Part Two – The Solution? Minnesota Department of Transportation – Executive Order 11246

By Donald W.R. Allen, II – Editor in Chief IBNN and USA Radical Black

“Taxes are collected in a non discriminatory manner. MNDOT discriminates when they only award contracts to White companies.”

From slavery to the civil rights movement “White Privilege” has sought to hide information in an effort to control, obstruct and delay deployment of “processes” put in place by overseers to avoid catastrophic failures, present and future.

One of the “processes” put in place to assist Transportation agencies across the United States in administering their respective DBE programs is Executive Order 11246. Again, MnDOT sidesteps the language of the order.

Here’s the language of the Executive Order  : “Prohibits federal contractors and subcontractors and federally assisted construction contractors and subcontractors that generally have contracts that exceed $10,000, or that will (or can reasonably be expected to) aggregate to more than $10,000 in any 12-month period, from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; and it requires them to take affirmative action to ensure that equal opportunity is provided in all aspects of their employment.”

*This applies to the contractors, not to the people who award the contracts? Certainly if the contractors executing the contracts cannot discriminate, the people awarding the contracts cannot discriminate. But what we see at MnDOT is a systemic failure from award-to-contractor with very relaxed and unenforced compliance goals.

In any event, clearly the intent of the funds is to benefit people of color and women, so to have virtually only awarded the contracts to white women violates the intent of the funds, and, we would imagine, other regular non-discrimination law. It would seem to be that in the future, if someone brought this issue to the proper person in authority, or initiated a lawsuit requiring fair awards, that something could be done to correct the award of the contracts. Also, in the future, Executive Orders could be re-worded to REQUIRE the awarding of the contracts in a fairer way.

As it pertains to Minnesota Department of Transportation, and the development of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program, “overseers” presented rules and regulations to insure the smooth and capacity building engagement with people of color and federal funds. Working on Minnesota’s roads and highways, paid for by federal funding is not a hand-out, but a tasked oriented mission that required technical and operational skills to build a roads, bridges and crosswalks. The problem is, MnDOT developed their own policies for DBE’s sidestepping federal regulations with decisions being made by White men and women on behalf of the minority-ethnic community. As history shows us, that never works.

Federal Regulation CFR 49 Part 26 Goals states, “In administering your DBE program, you must not, directly or through contractual or other arrangements, use criteria or methods of administration that have the effect of defeating or substantially impairing accomplishment of the objectives of the program with respect to individuals of a particular race, color, sex, or national origin.”

Another part of the problem: Prime and general contractors, at this point are not worried about MnDOT, its commissioner or MnDOT’s Department of Civil Rights.  Look at it this way; these are the same people that sued an engineering firm they hired to inspect local bridges after the 35W Bridge collapse.

Prime and General Contractors have learned the game.

To create an Affirmative Action program, general contractors must have Affirmative Action participants.

After reviewing several local contracting firms Affirmative Action plans the findings are startling. It seems when the plan is developed, most contractors have 2-5 Black employees. But plans go on to show that the minority-ethnic employees are the first to be laid off from the companies. MnDOT rarely or never checks the status of a contracting firms Affirmative Action plan – and the prime and general contractors know it. MnDOT’s Civil Rights department’s counterpart, the City of Minneapolis’ Department of Civil Rights, no contractor is fined or barred from doing business even with evidence of repeat non-compliance.

Another part of E.O. 11246 says, “Any contractor doing business, being paid with federal funds must develop an affirmative action program.” Under Section 503, however, all government contracts must meet the dollar threshold amount of $50,000 for coverage. Contractors are obligated to develop and maintain a Section 503 affirmative action program.

I challenge you to call MnDOT and ask to see current Affirmative Action Plans for the top 10 general or prime contractors who currently are doing business with the agency. The results will show that MnDOT’s compliance goals send minority-ethnic contractors back to the time when there was “White only drinking fountains,” a total exclusion, obstruction and denial to compete for federal funds based on race, color and sex.

Let’s also put ourselves in the shoes of prime and general contractors. The facts already state the following:

A. MnDOT is not going to check on contracting firms.
B.    MnDOT is not going to enforce CFR 49 or Sec 503.
C. MnDOT will never “burn bridges” with large firm by asking them to follow the law.

“Hell – what do they have to worry about?”

Next…Part Three: Who’s signing off on contracts with 0%-0% Compliance?

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