Black businesses want, deserve a piece of the pie
Hazel Trice Edney/NNPA Editor-in-Chief
Issue date: 3/22/09 Section: Politics
WASHINGTON (NNPA) - As the Commonwealth of Virginia is poised to spend more than $4 billion of the $787 billion stimulus money being spread across the U. S., Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, admits Virginia's record of spending with minority contractors has been pathetic and even worse with specifically Black-owned businesses and contracting firms.
"It is the case that the state has had an abysmal record in minority contracting. We're getting a lot better although we're not where we want to be yet," Kaine said in an interview with the NNPA News Service.
Based on a study of Virginia procurement commissioned by Kaine's predecessor Gov. John Warner, Kaine confirmed "the portion of our discretionary spending on contracts that went to minority firms was four tenths of one percent."
He said the percentage for minority business has increased from as low as 0.44 percent to as high as six percent under his administration. However, he added, when broken down by race, "the African-American portion is still in the kind of two percent range. We need to get better than we are, but we have been dramatically moving the numbers…We're probably behind others, but there are similar problems in other states," Kaine said.
He's correct about other states. In fact, Black contracting associations across the nation are deeply concerned that although the White House has promised that the stimulus money will be subject to federal anti-discrimination laws, monitoring on the state and local levels will simply not be enough to know where the money is actually going.
"The biggest fear that the African-American contractors have is that it will go to the majority contractors and they're going to divvy out a little bit of nothing to the smaller contractors,'' said Omar Sharef, president of the Chicago-based African-American Contractors Association which represents more than 1,200 Black-owned firms in 11 states, including Virginia. "Nepotism, cronyism and racism play a deep part in this. Nothing is going to done equally and fairly for the small businesses."
"It is the case that the state has had an abysmal record in minority contracting. We're getting a lot better although we're not where we want to be yet," Kaine said in an interview with the NNPA News Service.
Based on a study of Virginia procurement commissioned by Kaine's predecessor Gov. John Warner, Kaine confirmed "the portion of our discretionary spending on contracts that went to minority firms was four tenths of one percent."
He said the percentage for minority business has increased from as low as 0.44 percent to as high as six percent under his administration. However, he added, when broken down by race, "the African-American portion is still in the kind of two percent range. We need to get better than we are, but we have been dramatically moving the numbers…We're probably behind others, but there are similar problems in other states," Kaine said.
He's correct about other states. In fact, Black contracting associations across the nation are deeply concerned that although the White House has promised that the stimulus money will be subject to federal anti-discrimination laws, monitoring on the state and local levels will simply not be enough to know where the money is actually going.
"The biggest fear that the African-American contractors have is that it will go to the majority contractors and they're going to divvy out a little bit of nothing to the smaller contractors,'' said Omar Sharef, president of the Chicago-based African-American Contractors Association which represents more than 1,200 Black-owned firms in 11 states, including Virginia. "Nepotism, cronyism and racism play a deep part in this. Nothing is going to done equally and fairly for the small businesses."
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