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Minority Firms Getting Few Katrina Pacts
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| Parent(s) |
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Oct 04, 2005 06:25pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| Media | Website - Yahoo News |
| News Date | Tuesday, October 4, 2005 07:20:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Minority-owned businesses say they're paying the price for the decision by Congress and the Bush administration to waive certain rules for Hurricane Katrina recovery contracts.
About 1.5 percent of the $1.6 billion awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency has gone to minority businesses, less than a third of the 5 percent normally required.
On Tuesday, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, and Rep. Donald A. Manzullo, R-Ill., asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether small and minority-owned businesses have been given a fair opportunity to compete for Katrina contracts.
Andrew Jenkins doesn't think so.
Once Katrina's destructive waters receded, he began making calls in hopes of a winning a government contract for his Mississippi construction company.
Jenkins, who is black, says he watched in frustration as the contracts went to others, many of them larger, white-owned companies with political ties to Washington.
"That just doesn't smell right," said Jenkins, president of AJA Management and Technical Services Inc. of Jackson, Miss., noting the region has a higher percentage of blacks and minority-owned businesses that other areas of the country. |
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