Disingenuousness At The Washington Post

The editors of the Washington Post are shocked! Yes, shocked! that right there in River City that the Minority Business Enterprise officer of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), i.e., the person whose job is to promote minority contracting, is awarding contracts on the basis of race! Would you believe it!

Last week WSSC moved to fire its chief minority business officer, Shaaron W. Phillips, who has held her position since 2000. In one instance, a contract to procure a crucial chemical additive was delayed because Ms. Phillips was pushing for the inclusion of black-owned subcontractors; as the deal was structured, however, they would do no work. In another, the utility is facing a $1.5 million expenditure to catch up on routine maintenance because Ms. Phillips held up a contract for a white-owned firm that was unable to find a minority-owned subcontractor….

By the account of her superiors, Ms. Phillips is a divisive influence, but the lessons that arise from her advocacy on behalf of minority-owned businesses are broader. Procurement officials should be prodded to seek out qualified, competent firms that may have been excluded from insiders’ networks on the basis of race. But Ms. Phillips’s activities suggest that she was operating in the absence of rules requiring businesslike operations by WSSC’s minority business office

So, the WaPo editors think the job of a minority contracting officer is to “seek out” minority contractors “that may have been excluded from insiders’ networks”? And then what? Make sure they are considered on the merits along with all other bidders? What have they been smoking?

Maybe the same substance as the managers of the WSSC, who describe their minority business enterprise program as

designed to ensure that small, local, and minority firms are afforded the opportunity to participate in contracting opportunities….

We strongly encourage small and minority firms to participate in construction contracting opportunities. We also encourage prime contractors in our Construction area, to consider using small and minority firms when subcontracting.

The opportunity to participate? Participate in contracting opportunities? Give me a break. These euphemisms have about as much to do with “minority business enterprise” contracting as treating race as “only one of many factors” that can tip the balance between equally qualified candidates does to affirmative action admissions. As an article on the racial morass of WSSC contracting in the WaPo itself last week pointed out,

The utility does not have a specific goal, but minority participation between 20 and 28 percent is required for many types of contracts.

Indeed, requiring “minority participation between 20 and 28 percent” does not sound like a “goal.” It sounds like a quota. And it has been rather strenuously enforced, as the WaPo article points out:

Some WSSC managers also have blamed Phillips’s office for obstructing maintenance of an aging water and sewer system. In 2002, when a white-owned company that provided regular pipe maintenance was unable to find a qualified minority firm for subcontracting, as required by contract, the minority business office refused to waive the requirement. No contract has been awarded, records show. It will cost an additional $1.5 million for the utility to catch up on that maintenance, officials estimate.

In February, according to agency managers, the minority business office delayed the purchase of a key chemical additive, putting public safety at risk. For several years, WSSC obtained the chemical from the same low bidder, Delta Chemical Co., a woman-owned firm in Baltimore.

Delta had been unable to find qualified minority truckers in the past, but had been excused from the requirement….

Preferentialists always assert that affirmative action, which they support, has nothing to do with quotas, which they oppose. As I’ve argued here many times, I’ve never understood what it is about quotas that preferentialists claim not to like. And their failure to object to the hard quotas of minority business enterprise contracting (“minority participation between 20 and 28 percent is required for many types of contracts”) confirms that their stated objection to quotas is just legal fiction.

Say What? (12)

  1. Dummocrats.com February 7, 2005 at 10:08 am | | Reply

    Disingenuousness At The Washington Post (discriminations)

    Disingenuousness At The Washington Post (discriminations)

  2. notherbob2 February 7, 2005 at 11:36 am | | Reply

    On Friday, June 15, 2001 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the

  3. The Precinct Chair February 7, 2005 at 11:52 am | | Reply

    In an ideal world, a minority contracting officer would be doing EXACTLY what the post is saying should be done — trying to expand the pool of those bidding and participating in contracts by getting them to seek the work.

    The problem is that the success of minority contracting programs is judged by how many minority firms get contracts and the percentage of minority participation in projects, NOT by how much minority participation in the bidding process there is.

  4. Anonymous February 7, 2005 at 1:25 pm | | Reply

    The entire industry around “minority” and “women-owned” is about inferior service. Attaching the “women-owned” or “minority-owned” lable to something is basically a plea to hire a company despite higher prices and/or substandard service. If the company could soley compete on price and performance, there would be no need to point out who the owners are.

  5. Sandy P February 7, 2005 at 2:00 pm | | Reply

    She was hiring a company which would get paid for doing nothing???

    I am in the wrong business.

  6. Nels Nelson February 7, 2005 at 4:11 pm | | Reply

    I could imagine that someone might support an “extra points” system while not supporting a quota system, as the latter has the potential to hire/admit people who aren’t even remotely qualified, while the former, at least in theory, should bring in those who are only somewhat underqualified. It wouldn’t surprise me, though, if in determining how many points should be added for minority status, the purveyors of such systems often just work backwards from quotas.

