A certain city I do work for requires that every project have a minimum of 15% work done by minority owned businesses.  There are a couple problems with this, besides, obviously, irritating my libertarian/conservative ideals.
1) Work is just randomly split.  It can be difficult enough to coordinate varying disciplines through different companies.  When you have two companies doing work on the same discipline, the scope of responsibility gets confusing.





2) The 15% is based off of minority population I'm sure. But in my
field of schooling, I only had about 5% minorities in my classes who
were US citizens. Which leads in to #3.





3) There is only one minority owned business in the city, so they get all the work.  Must have had friends in high places.
4)  The minority owned business can have all white male employees, pretty much nulling the reason for the rule.
5) We did a LOT of business with a minority owned printing company (until the owner passed away).  It seems he was successful without laws supporting his business.  Why do we need to baby other businesses?


 

its getting common around here too. ESPECIALLY reservation work. Talk about a cluster

It's Title VI crap gone haywire.  But your city is misinterpreting the "rule".

MBE's are not guaranteed work under the rule.  They are not guaranteed winning a contract.  They have to bid like everyone else.

The contractor and subs need a minority workforce proportional to the minority percentage in the city or county.  That's it.  If they don't meet the %, they have to explain why this wasn't possible (a form or two filled out).


What you're experiencing is a TitleVI person overstepping their bounds and reinterpreting the rule.  It happens from time to time.  Ignore them, and follow the rule as written...ask for clarification from someone else if you're concerned.


Funny this came up.  We've got two "protected class" women in TitleVI at TDOT spouting off the same bullshit.  They're idiots and everyone knows it, but they're also militant so nobody says anything about it.  

Follow the rule, not what some nitwit tells you.


ETA:  When cities/counties contact us for engineering procurement, we have to notify 3 minority or women-owned firms plus whatever firms the city preferred.  That's it.  They are not guaranteed anything.

I worked for a city where we had several asset management firms looking over the cities treasury funds (around 300 million).  One of the firms was underperforming and I was told there were other considerations.  

The firm was T Rowe Price.  I asked for the statement one day and my controller corrected me and said, oh it's not T Rowe, it's T. Rose & Associates.  Turns out the guy is a part of a certain protected group and was trying to sound like the big investment firm T Rowe Price.

Reminded me of this.  Had to have a chuckle at that one.

My company doesn't have any say in it.  We're contract.



City hires a company to do work.  That company doesn't have resources in the area so they hire us.  He have to hire a MBE to work with us.



So we have Co1 make a design, pass it to Co2 who checks and corrects.  They pass it to Co3 who does detailed work on only part of it, passes it back to Co2 who checks everything, then passes it back to Co1 who approves.



Might as well join a union at this rate








 

Anyone holding a gun to your head is no friend. Give them the work you don't care for.

If the project is city-funded, you've got a TitleVI coordinator at the city level who's a tard.

If the project is grant-funded, you've got a TitleVI coordinator at the state level who's a tard.

Sorry about it either way.  I would imagine it makes the job much more difficult for you guys.

Personally I think laws like this are an insult to the very people they are disigned to help.

It is like telling a group that they are too incompetent to be able to do a job.

Remember when Jesse and Al were pushing that dopey Ebonics shit?

What an insult to an entire race!

Pretty much what happens when working in the fed.gov. Often we just throw up our hands and buy from whoever delivers the fastest.

True, but if you dare bring this up in the public arena, you are deemed a racist.