John Correia’s thick Azorean accent made him an easy target when he immigrated to Rhode Island in 1963.
He was called a “greenhorn” and accused of taking jobs from “more-deserving Americans” when he worked at General Dynamics Electric Boat. Even when he started his own business, M&G Plumbing Supply Co., Correia, who would become a state senator, scraped by only because other Portuguese immigrants frequented his shop.
A generation later, Correia’s son Richard runs the family plumbing supply business that has become a community fixture spanning two locations in East Providence. No one mentions the younger Correia’s ancestry. In fact, most probably can’t even tell he’s Portuguese American, he says.
Still, his background could afford him an advantage when it comes to getting a share of the millions of dollars spent each year in government contracts because of a state program designed to level the playing field for disadvantaged minority business owners. Those of Portuguese descent are on the list.
To some critics, it’s the most obvious example of why the state’s Minority Business Enterprise program – and more specifically who qualifies as a minority – is desperately in need of an overhaul for the first time in its 35-year history, ensuring it’s helping the people who need it the most.
“I don’t know if removing Portuguese [from the program] is the answer, but we need to have a real conversation about the fact that Portuguese is not a minority and then figure out what that means in the context of the minority business program,” said Rep. Karen Alzate, D-Pawtucket, who leads the Rhode Island Legislative Black and Latino Caucus.
One Rhode Island lawmaker has for years tried to strike Portuguese from the definition of a minority. In Massachusetts, the matter reached state Superior Court, which ruled Portuguese business owners should be removed from the minority business program after finding no evidence they faced discrimination.
And the scrutiny over the program in Rhode Island extends beyond the Portuguese. The state’s description of Hispanic people, for example, also strikes some as odd, or at least outdated, since it includes descendants from Spain.
Further fueling outrage is the state’s failure to consistently meet the goal of awarding at least 10% of state contract dollars to MBEs of any racial or ethnic group. That mark was finally reached in the two years just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Still, some in the minority business community question why the program has never been revamped.
“With any policy or law, you would think they need to be periodically reviewed to ensure they’re still relevant, especially given how much our demographics have changed,” said Lisa Ranglin, founder and president of the Rhode Island Black Business Association.
But the leader of a national Portuguese American advocacy group insists that deleting certain groups would be the wrong approach.
“Putting resources behind helping Black- and brown-owned businesses grow, and even helping new businesses to open, would be a better, more productive, more unifying approach to solving the disparity problem,” said Angela Simoes, chairwoman of the Manassas, Va.-based Portuguese American Leadership Council of the U.S. “Robbing Peter to pay Paul doesn’t level the playing field.”
[caption id="attachment_388286" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
GETTING CERTIFIED: Dominican immigrant Pedro Mendez, right, has applied for his business, AmeriSigns, to be part of the state’s Minority Business Enterprise program. Also pictured are workers Luiyi Moreno, left, and Obdalis Csisa. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
DEFINING MOMENT
Portuguese business owners weren’t supposed to be one of the qualified minority groups when the Minority Business Enterprise program was first proposed in 1986, said Harold M. Metts.
A freshman state senator at the time, Metts was looking for a way to help Black-owned businesses that were getting passed over for state contracts. The legislation he crafted was modeled after similar programs established by federal agencies.
On the final night of the 1986 legislative session, Metts was asked to strike a deal with senior legislators to get the bill passed.
One of those legislators: Sen. John Correia, who remembered how he had been treated poorly when starting M&G Plumbing years earlier. He insisted Portuguese be added as a minority group. Metts agreed, and the measure was approved.
“I figured half a loaf was better than none,” Metts said recently.
For 35 years, the state MBE program has included business owners who identify as “a person of Portuguese, Brazilian or other Portuguese culture, regardless of race.” (Federal disadvantaged business programs also recognize Portuguese business owners, although they’re grouped under Hispanic rather than a separate category.)
Black, Asian American, American Indian and Alaskan Native, and Hispanic are also listed as minority groups. Some of those definitions within the state ordinance raise questions, too.
For example, “Hispanic” includes a “person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race,” according to the law. That means a Rhode Islander whose great-grandfather was born in Spain – and has the documentation to prove it – can qualify.
Decades later, Metts looks back at that last-minute deal as his first bitter lesson in politics. The way certain minority groups were defined has “diluted” the intent of helping business owners facing racial and ethnic discrimination, Metts said.
