City of Seattle to Contractors: No White Males Need Apply?


An interestingly-written PowerPoint presentation from the City of Seattle caught our attention recently. As Seattle moves forward with the Mercer mess construction project, a multi-year and multi-stage project to basically re-make the South Lake Union neighborhood, it has set up rules and regulations in concurrence with federal and state regulations for working with contractors and subcontractors.

Some of the money set aside for the Mercer Corridor Project comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the "stimulus package" President Obama signed into law in early 2009. As stipulated by federal requirements, the city must set aside a certain amount of work for disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs) -- these are businesses owned and operated by women or minorities -- and certified by the state's Office of Minority and Women's Business Enterprises.

The state DOT says, "The purpose of the MWBE program is to provide maximum practicable opportunity for firms owned and operated by minorities and women in public works projects and procurement."

The city of Seattle recently hosted a pre-bid meeting to let contractors and subcontractors ....
http://washingtonpolicyblog.typepad.com/washington_policy_center_/2010/06/city-of-seattle-to-contractors-no-white-males.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WashingtonPolicyCenterBlog+%28Washington+Policy+Center%27s+Blog%29

P 77,

Your choice in thread titles is undermining your usefulness as a contributor. How does lying improve anything about you?

Sg

What possible downside do you see from awarding contracts to as many companies as possible to spur the economy, Phoenix?

GH,

Do you want the best contractor to do the work, or one based on skin color or heritage? I personally think this is a shitty deal, why should my company have a disadvantage bidding this work because the owner is a white male?

Salmo,

Its on page 7 of the PDF link within his article post.

Are they mutually exclusive?

I think you should be a little more pissed at who wrote the laws and the ones trying to help the minority....

Keith

They are not mutually exclusive, but the best contractor for the Job runs a good chance of being excluded if they do not meet the criteria. I deal with shitty subcontractors based on union preference, mbe/dbe, requirements all of the time. The fukkin bs of the whole thing, most of them are guys who incorporate in their wives name. One's work and pricing should be what a competitive bid is judged on, not their skin color or the name on the business liscense.

So are some of you saying The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds should be refused to allow companies run by white males able to bid?

I say take the funds, use a minority company and get the work done...

Let the best company able to complete the job for a reasonably bid price do the job. Race, be it white, black, or plaid, needs to be removed from the process.

Judging by the title and context of the article, and those defending it, I believe the opposite is true.

Never figured you would have cared nor did I really care if you did. Just posting jibberish as you do daily....

Keith

I agree 100%.

I am just saying the reality is that the money for this program is there and can either be used here or passed on down the line and the Mercer Island project can be funded by the regular ol' taxpaying budget.

I'm sure it does.

By the way... where exactly in the Stimulus requirements does it state that if there aren't enough women/minority owned contracting companies available, the work doesn't get done?

Ohh yeah... there ain't.


If indeed there were such a thing as a level playing field when it comes to contractors bidding for jobs... there would be NO need for any stipulations in the Stimulus funding.

Since there ain't... there is.

P 77,

If I mistakenly attributed the thread titles to you, I apologize. But there were two or three consecutive threads you started where the title said one thing and the article or video said something else. I thought you were editorializing.

WRO,

Sure, I'd like the best contractor and for contracting to be a color-blind process. However, we tried that, and it wasn't. That is, qualified minority contractors were ignored either because of race or not being part of the construction industry's good ol' boy network. It's still true to some degree. The owner of the roofing and insulation company I used were white males, but the foremen and crew were Mexican. Things do change.

How do you propose to better integrate business in the US without some form of affirmative action type of regulations?

Sg

P77 is just worried Hankie might out cut-n-paste him so he's getting desperate.

I would imagine that they would be welcome to bid the job, the payment (funding) would be the question at that point.

You know KK I realize you are a genius in your own eyes but I do believe you were born with a handicap.........blindness. Has to be because no human alive could have their head up their ass as far as you do AND not notice the lack of light. Just not possible.

Last time I checked, we have a black president. I was helped by a black doctor in the McCleary hosptial two weeks ago when I decided to run a box knife into my hand. I have clients of all types of ethnic origins, (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Sudanese, Mexican, Honduran, Israeli, East Indian, Pakistani are a few that come to mind) and they were all able to succeed without the aide of affirmative action.

Our society is fairly well integrated compared to 70 years ago. Yes, there are some racist MF'rs out there, but just because a few of those folks exist is no reason to use reverse discrimination. Time to move on.

There are many great examples of people who have excelled regardless of their race. Fans of affirmative action basically are stating that folks who need it aren't good enough to win a contract on their own, so they need a crutch.

How many multimillion dollar construction projects have you estimated in the last 5 years or put bids together on? 99.99% of general contractors take low bid as long as the sub is a known entity. Not taking low sub bid means not getting the job in this economy. BTW, the worst of the bunch for discriminating is Union General Contractors. Btw, the mexicans that did your roof and insulation probably now run their own firm and I've probably hired them if they do any commercial.

A few years back a man I was working for was recruited to help set up a subsidary for a big contractor. The whole reason for the subsidary was to have have a minority owner that could bid on certian contracts. The minority "owner" just had to sign the corporation papers. I think the plan was for the bigger companies owner to have a minority stake of 49% in the minorty owned company. He then would put together the bids and have them submitted. His minority company would then hire the bigger company to work the job under them. A small percentage was to be left over for the minortiy company to split as profit. I don't think they actually got the scam going, but the contrator who was trying to do it is still in business and is a fairly big player in the area.

Lot of them do it, also non union subsidiaries as well.

I think we can all agree that a LOT of cronyism and scamming goes on whenever there is potential to make money from the federal government... which brings us right back to why the Stimulus funding stipulations exist in the first place.

It IS a damned shame that white males have been so oppressed over the years... ain't it?

Keith, you pretty much nailed the bafoon kaykay!!!

Just to do the concrete work on the graving docks for the 520 project in Aberdeen requires a $20 million bond. Not a lot of folks have that kind of scratch lying around.