ISAIAH Holds MN DOT Accountable
Bernadette Dodge

(February 18, 2009)  The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MN/DOT) has not met its required goals of hiring women and minorities, and ISAIAH is keeping that failure on the table and vocalized. Close to 200 ISAIAH and HIRE Minnesota leaders attended MN/DOT’s report to the House Committee for Transportation Policy, Oversight Division on February 18.

Bernie Arseneau, division director of Policy, Safety and Strategic Initiations, summed up the report by saying, “We have not done a good job. We can do better. We want to accept responsibility for that. But more importantly, we want to move forward with a program that will provide us with the foundation that’s needed to work for both the minority community and the contractors.”

While MN/DOT claims its intentions are “to recruit employees and contractors from all of Minnesota’s diverse populations,” and to recruit women and minority owned businesses to join the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) to work as prime or sub-contractors on MN/DOT projects, actual funding and hiring results showed this was not a priority.   

Vice chair of the subcommittee State Representative Bobby Joe Champion, pointed out that the report states that MN/DOT spent $3.2 million to further educate 31 of its engineers in 2008, but in the same year only allotted $229,000 to educate 430 people in its women and minorities training programs.

Hope Jensen, the director of the office of the Civil Rights Department of MN/DOT, clarified that the $3.2 million included the engineers’ salaries, but agreed it still meant MN/DOT spent more money on its engineers than on bringing people into the programs. Of those engineers, five were people of color and six were Caucasian women.

More than 60% of the contracts with DBE goals in 2007 and 2008 did not meet the goals, yet MN/DOT imposed only one sanction in 2008.

ISAIAH leader, Rev. Paul Slack, called for the kind of transparency that publicly names the contractors that are not compliant with DBE goals, and publicly reveals MN/DOT’s actions and the results of those actions.

Slack said that with upwards of 12% out of work, and people of color chronically out of work for decades, MN/DOT needs hiring and training inclusion immediately. “We need to invest right now while we’re in crisis so we can all rise out of crisis together,” Slack said.

ISAIAH was recognized several times during the hearing by legislators and affiliates.

“I want to thank ISAIAH for continuing to push accountability and transparency for MNDOT,” said Louis King, President of Summit Academy Opportunities Industrialization Centers and co-chair of HIRE Minnesota. HIRE Minnesota is an expansive coalition of organizations committed to ensuring funding from the federal economic stimulus initiatives reach women and people of color owned businesses and communities. 

But ISAIAH’s work with MN/DOT precedes the latest stimulus initiatives. It began in 2006, and has been a consistent journey of building partnerships with affiliates, legislators and MN DOT employees, such as Hope Jensen, who was a recent candidate for the director position of the department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity.

In the 2007-08 legislative session, ISAIAH leaders partnered with Rep. Alice Hausman and Sen. Mee Moua to pass the law that now requires MN/DOT to report both the resources spent on their current programs and the level of achievement of these programs in impacting MN/DOT’s ability to meet federal participation goals for women and minorities.

The report hearing on February 18 was the result of this preceding work, but clearly the collective effort will need to continue.

“Intention is not enough,” said Slack. “Good faith is not enough. We’re going to continue to work until we see a different result, not just a different intention.”