NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — According to Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s office, since 2018, the city has either completed or bid about $1billion in road projects. Now one member of the New Orleans City Council wants to take a closer look at the contractors that are getting the business.
“We’re going to put a microscope on it,” Councilman Oliver Thomas said during a meeting of the council’s Criminal Justice Committee. Specifically, Thomas wants to look at the businesses that qualify for the city’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, program.
At one point during his comments, Thomas held up a list that he said contained the names of hundreds of businesses. “What DBEs are African-American, and which ones are white female?” Thomas asked the crowd.
Bottom line, Thomas thinks too many businesses that are owned by white women are getting city contracts. Some of them, he says, are actually run by their white husbands and use the woman’s DBE standing to improve chances of getting city business.
Thomas also wants to take a closer look at the people who the DBEs employ. “What DBEs have been DBEs on the surface but not DBEs in terms of who they hire and who they do business with? There are a few.”
Thomas chose to make the comments specifically during the council’s Criminal Justice Committee meeting for a specific reason.
“There’s no place in the world where the majority population that has our poverty statistics that’s going to be safe,” he said, also promising to research the topic and make additional statements in the future.
A few weeks later, WGNO News spoke with Thomas about his research. He told WGNO News that he wants men and women of all races to do business with the city. But we asked him specifically about his concerns involving businesses owned by white women.
“Are white women dominating categories where we could create opportunity for other ethnic groups, black women, other African-American male contractors?”
The Louisiana Associated General Contractors is a trade group that represents about 600 contractors in the state. The group also works with municipalities that have DBE programs. The CEO is Ken Naquin.
Naquin says the city is free to keep statistics on who gets contracts under its DBE program, but it can’t create rules and advantages for specific groups that participate in it.
As for white women owning businesses that their husbands run or have executive positions, Naquin told WGNO News, “Does a female-owned business have the husband become the general superintendent or general manager of the business and run the project? Sure. But at the end of the day, it is the female that is the presiding officer for that business,” Naquin said.
As for creating any sort of checklist for businesses that might allow for greater favor to land city contracts based on the race or gender of their workers or of the subcontractors they hire, “I would have to say we would have a problem with a score card like that,” Naquin said.
Also, the LAGC says that the city updated and approved the rules for its DBE program as recently as 8 years ago during a process that also brought business owners and trade groups to the table.
“We took that exact approach,” Andre Kelly told WGNO of those negotiations. “What are we trying to accomplish, City of New Orleans? How is that palatable and agreeable and legal to the construction industry? And we got to the current DBE policy that everyone jumped on board and was happy with,” Kelly said.
Thomas says he will continue to look at options. He hopes to have proposals ready to present by the end of the year, during the budget process, in case and city money is needed to move his ideas forward.
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