The Experience of Ron EdwardsA Renaissance Black Man in a White Man's WorldA Beacon for Freedom in the City
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The unfinished audits: disaster relief audit; training audit; hiring audit.
Friday, September 26, 2014
A review of three audit issues of non-compliance or unsatisfactory performance regarding:
(a) non-compliance at the new Vikings stadium, at major construction projects, and disaster relief, and
(b) the diversion or misdirection of both public and private funds
The contents of this review has been long known by the state, county, city, and Star Tribune, but all continue to provide an abundance of words in meetings and newspapers in order to avoid having to provide actual actionable interventions to assure.
(1) Non-Compliance in the proper use and spending of funds regarding relief support, training, and hiring, as intended by the money providers, tax payers, legislation and statuets, and
(2) Non-Compliance in meeting training and hiring goals as mandated by state legislation and city statutes.
Key columns and Solution Papers:
DISASTER RELIEF NON-COMPLIANCE:
Column, March, 13, 2014, What happened to the receipts? Revisiting the Tornado Relief Funds. “…how much was diverted from such help? Incompetence? Embezzlement? Both?”
Column, June 8, 2011, When experience and knowledge truly mean something. Real vs. Fake Ministry Responses to the North Minneapolis Tornado.
June 2, 2011, Disaster accelerates gentrification of North Minneapolis. Reconstruction proceeds without Black workers..
HIRING NON-COMPLIANCE
Solution Paper 46, November 22, 2012, Disparity/Compliance Studies: Minneapolis Has Practiced Disparity And Purposefully And Actively Avoided Compliance. List of 41 columns, going back to 2005.
March 27, 2013: Will the Vikings stadium be a repeat of Target Field? Question: Will the State/City and Vikings/NFL allow the “Blacks need not apply” motto of Twins Field be applied to the Vikings stadium? …
POOR TRAINING AND HIRING NON-COMPLIANCE
August, 13, 2014: Stadium Update. Is 34% minority participation goal being met??
"The Star Tribune recently reported Polar Explorer Will Steger hired two Summit OIC (Opportunities Industrialization Center) graduates …. exposes the level of training of Summit OIC graduates. The article clearly suggests they aren’t qualified for stadium construction work. How many Summit graduates are?"
"Do they have licenses as Journeymen or Apprentices? What do their certificates of completion mean? …. Summit OIC claims …. after just 20 weeks of training start them at a job that will earn an average of $26,000 annually.” How many Summit OIC graduates have actually done so? …. how come Summit OIC graduates are not being lifted out of poverty?"
January, 29, 2014: "NAACP activates legal strategy. Local branch joins Doug Mann in law suit against the Minnesota Sports Faciliteis Authority." The MSFA failure to create a diverse work force is clear. Its time of stalling by again saying “wait” has run out (see Martin Luther King, Jr.’s seminal 1963 book regarding this, Why We Can’t Wait. Hint: injustice and unfairness).
In his 1963, “Letter from a Birmingham jail,” Dr. King wrote: "The question is not whether we will be extremists but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or the extension of justice?"
October 17, 2012 Column #42: Vikings stadium officials promise 32 percent diversity hiring! But no one seems to have a copy of the equity plan.
Column, May 12, 2010, City failed to monitor hiring during Twins stadium construction. I “vigorously opposed the breaking of employment compliance law” by the Twins Ball Park Authority. …. there was fanatical resistance, absolute refusal, to embrace a specific goal for African Americans.
Column, February 20, 2012, Will Blacks finally get a fair share of work on this stadium? Chair of stadium authority raises serious questions about past inclusion. Three City-commissioned studies by two separate research groups support Chairwoman Kelm-Helgen’s observations. The last study was issued on May 15, 2012, by NERA (National Economic Research Associates) at a cost to Minneapolis of $500,000. These studies expose the City’s serious and purposeful noncompliance with Minority and Women Business Enterprises (M/WBE) utilization requirements.
Ted Mondale, who stated to us at a closed meeting October 10, 2012, with the chairwoman that although there was no Equity Plan for Target Field, and that they had no numbers for compliance, it will be different for the Vikings stadium; just give us a chance, Ted Mondale said. NERA’s report will help facilitate preventing future cover-ups and provides an opportunity to stop the misrepresentation of the plight of African Americans in Minneapolis.
Pages 205-208 show just how little inclusion there has been for African Americans in the area of utilization in construction and other aspects of economic opportunity: less than one percent. At page 209 of the October 22, 2010 report we see that on City-funded construction projects for the period 2003-2007, African Americans were awarded and ultimately paid less than one percent of the total.
Zero in so many categories — this exposes the true nature of so-called Minneapolis job training programs. Only the size of this new stadium project is exposing the true nature of the Minneapolis condition of purposefully not training African American workers and of hiring minorities defined as not Black. Claims of certification and hires are false. Despite computers able to collect data, unlike the old paper-and-pencil days, the City cannot authenticate African American hiring for the construction at TCF Stadium, Target Field, Target Center, Fairview Children’s Hospital at the University of MN, or the Minneapolis Public Schools District’s new HQ.
Posted September 26 2014, 8:06 am.
Ron hosts “Black Focus” on Channel 17, MTN-TV, Sundays, 5-6 pm. Formerly head of the Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission and the Urban League, he continues his “watchdog” role for Minneapolis. Order his book, hear his voice, read his solution papers, and read his between columns “web log” at www.TheMinneapolisStory.com.
Permission is granted to reproduce The Minneapolis Story columns, blog entires and solution papers. Please cite the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder and www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for the columns. Please cite www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for blog entries and solution papers.
