Boosting equal access to St. Paul contracts

Determined to open more city contracts to minority- and women-owned businesses, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman announced Thursday that he will create a new department headed by a new director vetted as thoroughly as the city's police and fire chiefs.

The Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity will pull together services, from civil rights enforcement to contract monitoring to workforce development, now spread among four city offices or departments.

Coleman spoke of just the one new position for 2009, but that job will be a big one, with many communities watching closely, said Clifton Boyd Jr., a business owner and past president of the National Association of Minority Contractors -- Upper Midwest.

"He or she better hit the ground running," Boyd said of the person who will lead the new department. "People are going to be looking for results sooner than later."

A report to the mayor assembled by City Attorney John Choi recommended that the search be overseen by City Council Member Melvin Carter III, who described the upcoming moves as the most significant expansion in the city's commitment to human rights in 40 years.

Also on hand to endorse the report were A.L. Brown, chairman of the city's Human Rights Commission, and Nick Khaliq, president of the NAACP in St. Paul, who said that while the plan may not be perfect, "it is a plan," and a step toward economic justice.

Young people, he said, can be susceptible to feelings of hopelessness when they see downtown or neighborhood work sites lacking people "who look like them."

Choi was asked to develop an action plan after an independent audit of the city and its Housing and Redevelopment Authority noted that fewer than 7 percent of $220 million worth of contracts in 2006 went to minority- and women-owned businesses.

The audit did not accuse the city of being intentionally discriminatory. But the move to put currently fragmented services under one umbrella shows that the system has failed, as Choi's report noted, to allow city staff "to act in a coordinated and powerful way."

The report suggests that the City Council approve an ordinance creating the department by early October, and that the community play a major role in hiring its director, who would be chosen from a list of finalists provided to the mayor.

The director, recommended to serve three-year terms, faces pressure to produce.

Recommendations call for a review of the department's performance every three years, with the mayor advised at that time on whether the director should be reappointed.