Colorado transportation officials are lagging behind their minority hiring target for federal stimulus projects, prompting a protest that has led to an internal review.
Since 2007, the state highway department also has fallen short of its goal to distribute 12.8 percent of its federally financed road work to companies primarily owned by blacks, Latinos and other groups deemed disadvantaged, hitting about 10 percent.
At issue is whether the Colorado Department of Transportation is doing enough to meet recruitment goals under the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program mandated by Congress.
“I’m very hopeful that we can move this situation forward,” said Helga Grunerud, executive director of the Hispanic Contractors of Colorado. “The state’s not going to get out of the economic slump unless everybody participates.”
Under the DBE program, states aren’t penalized for missing targets.
A $9 million bridge project funded with federal recovery dollars recently galvanized concerns in the minority construction community. The Hispanic Contractor Association joined with Hamon Contractors Inc. of Denver to challenge the state’s selection of low bidder Sema Construction to build two overpasses along Interstate 76 in Adams County.
State engineers imposed a 7.5 percent minority hiring goal for that project. But Sema committed only 1.4 percent, prompting Hamon, the second-lowest bidder — pledging 9 percent minority work — to accuse Sema of disregarding the state’s good-faith effort to find enough minority subcontractors.
Sema denied the allegations, and CDOT supported Sema after investigating its processes, saying it satisfied state requirements for soliciting minority work. The CDOT review also showed Sema’s commitment was closer to 3 percent.
“Each bid is different, and our ability to meet the goal is dependant upon the type of work involved,” said Tom Clark, senior vice president for Sema Construction, adding that Sema met the DBE goal on two other recent projects.
In the wake of the complaint, CDOT officials acknowledged that improvements could be made in opening up work for disadvantaged businesses.
They set up a committee — seated with transportation commissioners, officials from Hispanic Contractors of Colorado, African American Contractors Association, the Rocky Mountain Minority Contractors and Hamon, among others — to examine the state’s oversight of hiring efforts and other DBE issues. The panel has met once and meets again Thursday.
“A lot of people have brought up information on a bigger scale” after the protest, said Debra Gallegos, manager of CDOT’s Center for Equal Opportunity. “We want to be able to address issues immediately. And we still have five months to push our numbers up to meet that (12.8 percent) number.”
In recent years, groups such as the Golden-based Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank, have assailed DBE and other “set-aside” programs as philosophically off-base.
“We’re talking about taxpayer dollars that should be spent wisely and not used for social engineering,” said Jon Caldara, the founder. “A pothole doesn’t care if it’s being filled by a white company or a Hispanic company.”
CDOT has expanded ways to assist minorities in recent years by offering computer resources, mentoring and other technical services through its Construction Development Center.
Still, the limited number of disadvantaged firms across the state and prime contractors’ varying methods for selecting subcontractors hamper CDOT’s ability to fully control the process and meet targets. Plus, highway projects in remote regions of the state can be too costly for some subcontractors to mobilize equipment.
Since 2007, the state has awarded 11 bids to minority- owned prime contractors, the plumb jobs overseeing large- scale projects, records show. During the same period, 600 contracts have been awarded to disadvantaged subcontractors.
One concern of minority business owners is that DBE goals for many individual projects seem low, especially when compared with the annual 12.8 percent goal.
“They’re putting in goals like 2, 3 and 4 percent,” Grunerud said. “They told us they would like to review that process, and I will push to do that. The attitude of the CDOT staff seems to be greatly improved. They’ve come up with some great suggestions already.”
Gallegos acknowledged that the new committee may explore that concern. “If there are issues around goal-setting (for individual projects), we may do that.”
Miles Moffeit: 303-954-1415 or mmoffeit@denverpost.com
