Miami-Dade studying racial gaps in contracts with local firms. Could lead to court fight
A study on racial gaps in Miami-Dade County’s $3 billion contracting budget will be completed next year, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Monday, setting up a possible court fight over programs to help minority firms win bids for county business.
At an event on small businesses, Levine Cava announced a “disparity” study was underway by her administration, after a similar effort led to no changes under the previous mayor, Carlos Gimenez.
“Today, I am reporting the procurement disparity study is finally underway,” Levine Cava said to applause at the county’s downtown library. She said the report would be finished in 2023.
A seven-year-old disparity study showed Black-owned businesses with a tiny share of county contracts. When she ran for mayor in 2020, Levine Cava, a former county commissioner, said she thought there was “systemic racism in county government.”
Ruel Miles, owner of the Land Developers Consortium construction-management firm, asked Levine Cava what was being done to make county contracting more fair.
“What are we going to do to address the bias that exists in the procurement department?” Miles said at the event.
Levine Cava pointed to anti-bias training in Miami-Dade’s police department that could be a model for other agencies, and said her administration was scrutinizing contracts to make them more accessible to small businesses.
A disparity study is the first step needed to reinstate contracting rules in place nearly 20 years ago that were designed to help firms owned by women, Black Americans and Hispanic Americans. Court challenges brought injunctions against Miami-Dade from using race-based rules for minority contractors, with judges as recently as 2004 finding that evidence didn’t support the prior rules that were based on race or gender.
In the ruling on Hershell Gill Consulting Engineers versus Miami-Dade County, U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan found unconstitutional a program aimed at hitting targets for minority businesses winning county contracts. That program included options to reserve contracts solely for businesses with female, Black or Hispanic owners, or to give minority firms advantages in bidding contests, such as 10% discounts on submitted prices.
While statistical information is required to defend minority-based procurement rules, producing a disparity study doesn’t mean changes will be made. The same Oakland, Calif., consultant hired for the current study, Mason Tillman, produced one in 2015 for Miami-Dade that showed wide racial gaps in county procurement practices.
That study of $1.8 billion in county contracts found that firms owned by non-minority males received 54% of Miami-Dade’s construction contracts and 62% of contracts for purchasing goods, while 2% of the construction contracts and 10% of the goods contracts went to Black-owned firms. It also found gaps in the number of firms owned by women and Hispanics that had won county contracts.
A disparity study documenting gaps for minority-owned firms in Miami-Dade and the amount of county contracts they receive could give county lawyers a chance to argue for new procurement rules to help those businesses.
“You’re talking about the ability to grow the Black business community,” said Bill Diggs, director of the county office dedicated to Black prosperity, the Miami-Dade Economic Advocacy Trust. “Shouldn’t we all be concerned about that?”
This story was originally published April 11, 2022 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Miami-Dade studying racial gaps in contracts with local firms. Could lead to court fight."