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<p>The Missouri and Illinois transportation departments want
the federal government to let them set separate contracting goals for including
women and minority owned businesses on the new Mississippi River Bridge
project.</p>
<p>"When we looked at the availability of minority-owned
business to do work for MoDOT and the utilization of those businesses, we found
there was a disparity," said Lester Woods, MoDOT's director of external civil
rights.</p>
<p>Before they can set separate goals for the involvement of
women-owned and minority-owned businesses, however, they have to get the
Federal Highway Administration to waive federal regulations that mandate a
single contracting goal for "disadvantaged business enterprises," a category
that includes both women-owned and minority-owned businesses.</p>
<p><img alt="WBE at MRB Bridge Meeting" class="image-left" height="303" src="/images/uploads/WBE.jpg" style="float: left;" width="266" />The transportation departments held public hearings on
Tuesday and Wednesday to gather public comments to support their application
for separate goals for women- and minority-owned businesses. They've also hired
Mason Tillman and Associates, Ltd., to prepare a disparity study to justify
having separate goals. And they are in a hurry. They aim to submit their
request for a waiver on August 1, because they aim to advertise in early September
for bids for building the main span of the bridge.</p>
<p>The hearings exposed some simmering tensions between women
and minority contractors. Over 200 people attended the hearing on Tuesday.</p>
<h4>Women Business Owners were out in force at a public hearing held by the Missouri and Illinois Department of transportation.<br /></h4>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Woods said Missouri's record shows a clear disparity in the
availability of minority-owned businesses to work with the transportation
department and how much they end up being utilized on transportation projects.
He said that 62 percent of the businesses in the pool of certified
disadvantaged business enterprises in the MoDOT region that includes St. Louis
are minority-owned businesses, but they've received only 12 percent of
contracts for disadvantaged business enterprises. Businesses owned by women
make up 38 percent of the pool, but they have received 88 percent of the
disadvantaged business enterprise contracts, he said. (On May 15, 2009, citing
a 2004 availability study, MoDOT said that businesses owned by white women made
up 65 percent of the construction disadvantaged enterprise pool. Businesses
owned by African Americans made up 20 percent of the pool, and businesses owned
by Hispanics, Asians, or Native Americans accounted for the rest.)</p>
<p>Women business operators expressed concerns that the process
was rigged to take business away from them.</p>
<p>"It seems you're only interested in advocates for minority
businesses. Will you be speaking to advocates for women, too," Patty Evansco
asked of Eleanor Ramsey, the representative of Mason Tillman.</p>
<p>Evansco, who is secretary of J-C Hauling, a women-owned
trucking company in Millstadt, IL, said that if the transportation departments
set a goal for women-owned companies that is lower than the amount of work they
get now, "we stand to lose business and that could cause a great financial
hardship for many women-owned businesses."</p>
<p>But Yusef Haqq, chairman of the Mississippi River Bridge
Advisory Committee and spokesman for the African American Business and
Contractors Association, said the disadvantaged business enterprise program "is
getting hijacked when you see disparity like you see in this district... We're
seeking an overhaul of the program."</p>
<p>"Eighty-eight percent and 12 percent does not sound equal,
level, or fair," said Yaphett El-Amin, executive director of MOKAN, a minority
contractors' association. "We're asking the U.S. Department of Transportation
to look at MoDOT and IDOT, and if they find there is discrimination, we're
asking them to halt all federal funds to the area until (the transportation
departments) remedy discrimination," she added.</p>
<p>The Associated General Contractors (AGC) of St. Louis, with
written support from the AGC of America and the American Road &amp;
Transportation Builders Association, was the only association to specifically
oppose the waiver plan in public.</p>
<p>"We will never support a waiver from federal law. The law is
the law," said Leonard Toenjes, president of the AGC of St. Louis. "If they
think there is discrimination, they should do a proper study and not rush
something through," he said.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>"Quotas haven't worked in 40 years, why do they think that
if we do more of what doesn't work, it will work now," Toenjes added.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Ramsey explained that the waiver the departments of
transportation are seeking is for contracting only, not for workforce
participation. MoDOT estimates that the $640 million project will create only a
handful of direct construction jobs in Missouri: 18 to build the Missouri
approach to the bridge and 63 on the main span of the bridge crossing the
river.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>