(Editor’s note: The  Metropolitan Alliance for Workforce Equity was misidentified in an earlier version of this story. The name has since been corrected.)

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is waiting to present the City Council his minority contracting plan due to insufficient stakeholder buy-in.

The council was scheduled to consider on Wednesday whether to approve the final draft of the Community Equity and Inclusion Plan (CEIP), which aims to increase participation of women and minorities on city construction projects. But the plan has met resistance from a number of the groups at the table, including the Metropolitan Alliance for Workforce Equity and the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council.

The mayor’s spokesman, Michael Cox, said it’s not known when the City Council will vote whether to accept the CEIP, or if additional meetings with stakeholders will be held.

“We want to make sure the city and the relevant stakeholders reach a higher level of consensus,” he said. “That’s our goal.”

The CEIP’s objective is a lofty one: to align all the equity plans of various city bureaus under one policy capable of withstanding legal scrutiny.

At the root of this issue is a discussion of the Community Benefits Agreement, a union-friendly policy tool. CBAs have been assailed by some stakeholders for excluding minority-owned nonunion companies. Opponents of CBAs say that owners of open-shop firms are better able to hire from within their own communities. They also point out that many nonunion companies are nonunion only because they’re small and/or starting out – and most companies partner with a union when they’re big enough.

Additionally, some city officials, as well as the city’s lawyers, have advised against using the language of pure CBAs in city contracts, because it could open the city to litigation.

Willy Myers, head of the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council, expressed opposition to the CEIP at stakeholder meetings. The plan, he said, lacks the “mechanics for delivering” on the city’s expectations. CBAs are the best way for public agencies to meet both diverse contracting and workforce goals, he added, because unions have a proven record of getting results.

“The problem with the CEIP is the fact that it totally devalues union labor,” he said. “It takes out of the equation what the unions bring to the table when it comes to equity and inclusion.”

Eliminating the signatory component of CBAs would mean crucial stakeholders would not be engaged in the process, Myers said. Additionally, nonunion firms are free to sign the same agreement with the city, but generally choose not to, he said.

But some professionals in the minority contracting community complain that unions only “hit the numbers” by playing with their numbers. Many white male-owned businesses end up earning diversity points when their data isn’t “disaggregated.”

The city tested CBAs five years ago on two Water Bureau projects. Though the projects achieved equity and inclusion success, an independent audit found fault with how the CBAs were implemented – namely, that members of the committees that administered project contracts also received contracts.

The audit, by Washington-based Framework LLC, concluded that CBAs as applied under the pilot projects could create the appearance of conflict of interest.

CBA supporters counter that with such a small minority contracting community in Oregon, such an outcome is nearly inevitable. They also point out that everyone was acting properly under the CBAs, and no one has ever been formally accused of an actual conflict of interest.

Myers invoked the fight of African-Americans for civil rights.

“Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream,” he said. “He had a dream of equity and inclusion, and he knew that the way to accomplish that dream was to bring labor to the table. He valued union labor and what it could bring. It’s very unfortunate that the city of Portland’s own Office of Equity doesn’t share the same value.”

The has played a prominent role in the development of the CEIP, though it’s been strictly one of public outreach, not policy drafting, according to Jeff Selby, an OEHR spokesman.

Versions of the draft CEIP were sent to 44 community groups; 26 provided feedback. OEHR Director Dante James visited personally with 23 groups to discuss the plan, according to a letter to stakeholders from the city’s work group.

The National Association of Minority Contractors-Oregon represents both union and nonunion shops. Executive Director Nate McCoy said it’s a misconception that nonunion companies choose it to skirt worker protections.

With some of NAMC Oregon‘s members boasting workforces upward of 90 percent minorities, McCoy said it’s important for both union and open shop firms to be involved in city contracting efforts. The city has exhibited transparency while drafting the CEIP, he said.

“It’s not like they just did what they wanted to do,” he said. “They took my comments and the union’s comments, and more or less found language that they felt was appropriate to address both concerns.”

It’s not yet known if more public work sessions will be held or if the Equitable Contracting and Purchasing Commission (ECPC) will continue to meet, Cox said.

Under the draft CEIP, progress would be watched by the Equity and Inclusion Commission, a new body. An earlier version listed that that task would be administered by the ECPC, before the language was eliminated.

Maurice Rahming, an outspoken member of the ECPC, said he believes some city officials are still attempting to fold the ECPC into the city’s other equity-focused citizen committee, the Fair Contracting Forum.

“There are elements at the city that are either trying to: A, change out some of the commissioners, or B, dissolve it,” he said.

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The Portland City Council on Wednesday passed its fall supplemental budget – an $18 million infusion that included funding for 16 new positions at the Bureau of Development Services and one position to support the Equitable Contracting and Purchasing Commission.

Staffing at BDS tends to ebb and flow with development activity, and the bureau was cut in half during the last recession, from about 330 staffers in 2008 to 160 three years later. The 2016 fall supplemental budget, or “bump,” calls for reinstating positions across the board, from administrative specialists to senior engineers.

