Objections to low levels of minority participation
by three African American Congressmen from Illinois have delayed the award, and
the completion, of construction of a $141 million railroad bridge in the
Englewood neighborhood designed to relieve freight and commuter rail conflicts
and delays. Representatives Bobby Rush, Danny Davis, and Jesse Jackson Jr.
succeeded in delaying the award of the contract from the May 11 METRA board
meeting until at least June 15. The delay in awarding the contract could set
back completion from June 2014 until the fall of that year.
Despite two years and $300,000.00 of community outreach
by METRA in Englewood, the apparent low bidder on the Rail bridge project,
dubbed the “Englewood Flyover,” pledged less than 1% of the subcontract work to
an African American firm, and less than 3% to DBE businesses. The letter from the three Congressmen to the
METRA board decries the lack of black business participation in this major
public construction project in a high crime black neighborhood: “It is
unacceptable that a public procurement process wherein millions of taxpayer
dollars are expended could have at its very core the systemic
disenfranchisement of a community of people,” the letter scolds.
Maybe the three Congressmen ought to walk over to
Chicago’s federal courthouse and examine the charging papers in recent federal
indictments for minority set aside fraud in the city, and look into the
possibility that past “successful” public contracts touting subcontracting
levels of 10% MBE and 5% WBE participation were based on seriously dishonest
calculations of those numbers.