Correia saw it differently. His push to add Portuguese wasn’t for himself – he never registered to participate in the program and, under his son, M&G Plumbing still hasn’t signed up – but he said he wanted to help those like him who face the challenges of building a business.
He agreed that Portuguese people are generally no longer the targets of discrimination. But he didn’t see that as a reason to remove them from the minority business program.
“The law is already there. Why take it off?” he said.
[caption id="attachment_388300" align="aligncenter" width="746"]
FAIR SHARE?: The chart on the left breaks down the number and percentage of minority-owned and women-owned businesses certified to participate in Rhode Island’s Minority Business Enterprise program. The chart on the right
shows the amount and percentage of prime state contracts awarded to businesses in each group in fiscal 2020. / SOURCE: R.I. Office of Diversity, Equity and Opportunity[/caption]
‘BIGGER LIGHTS’
David DaSilva, president of Silva Advertising Specialties Inc. and a Portuguese immigrant who moved to the U.S. 50 years ago, also disagrees with removing Portuguese from the state MBE program.
He said his East Providence screen printing and sign-making company has received about a dozen small state contracts in the six years since he became certified as a minority owner, including a $40,700 contract in fiscal 2020, according to state records.
A review of any kind, even one that looked beyond the Portuguese definition, would be “a waste of time,” he said.
That logic doesn’t make sense to business owner Vennicia Kingston, who says she needs all the help she can get as a woman of color.
The New York City native who moved to Rhode Island 25 years ago has found it difficult to navigate the complex, “I know a guy” web of state contracting.
Some of that is because her business, Eagle Eye Post Construction Services, is new. She founded the staffing company for construction and post-construction jobs in 2018, then applied to be certified as a Black, woman-owned business under the state MBE program.
She still feels she’s being held back by discrimination. “It’s not blatant and upfront and in my face, but it’s a system that keeps us out,” she said.
Black business owners comprise nearly 21% of the 783 businesses certified through the state MBE program as of July. But in fiscal 2020, they got just under 15% of the $29.4 million in prime contract dollars awarded to MBE participants. Hispanic-owned businesses fared even worse – getting 6.5% of the dollars when they made up 13.5% of the pool.
White women and Portuguese business owners, in contrast, got higher percentages of dollars than their shares of the pool of available MBEs.
The state explained its failure to meet its 10% goal in most years as an availability problem. Many of the specific purchases and contracts during the pandemic, for example, had few or no certified minority businesses available in those categories, according to Derek Gomes, a spokesman for the R.I. Department of Administration.
But a study released in July that examined disparities in the state MBE program from fiscal 2014 to fiscal 2017 found the percentage of contracts awarded to certified minority businesses was far less than the percentage available to get those jobs.
The state-commissioned report by Oakland, Calif.-based consultant Mason Tillman Associates Ltd. laid out a host of recommendations for how to improve the MBE program. Redefining the minority groups was not among the proposals.
That has not stopped Rep. Anastasia P. Williams, D-Providence, from trying to redefine them anyway.
Williams has for several years introduced legislation to strike Portuguese from the list of minority groups and, in 2021, another bill that would eliminate white women while increasing the percentage of total contract dollars awarded to minority businesses from 10% to 25%. Neither proposal passed, but Williams is optimistic that the Mason Tillman report might drum up more support.
“It was not a surprise,” she said of the report’s findings. “But it has bigger lights on it now.”
House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi and Senate President Dominick J. Ruggerio have been noncommittal thus far. In separate emailed statements, the legislative leaders said they were open to legislation to amend or enhance the MBE program but provided no further details.
Alzate said the 21 members of the Black and Latino caucus are interested in updating the language of the program, including its definitions, which she described as “antiquated” given the state’s changing demographics.
Indeed, when the law was written, people of “Spanish origin” comprised just 2% of the state population, according to the state’s 1980 census data. As of 2020, 16.6% of Rhode Islanders identify as Hispanic or Latino.
The pool of registered MBEs – of any racial group – is small, making it hard for general contractors looking to meet the state 10% goal through subcontracts with minority businesses, said Kerrie Bennett, executive director for the Rhode Island Association of General Contractors. Removing groups such as Portuguese from that pool could make it even harder, she said.
It could also threaten to put companies that have grown to rely on state contracts out of business, warned Simoes, from the Portuguese American Leadership Council.
