Mayor Buttigieg’s Complicated Run from Race
Today, October 2nd, the City of South Bend distributed a Minority and Women Owned Business disparity study, developed by a consultant firm. The release came just a day before the only scheduled public meeting with Mayor Pete Buttigieg about this disparity study. That meeting is to be held tomorrow, October 3rd, at the Charles Martin Youth Center, 802 Lincoln Way West, at 5 p.m.
The draft of this study, submitted in late July, had most of its details kept from public view, despite the judgment of Indiana’s Public Access Counselor, Luke Britt, that Indiana law requires the city to release the report “immediately… upon receiving it.” My own public records request for this document was not answered for nearly two months, and when it was, all information regarding South Bend, and most of the report, was redacted.
Staff of the Mayor’s Office stated the administration’s intention: “we don’t want any sidebar conversations before we let the community know what the outcome of the study was and what the recommendations are.”
And in its press release issued today, the administration did let the community know. The press release describes many positives the Buttigieg administration has delivered on diversity and inclusion, and numbers the disparity study among them: “The MWBE disparity study is the latest step by the Buttigieg administration to promote equity and economic inclusion.”
But the disparity study itself tells a different story. Here are some reported perspectives from or about African-American business owners in South Bend:
“ I really felt like [the City staff] didn’t want me to have the job….”Like, “You just a little black girl. You won’t need that much money.”
“There are Black-owned construction companies, but one reason a lot of them that I talked to went out of business, because they can’t get contracts with the City.”
“There is said to be a clear exclusion, especially to Black-owned and African American companies, to get access to information.” (Pages 41–42)
These selected statements sound much like the problems aired by local entrepreneurs in 2014, the middle of Mayor Buttigieg’s first term, during public meetings of the City of South Bend Board of Minority and Women Business Enterprise Diversity. Community members stated their problems in accessing basic information, navigating the city website, the lack of a Diversity Utilization Plan, and “a lack of commitment to making real progress for minority business.”
Instead of addressing these concerns, the Board did not convene again until 2018. And in this period, city spending on African-American owned business plummeted. According to South Bend’s annual diversity in purchasing reports, in 2012, Mayor Buttigieg’s first in office, the City of South Bend spent roughly $250,000 with three African-American Owned Businesses. In 2014, the City of South Bend spent over $55 million dollars; $2,923 was spent with an African-American Owned Business. In 2015 South Bend recorded $0 spent with African-American Owned Business, in a year when the city had outlays of over $90 million. In 2016 it contracted with only one African-American Owned Business. In 2017 the City of South Bend spent just $707 dollars with a solitary African-American Owned Business, out of over $100 million allocated in contracts.
The 2019 disparity report released today found affinity between its interview accounts and its statistical data: “Consistent with other evidence reported in this study, anecdotal interview information suggests that minorities and women continue to suffer discriminatory barriers to full and fair access to South Bend, and private sector, contracts and subcontracts.” ( 43)
Among the statistical evidence is an analysis of contracts awarded by the City of South Bend in a three year period, 2015–2017. This span comprises the last year of Mayor Buttigieg’s first term, and the first two years of his second. Out of over $83 million dollars allocated by the City of South Bend in this data set, $0 was spent on African-American owned business. (53–54). The City of South Bend is over 25% African-American, according to the 2010 Census.
The disparity report distills its wealth of detail into some broad assessments, notably,
“The record– both quantitative and qualitative– establishes that M/WBEs in several sectors in the City’s market area continue to experience significant disparities in their access to City contracts” (84)
Despite its length of 110 pages, the report curiously does not examine the under-representation of minorities among city employees, particularly those in departments most responsible for city contracting. The report is silent on the failure of the City of South Bend Board of Minority and Women Business Enterprise Diversity to meet in 2015, 2016, or 2017, and that its most recent meeting in 2018 could not achieve a quorum. That board is composed with a number of mayoral appointees without a demonstrated record of attendance in recent years. And while the South Bend Tribune has speculated that the Buttigieg administration may not be compliant with a city ordinance governing diversity in purchasing, the report leaves this concern unaddressed.
As noted in the closing pages of the report, “The City has initiated some efforts to level the playing field. However, much more could be done.” (83) In a similar fashion, the consultants’ report itself is a positive step, but much more could have been done with the Buttigieg administration’s handling of the report itself, which did not permit the public to view the report with substantial time before a community meeting, did not release the substance of the July draft report, and did not report critical issues discovered by the disparity study in its press release, including the zeroing out of contracts to African-American owned business in its 2015–17 data. Or, as one study contributor put it,
“I have not seen the City of South Bend do any of the outreach things that some of the other places do.” (43)
