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KC Council Vote on MBE/WBE, Meta Project Not Satisfying All

Rendering depicting the Meta Kansas City data center. (Photo source Meta)

The Kansas City Council last week voted—belatedly—to amend its contract with Facebook parent Meta by restoring goals for including minority- and women-owned businesses in the multi-billion-dollar Northland project.

Still, it was too little, too late, says Joe Mabin, vice president of the Unified Contractors of Kansas City.

“Am I happy with the outcome? Not in several ways,” Mabin said this morning. “They agreed to, in essence, set a goal of 14.7 minority-owned and 14.4 percent women-owned businesses,” he said. “Each individual project has to be evaluated based on the scope of work available and the availability of minority and women contractors in the marketplace.”

Setting those metrics right out of the city’s most recent disparity study he said, “is, in fact, operating a de facto quota system. This project should have been evaluated by CREO (the city’s Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity department) and qualified as any other job.”

Had that happened, Mabin believes, MBW/WBE assignments might well have come close to the levels the city saw with work on the new Kansas City International Airport, which more than doubled those percentages.

“If challenged,” Mabin says. “I don’t think this will stand. We still don’t understand why this project wasn’t handled as any other. Is this the new trend in the city, where it’s willing to trade away its commitment to contracting opportunities for minorities and women to get a major project here? Do we know whether META made that a condition of building a plant here?”

The city has authorized $8.2 billion in incentives over a 37-year period to secure the project, part of a mammoth buildout of Golden Plains Technology Park. The council’s hand was forced earlier this month after CREO issued a report that found that only 5.5 percent of the project contracts to date were with minority businesses, and only 11 percent with women-owned businesses.

“If you’re looking at comparable projects and scopes of work involved,” Mabin said. “Those goals should have been higher than 14.7 and 14.4.”

Posted May 30, 2023