Minority Firms Getting Few Katrina Pacts

[journalist3072]

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 4, 2:17 PM ET


WASHINGTON - Minority-owned businesses say they're paying the price for the decision by Congress and the Bush administration to waive certain rules for Hurricane Katrina recovery contracts.

About 1.5 percent of the $1.6 billion awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency has gone to minority businesses, less than a third of the 5 percent normally required.

On Tuesday, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, and Rep. Donald A. Manzullo (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether small and minority-owned businesses have been given a fair opportunity to compete for Katrina contracts.

Andrew Jenkins doesn't think so.

Once Katrina's destructive waters receded, he began making calls in hopes of a winning a government contract for his Mississippi construction company.

Jenkins, who is black, says he watched in frustration as the contracts went to others, many of them larger, white-owned companies with political ties to Washington.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20051004/ap_on_bi_ge/katrina_minority_contracts_2

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Halliburton needs the wirck.

[journalist3072]

2. The true story here...

Is how when Bush gave his speech from NO on 9/15, he talked about breaking the cycle of poverty in NO, and helping minority businesses.

How can he expect to do all of that, when African-American firms can't even get the contracts?

That's the angle I'm coming at on my blog: http://progressiveminds.bloghi.com