Business

Multicultural Business Leaders Call for Immediate Change in City’s Contracting Practices

The group is asking that the city “address delineate grave concerns centered on disparities that plague contracting opportunities for Black, minority and women-owned businesses. Further, request for Reiskin and his administrative team to institute and implement needed changes with immediacy, by year’s end.”

Published

3 years ago

August 27, 2021

Isabelle Price

View Downtown weekend in Oakland via magazine courtesy of AAA Northern California

Ed Reiskin Oakland City Administrator

Cathy D. Adams

The Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce (OAACC), led by President and CEO Cathy D. Adams, recently held a virtual meeting with Ed Reiskin, City Administrator, Oakland’s top executive.

Following a series of ongoing meetings throughout 2021, the collective is calling for measurable actions to resolve systemic problems in City of Oakland contracting practices.

“We want everyone to be clear and concise,” said Adams. “We know where we’ve been, and we know how we feel. However, for the sake of our businesses, we are focused on remedies to bring equity and parity to all city contracts. We want progress and fairness in 2021 – the time is now.”

The collective maintains that all multicultural businesses are experiencing the same fate.

OAACC is working with other local chamber leaders including Jessica Chen (executive director, Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce), Barbara Leslie (president and CEO, Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce), Jennifer Tran (executive director, Oakland Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce); along with business executives Rick da Silva (LOH Realty & Investments/Wellington Property Company), Joe Partida (Partida Benefits & Insurance), Michael Baines (BGI Construction, INC) and; Paul Cobb, publisher, Post News Group.

“There are three issues impacting the contracting activity in the City of Oakland,” said Eddie Dillard, former president and CEO of the Oakland Black Board of Trade and Commerce, a meeting participant. “First, the City of Oakland does not collect fines and penalties on non-compliant prime contractors.”

Citing an example, Dillard said, “A prime contractor who built the McArthur BART Transit Village Project was found to be non-compliant with the law and was assessed a $4 million fine. One year since the citation, the City of Oakland has not collected the fine. Monies from this fine could pay the combined budgets of city departments, specifically, Workplace and Employment and Race and Equity departments.”

Dillard continued, “Black contractors are included in city bids for public contracts, yet when the awards are given to prime contractors, Blacks contractors are removed from participation. This pattern and practice is illegal and against State law. We have witnessed this blatant exclusion from contracting awards, time and again among qualified Oakland-based Black businesses.”

“The repeated practice by city departments that issue waivers to non-compliant Small Local Business Enterprise (SLBE) and Local Business Enterprise (LBE) programs must stop,” Dillard said. “The continued practice of these non-compliant waivers, sponsored by department heads, relieves the city from enforcing its legally bound commitment to promote and utilize Oakland-based certificated firms. This pattern and practice must cease if we are to close the inequality gap addressed in the most recent disparity study.”

Participating business leaders and community activists focused on the following:

Minority businesses directly impact the city’s economy, tax base, infrastructure, workforce, community stability and public safety;
Equity, parity, and inclusion is not a trendy tagline rather requirements for all businesses;
Equitable distribution of all contracts for all businesses;
Strengthen city staffing to process corrections to policy deficiencies in a timely manner;
Immediate redress to cure systemic challenges and problems with all city contracts;
Implement and maintain accountability metrics with all city contracts;
Adhere to findings in the disparity study;
Actionable framework and timeline to enforce curative resolution to the City’s contracting practices with all businesses.

The Oakland Post’s coverage of local news in Alameda County is supported by the Ethnic Media Sustainability Initiative, a program created by California Black Media and Ethnic Media Services to support community newspapers across California.

Isabelle Price

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Business

Google’s New Deal with California Lawmakers and Publishers Will Fund Newsrooms, Explore AI

Gov. Gavin Newsom, California lawmakers and some newspaper publishers last week finalized a $172 million deal with tech giant Google to support local news outlets and artificial intelligence innovation. This deal, the first of its kind in the nation, aims to invest in local journalism statewide over the next five years. However, the initiative is different from a bill proposed by two legislators, news publishers and media employee unions requiring tech giants Google and Meta to split a percentage of ad revenue generated from news stories with publishers and media outlets.

Published

7 days ago

October 1, 2024

Oakland Post

iStock

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

This deal, the first of its kind in the nation, aims to invest in local journalism statewide over the next five years. However, the initiative is different from a bill proposed by two legislators, news publishers and media employee unions requiring tech giants Google and Meta to split a percentage of ad revenue generated from news stories with publishers and media outlets. Under this new deal, Google will commit $55 million over five years into a new fund administered by the University of California, Berkeley to distribute to local newsrooms. In this partnership, the State is expected to provide $70 over five years toward this initiative. Google also has to pay a lump sum of $10 million annually toward existing grant programs that fund local newsrooms.

The State Legislature and the governor will have to approve the state funds each year. Google has agreed to invest an additional $12.5 million each year in an artificial intelligence program. However, labor advocates are concerned about the threat of job losses as a result of AI being used in newsrooms.

Julie Makinen, board chairperson of the California News Publishers Association, acknowledged that the deal is a sign of progress.

“This is a first step toward what we hope will become a comprehensive program to sustain local news in the long term, and we will push to see it grow in future years,” said Makinen.

However, the deal is “not what we had hoped for when set out, but it is a start and it will begin to provide some help to newsrooms across the state,” she said.

Regina Brown Wilson, Executive Director of California Black Media, said the deal is a commendable first step that beats the alternative: litigation, legislation or Google walking from the deal altogether or getting nothing.

“This kind of public-private partnership is unprecedented. California is leading the way by investing in protecting the press and sustaining quality journalism in our state,” said Brown Wilson. “This fund will help news outlets adapt to a changing landscape and provide some relief. This is especially true for ethnic and community media journalists who have strong connections to their communities.”

Although the state partnered with media outlets and publishers to secure the multi-year deal, unions advocating for media workers argued that the news companies and lawmakers were settling for too little.

Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) proposed a bill earlier this year that aimed to hold tech companies accountable for money they made off news articles. But big tech companies pushed back on bills that tried to force them to share profits with media companies.

McGuire continues to back efforts that require tech companies to pay media outlets to help save jobs in the news industry. He argued that this new deal, “lacks sufficient funding for newspapers and local media, and doesn’t fully address the inequities facing the industry.”