council’s Committee of the Whole would have subpoena power to compel the testimony of any public official or head of a city department dealing with city contracts, and make recommendations based on public testimony. Nutter, who often finds himself at odds with the mayor, has hinted at a run for the office himself in 2007. At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Street said the disparity study is still in draft form, and took a playful swipe at his council nemesis, saying Nutter released the information early.

"Mike Nutter was just trying to help," Street laughed when asked about Nutter’s leaking of the study to the press. "We authorized the study because we were unhappy with the level of minority participation in city contracts. As we make more aggressive efforts to get those numbers up, the study will serve as evidence when our policies are challenged in court."

Street said that there are some people in the city who don’t want minorities getting anything at all, but he feels a moral and practical responsibility to the minority business community to advance the cause of full and fair participation. The mayor said his team is already working on an aggressive program to increase the numbers of minority contractors, but declined to provide details.

"These things take time," said Street. "The details will be made available as we work through the plan, but I’m telling you we are committed to improving those numbers."

Street said the disparity study hadn’t officially been released yet because the city’s Law Department is still studying the nuances of the report. When they’re done, he said, he’d get a full briefing and proceed with plans for his brand-new aggressive campaign. How long that will take is anybody’s guess.

"Once we officially release the disparity study, it’s all we’ll have," he said, "We’re not backing away from it, we’re using it to improve our record."

Part of the problem, Street explained, is that minority contractors just aren’t bidding on the big ticket, or prime, contracts. Finding minority bidders for prime contracts is difficult, he said, and the city is limited in how much assistance they can provide.

To Street’s credit, there’s every chance that he will indeed be able to elevate the numbers of minority participants bidding for city contracts, and start to close the gap between those who sit at the table, and those who wait for crumbs to fall on the floor.

To his shame, the reason it should be a cinch to improve the city’s record in this regard is because that record is so dismal to begin with.

Daryl Gale’s weekly radio show, Dialogues, with co-hosts Rotan Lee and Bill Miller, is burning up the airwaves Fridays 7-10 a.m. on WURD (900 AM) in Philadelphia.