No decision from county on M/WBE audit

Chicago Defender

July 6, 2005

By Kate Marshall, Medill News Service

In a meeting one commissioner labeled "bizarro," a Cook County Board committee spent most of Tuesday morning discussing a proposed independent audit of minority- and women-owned businesses - but ultimately made no decision.

The Contract Compliance Committee, which meets rarely, convened Tuesday to consider the proposed resolution. But the meeting ended without a vote or even a motion, leaving the resolution's sponsor and others unsure of what will happen next.

"You have to have some kind of motion," Commissioner Mike Quigley (D-Chicago) said after the meeting. "We didn't actually move anything, and we have to. It was bizarro."

Commissioner Roberto Maldonado (D-Chicago), who sponsored an amendment to the resolution at the last committee meeting, withdrew the motion during Tuesday's meeting, essentially taking it off the floor. But the motion was never officially deferred. Much of the discussion centered on whether an audit was needed - and also, how the county could properly recognize that businesses are minority- or women-owned.

"There was no closure to the meeting," said Commissioner Gregg Goslin (R-Glenview). "It's just kind of hanging out there in space."

Quigley said he proposed the resolution after a series of recent public revelations uncovering problems with the county's program encouraging contracts with minority- and women-owned businesses.

One such revelation in March was that a woman who supposedly ran the subcontractor Crucial Communications LLC had been dead for more than a year.

Quigley said he hoped his resolution would reveal such abuses and therefore improve the entire system.

"The whole point was not to attack the system but to protect it," he said.

Betty Hancock Perry, contract compliance administrator for Contract Compliance Office, said at the meeting that the county should consider expanding the office's staff and resources rather than outsourcing the certification process.

Not everyone was unhappy about the committee's inaction. Community members who came to the meeting to plead their case against outsourcing said they were satisfied with the lack of an outcome.

"I'm pleased that a decision was not made today," said Donna Gaines of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. She said there's nothing wrong with the program as it stands and since nothing was voted on, minority and women businesses will have more time to prove that.

Commissioner Goslin said employees of the contract compliance office, which monitors Cook County's minority and women business enterprise contracts, will have to come back to the committee later and demonstrate what they're doing.

Copyright 2005, Chicago Defender

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