“During this time of economic crisis, legislators should be focusing their efforts on how to lift all businesses to levels of success and thriving,” she said.
And with more than $78 million on the line — the amount awarded in prime and subcontracts to certified MBEs in fiscal year 2020 – the stakes are high. Getting even a small piece of a high-dollar contract could keep a small business afloat.
That was the reason why Pedro Mendez had applied to become certified as a state MBE.
Having just opened his commercial painting business, AmeriSigns, months before COVID-19 hit in March 2020, he had a hard time persuading prospects to shell out money for a new sign during a global crisis. Instead, he had to use his personal savings to pay rent for his Pawtucket shop, frantically applying for government aid programs.
He didn’t think his Dominican accent or heritage had much to do with his struggles. It was the same hardships faced by many small-business owners, especially new ones.
He hadn’t faced discrimination or racism, but he also said he’s not one to dwell on those kinds of problems.
“Our culture is happy people,” he said. “We do not complain.”
[caption id="attachment_388299" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
COMPLEX CONTRACTS: Eagle Eye Post Construction Services owner Vennicia Kingston has found it difficult to navigate Rhode Island’s complex, “I know a guy” web of contracting. / PBN FILE PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY[/caption]
LAX REVIEWS
Others have complained.
In Massachusetts, a female construction company owner sued after she was passed over on a contract in favor of a Portuguese-owned business. The Superior Court sided with her, issuing an injunction that stopped Massachusetts from certifying or awarding contracts to Portuguese business owners unless it could prove they had faced discrimination. Subsequent state analysis did not show this.
Massachusetts has since developed a separate designation for Portuguese business owners that lets them participate only on state transportation bond projects that use federal money.
No legal challenges to Rhode Island’s MBE program categories have emerged, said Dorinda Keene, assistant administrator for the R.I. Department of Administration who oversees the Minority Business Enterprise Compliance Office.
It’s difficult to get a clear picture of how other states have handled updates to their MBE programs, if at all. The National Conference of State Legislatures has not tracked which states had specific set-asides for minority business owners since 2016, when at least 38 states had minority business set-aside programs.
Keene, who declined to comment on whether Rhode Island’s definitions need to be changed, said she didn’t think there was rampant abuse. She had no recollection, for example, of any currently certified MBEs whose owners were descendants of people from Spain or Portugal. More common are direct immigrants, or those from the Azores or Cape Verde, she said.
Official reviews have been limited. The disparity report released by the state in July examined just three years of the program, ending in fiscal 2017. Massachusetts, by contrast, has conducted several disparity studies analyzing the effectiveness of its construction contract program and whether each of the defined groups faces discrimination that merits getting an advantage on state bidding.
Alzate has called for more reviews of Rhode Island’s MBE program. Among her concerns is how the state verifies the identities of minority business owners. She and others have heard stories of male-owned companies who get in by putting their business in a wife’s name or making up a fictional person.
Tomás Ávila, associate director for the R.I. Office of Diversity, Equity and Opportunity, did not respond directly to allegations about fake identities of MBE businesses. Instead, he listed the financial documents and business filings that potential applicants are required to submit as part of the screening.
The state disparity report called for stringent tracking of participation, particularly among subcontractors.
Indeed, the state reported awarding $78.6 million in direct contracts and subcontracts to MBE participants in fiscal year 2020, but it didn’t track the demographics of minority businesses that received nearly $50 million in subcontractor payments.
Ranglin thinks Portuguese business owners should not be part of the program, but says her priority is on improving the monitoring. She says the program can’t work as intended if it doesn’t consider who suffers from systemic racism and discrimination.
“What a Black business owner faces in terms of barriers and challenges compared to someone who’s Portuguese is very different,” Ranglin said. “There’s a level of structural racism you experience just walking around with a Black body.”
Oscar Mejias, executive director for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, agrees the data available on how state contract dollars are distributed suggests the need for change. Even how the state program defines “Hispanic” concerns Mejias.
He was surprised to learn nonimmigrant Hispanic business owners, including those whose ancestors came from Spain, were able to take part in the program. He was not sure that was fair.
“Culturally, an American guy who was fifth generation Mexican-American, I don’t know if they should be applying as a minority,” he said. “The real disadvantage is for people who come from another country, who speak another language.”
Nancy Lavin is a PBN staff writer. Email her at Lavin@PBN.com.