  7. Cobra February 7, 2005 at 7:13 pm | | Reply

    An anonymous poster writes:

    >>>The entire industry around “minority” and “women-owned” is about inferior service. Attaching the “women-owned” or “minority-owned” lable to something is basically a plea to hire a company despite higher prices and/or substandard service. If the company could soley compete on price and performance, there would be no need to point out who the owners are.”

    Now, I’ve been accused of many things on this blog, from misinterpretation, to straw man arguments, all the way up to putting words in the mouths of other posters. The above quote is a telling example.

    How am I to interpret what is written here? Is it:

    A. A blanket statement that minority or “women-owned” businesses are inherantly inferior, as alleged in the opening sentence?

    B. A whipsmart critique of the PERCEPTION held by the majority that minority and “women-owned” businesses are inherantly inferior, with a call for free competition in the final sentence?

    C. None of the above

    I’m really curious.

    –Cobra

  8. Andrew P. Connors February 7, 2005 at 8:18 pm | | Reply

    The answer is C.

    The poster clearly means that women-owned or minority-owned businesses are not inferior per se, but that those businesses that give themselves that label for the purposes of a competitive advantage must be, hence the poster’s comment:

    “If the company could soley compete on price and performance, there would be no need to point out who the owners are.”

    Now, I would say that he may be onto something, but that we shouldn’t even interpret that those in the quota pool are all inferior, per se. Some certainly must be, since they have been given an out of competing against white-owned businesses.

    Now with that said, can we really blame those businesses? I don’t think so. If I were a minority and I owned a business, I would, without any thought, declare my business as minority owned and actively pursue programs beneficial to that status. It really wouldn’t matter to me if I could compete or not, since there really is no downside (at least in business terms) to declaring my business as minority owned.

    So don’t blame the participants, and certainly don’t cast an unfair system as indicative of the quality of those participants. I’d say this with only one caveat: for certain, those that actively push for minority set-asides in government contracts that concurrently own or have a stake in a minority owned business, are likely a part of an inferior company. When I say actively, I mean that in a very vigorous sense – as in, a person that spends more time lobbying for quotas than divesting that time in their business. For those people, one must ask why so much of their time would be spent when that time would be more effectively used producing goods and services within that competitive business? If you can’t reasonably answer that question, then bets are your business isn’t competitive.

  9. The Precinct Chair February 8, 2005 at 11:25 am | | Reply

    Now I’m going to partially agree with Cobra on this one — please note the date and time.

    I read the anonymous post the same way, inferring from it that the writer intends to cast all female/minority owned businesses as inferior. I think that the anonymous one clearly menat to imply that they are. And I think we all know that such is not the case — there are any number of good, highly qualified companies owned by women and minorities that are capable of doing the work — though often (because of economies of scale) unable to compete with the “big boys”.

    Now I have no problem with trying to reach out to such businesses (indeed, to ALL small businesses). But the issue does come down to the ability of the business to do the work at the level expected. Unfortuantely, there have been instances when courts (and I can think of an Illinois case where the court ruled this way) have said that the mere fact that a female/minority owned businesses does shoddy work is not a basis for canceling their contract or excluding them from consideration — because participants in such programs are be presumed to be inferior.

  10. DrLiz February 8, 2005 at 1:14 pm | | Reply

    I’m surprised no one mentioned another problem surrounding these set-aside programs. It’s not about whether or not the firms are inferior, or perceived to be inferior, it’s about whether or not the firms are actually minority-owned. They may be according to the letter of the law, but not always according to the spirit. So, you may have a minority owner who represents the “face” of the business, but has no real power, and no minority workers, and still be a minority business in many of these programs. (Technicalities make the world go round.) Not that this makes the programs any better. They are inefficient, and rarely result in anything like the lofty goals desired by the social engineers.

  11. TJ Jackson February 8, 2005 at 7:27 pm | | Reply

    If you wish to see the waste and fraud in minority contracting examine the Federal contracting process. Minority firms do not compete on the basis of competitiveness as long as they are “minority or women owned” this usually translates as acting for a front for a larger firm which wishes to rip off the tax payer.

    The kjoke of all this is that federal bureaucrats have tons of guidelines which they will ignore when it comes to meeting quotas. And this quota system also applies to hiring as well. Just look at monority employment in federal agencies.

  12. TJ Jackson February 8, 2005 at 7:28 pm | | Reply

    If you wish to see the waste and fraud in minority contracting examine the Federal contracting process. Minority firms do not compete on the basis of competitiveness as long as they are “minority or women owned” this usually translates as acting for a front for a larger firm which wishes to rip off the tax payer.

    The kjoke of all this is that federal bureaucrats have tons of guidelines which they will ignore when it comes to meeting quotas. And this quota system also applies to hiring as well. Just look at monority employment in federal agencies.

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