Jun. 18—ST. LOUIS — The city's economic development office is taking over the job of deciding whether contractors meet guidelines for minority and women-ownership, ending a longtime arrangement that had outsourced those duties to St. Louis Lambert International Airport.
The St. Louis Development Corporation Board is set to vote Thursday on a new three-year, $175,000 contract with Phoenix-based B2Gnow for minority- and women-owned business certification management software.
Under city rules, the SLDC is in charge of determining whether businesses meet guidelines to be considered minority- or woman-owned businesses. It's a crucial step for companies hoping to get business from the city, which has ordinances requiring a certain percentage of minority- and women-owned contractors work on city contracts.
And SLDC has historically paid the airport to certify the contractors.
A staff report filed before Thursday's SLDC meeting, however, shows that the board is preparing to terminate its agreement with Lambert's Business Diversity Development Office "and is actively engaged in discussions with the Airport to transition the handling of this process over to SLDC." Hiring B2Gnow directly will allow SLDC to "customize the process for future applications to facilitate a more streamlined and efficient application procedure," the report says.
SLDC President and CEO Neal Richardson said more information will be available once his board votes on the measure, but he said the move wasn't because of any concern with Lambert's handling of minority business certifications. Rather, he said, SLDC is taking the functions in house to "add some capacity to the MWBE program."
However, a St. Louis-commissioned disparity study on minority and women owned business contractors in the city, released in January, found that 43% of city contract funds should go to women and minority-owned firms, yet only 29% of those dollars did.
Richardson's office is also looking to establish a list of consultants that can provide supplemental business certification services, which it anticipates needing as the airport hands over those functions to SLDC and the agency "works to clear any backlogged applications."
A spokesman for Lambert, which is owned by the city, declined to comment on SLDC's decision.
SLDC is asking its board to waive competitive bidding requirements in order to award the contract for minority business certification services to B2Gnow. Waiving competitive bidding is allowed under SLDC rules when a firm has specialized knowledge, "continuity of service must be maintained" and "the work is of such urgency that a competitive selection cannot be conducted."
B2Gnow currently provides that same software to Lambert's minority and women business certification office and is considered an "industry standard," SLDC said in the staff report on the measure.
SLDC is also hiring its own business certification staff. It has job postings out for three positions related to minority business certification.
SLDC's budget, meanwhile, cuts the $140,000 it pays to Lambert for the services by half for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Richardson said that will cover the remainder of the calendar year as the business certification functions transition out of Lambert.
Richardson said SLDC's minority certification program will be housed in the Northside Economic Empowerment Center, a business services center on Sumner High School's campus in the Ville neighborhood of North St. Louis.
Historically, the airport's minority certification program has focused more on certification for federal contracts, Richardson said, or those with federal dollars from the Federal Aviation Administration. The city will have more of a focus on certifying firms looking for work on city construction projects, he said, as well as for large area employers such as BJC HealthCare.
"They all have diversity goals they're aiming for as well," Richardson said.
St. Louis County also works with Lambert for minority and women-owned business certification and is considering its options.
"We are looking at how we can make this process more efficient," said St. Louis County spokesman Doug Moore.
That could also entail taking those functions in-house in the county, Moore said, but no decisions have been made yet.
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