• Minority contracting: Mend it Minority contracting: Mend it By the St. Louis Post-Dispatch February 24, 2005 Missouri should plug the legal holes that a federal judge left in the state’s program for awarding a percentage of state contracts to
• Minority contracting: Mend it
Minority contracting: Mend it
By the St. Louis Post-Dispatch February 24, 2005
Missouri should plug the legal holes that a federal judge left in the state’s program for awarding a percentage of state contracts to minorities and women. The state needs to continue to expand and strengthen minority- and women-owned businesses.
U.S. District Judge Gary A. Fenner recently refused to change his original ruling against Missouri’s program, which requires that 5 percent of state contracts go to businesses run by women and 20 percent to companies headed by minorities. Gov. Mel Carnahan signed the executive order that created this program.
Last month, the judge enjoined the state from enforcing the executive order in response to a lawsuit filed by Behavioral Interventions Inc., of Boulder, Colo. The company sued Missouri’s Office of Administration after the company was eliminated from bidding for a $4.5 million state contract because it didn’t meet the requirement for hiring minorities and women as subcontractors.
The U.S. Supreme Court generally has said state and local governments must show proof, usually through studies, that minorities and women have been discriminated against and that sufficient numbers of these business owners are available. The judge blocked Missouri’s program in part because the state is using data more than a decade old to justify the need for its program.
Donna Wolfersberger, former head of the local chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, regards this ruling as an opportunity rather than a disaster.
She says the state should develop a better system for supporting minority- and women-owned businesses. Ms. Wolfersberger wants Gov. Matt Blunt to set up a voluntary board of state lawmakers, agency heads and minority and women business groups to craft a sensible program that can withstand court challenges.
One seldom-mentioned complaint about the state’s program is a charge that prime contractors use minorities and women as partners to win bids but never award them any of the work.
Another complaint, voiced by James Webb of the Minority Business Council in St. Louis, is that Missouri never has reached the level of minority- and women-owned business participation called for in the executive order. Both of these criticisms warrant attention.
Attorney General Jay Nixon should remain vigorous in defending the goal of this executive order in court. Allowing a judge to kill it would be a major setback for Missouri’s enlightened policy of equal business opportunity for all groups, including those that have been shut out of the contracting process by tradition, indifference or discrimination.
