Earlier this year, Oakland adopted a roadmap outlining steps to help minority and woman-owned businesses get a fairer share of public contracts. But for many contractors and advocates, the question is why has it taken so long?<\/p>\n
In 2008, Oakland first commissioned a study to determine whether there were racial and gender disparities in the city\u2019s contracting process for construction, architecture, maintenance and other services.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That study, and subsequent studies conducted every five years, found that Oakland steered the vast majority of its public dollars to a small group of largely white, male-owned firms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo decades, four disparity studies, and disparities still exist. It\u2019s unacceptable,\u201d City Councilmember Carroll Fife said when the most recent report<\/a> was presented in February to the council\u2019s Life Enrichment Committee, which she chairs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In construction, seven non-minority-owned firms received 71% of all contract dollars from 2016 to 2021, with four firms accounting for roughly half, the consulting firm Mason Tillman Associates found.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen discrimination is built into the system, you can have good people perpetuating bad policies,\u201d Fife said. \u201cAnd it recreates systems that are problematic for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n Based on their availability, African American firms were expected to receive roughly $21.5 million of the city\u2019s contract dollars, the study found, but received less than $700,000. Firms owned by white women received about $80,000, compared to an expected $6.5 million.<\/p>\n \u201cThe findings are not just troubling, they are appalling,\u201d Brenda Harbin-Forte, a retired Alameda County Superior Court judge and chair of the Oakland NAACP Legal Redress Committee, said at the February committee meeting.\u00a0 \u201cWe have let these things go on in our city. We need action.\u201d<\/p>\n When the report came to the full City Council in March, more than 20 people gave public comment, criticizing the city\u2019s contracting practices as preferential and discriminatory, and demanding the council take action.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think there is evidence that there is preferential treatment, and I think that should be addressed,\u201d Eleanor Ramsey, the president and CEO of Mason Tillman and the author of the report, told the council.\u00a0<\/p>\n Racial disparities aside, nearly 65% of the city\u2019s prime contracts were awarded to non-Oakland businesses. Ramsey, a Black female Oakland business owner, said that\u2019s bad for the whole city because it translates to lost tax revenue and fewer active commercial spaces.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s good for the city to keep money within the city.\u00a0 Just pure economics makes it important to do things differently,\u201d Ramsey told the council committee.<\/p>\n The council accepted the report and directed staff to draft a road map to implement its findings. In April, city leaders accepted a staff report that spelled out steps the city would take to level the playing field.<\/p>\n Contractors are frustrated<\/p>\n Stanley Cooper, a Black man born and raised in Oakland, runs a civil construction firm and has found it difficult to compete for public work.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI started this company myself, but I want this to outlast me. And if Oakland keeps going the way it is, it\u2019s going to be next to almost impossible for an up-and-coming company like myself to outlast a system that\u2019s not really set to have a company like mine advance and grow,\u201d Cooper said in an interview.\u00a0<\/p>\n Having started his firm, Cooper Construction and Engineering, in 2018, Cooper said younger firms like his are often outbid by larger and more established companies that buy supplies in bulk. Smaller firms also have trouble abiding by the city\u2019s requirement that contractors be able to fund a project for at least 60 days, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a result, firms like Cooper\u2019s often end up as subcontractors to larger firms on city projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we say prime and subcontractor, they\u2019re the same qualified companies. One just has access to the money to financially run a project, and the other doesn\u2019t,\u201d Cooper said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Oakland has tried to improve the odds for small firms like Cooper\u2019s by making it easier to obtain the certification necessary to bid on city projects. Changes made in January to clarify the rules requiring contractors to be headquartered in Oakland worked to increase the number of certified minority-owned businesses, an April report<\/a> from the city\u2019s Department of Workplace and Employment Standards showed. But the needle barely budged for that group\u2019s percentage of all city-certified contractors.\u00a0<\/p>\n