Also, an allotment of $42,170 will go to the Office of Equity and Human Rights to hire a full-time staffer dedicated to assisting the ECPC.

The ECPC has had a rocky 12 months of existence since its first meeting last October, including a bureau relocation and front-page stories publicizing a no-confidence vote in the city council. Members have criticized Mayor Charlie Hales for appearing distant and not giving the commission the tools it needs to be successful.

ECPC member Maurice Rahming said the staff person would likely be involved in data collection, fine tuning reports to council and inter-bureau communication.

“That’s one of the things that Charlie promised, and it looks like he’s going to deliver,” Rahming said.

The new staff positions will grow total city staff to 6,175.38 FTE.

Other bump funding includes $1 million for “Vision Zero” traffic planning efforts to reduce fatalities in East Portland, and $120,000 to replace 10 overhead doors at five Fire Bureau stations.

Commissioner Nick Fish said three bump-funded positions in the Water Bureau will aid with the added burden of lead testing, which has been a hot-button subject since lead was found in the drinking water of Portland Public Schools facilities.

In other business:

• The council ratified an agreement between the Portland Bureau of Transportation and the Laborers International Union of North America Local 483 upping pay for dangerous sewer work.

The $2 per hour premium will apply to confined space work (CSET) and work with hazardous materials from sewers (CHMS). It will be applied retroactively through July 1, 2015.

Forecasters expect the premiums to cost the city approximately $16,500 per year.

• The council agreed to proceed with construction of the $3.7 million Woodlawn-King Alleys Sewer Rehabilitation project.

About 15,000 feet – or 11.5 miles – of 90-year-old sewer pipe in North Portland will be replaced as part of the Bureau of Environmental Service’s much larger Large Sewer Rehabilitation Program.

The work is expected to heavily impact the Woodlawn and King neighborhoods. The city has sent informational mailers to approximately 6,000 residents and businesses.

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City officials are speaking out against efforts to employ a union-friendly policy tool to meet minority hiring goals on city projects.

Community Benefits Agreements, or CBAs, are contracts tying project developers and stakeholders to goals that support a project-affected community, notably the targeted hiring of women and minorities. But not everyone in Portland’s minority contracting community agrees they’re the best way forward.

CBAs will be the subject of a hearing on Thursday, at 2 p.m., at City Hall to evaluate their effectiveness and whether they should be incorporated into the under-development City Equity and Inclusion Plan, which would apply to all major city projects across all bureaus.

And now Fred Miller, head of the Office of Management and Finance, and Michael Stuhr, head of the Water Bureau, are publicly airing concerns about CBAs, citing issues that emerged during a testing CBAs on two Water Bureau projects.

“While the CBA provided benefits to the projects, the deficiencies identified in this report also had negative impacts on both the Kelly Butte Reservoir and Interstate Maintenance Facility Renovation Projects,” Stuhr wrote to the council in a report dated Sept. 2.

Stuhr wrote that the draft model CBA used on the pilot project should not be applied to future projects, citing outcomes identified in an independent report by consulting firm Framework LLC.

Miller listed issues he sees with CBAs when he wrote to the council in a . They include the appearance of conflict of interest and a $500,000 line item by the contractor for administration of the CBA pilot program.

Additionally, Christine Moody, the city’s chief procurement officer, and her boss, Ken Rust, the city’s chief financial officer, are renouncing a report given to the council last week by a volunteer commission supportive of CBAs – the Equitable Contracting and Purchasing Commission.

Moody defended some of her office’s equity efforts in a memo sent to ECPC Chairman Dante James, head of the Office of Equity and Human Rights. And she met personally with him Tuesday.

“We think the ECPC presentation included some information that was inaccurate and unclear,” she wrote in the letter obtained this week through a records request.

And in an email Tuesday to the city’s elected officials, Rust gave an overview of concerns raised in Moody’s report.

“We wanted to make sure council was aware of it, because the presentation was very confusing,” he told the 91��Ƶ today.

Rust said he didn’t want to take a position on CBAs, but felt the procurement office could have corrected errors in the ECPC’s presentation had it had a chance to review it. He suspected the errors were the result of inexperienced staffers transferring complex and incomplete information from one software program to another.

On Sept. 14, nearly a year after ECPC members met for the first time, they painted a dire picture of the city’s efforts to increase inclusion. Graphics showed white males dwarfing all other categories and backward movement in key areas.

“CBAs are a powerful tool for promoting the including of underrepresented people,” said Nicky Nicholson-Klingerman, an O’Neill Electric project administrator who addressed the council last week on behalf of the ECPC.

A coalition supportive of CBAs issued its own postmortem of the pilot project: “The Community Benefits Agreement: A Proven Tool for Advancing Portland’s Commitment to Equity in Contracting and Workforce Diversity.”

ECPC member Maurice Rahming told the council at last week’s hearing that union hiring halls are better able to respond to calls for a diverse workforce than contractors, who currently aren’t being held accountable where diversity is concerned. He said CBAs get better results, as well as detailed data for helping officials understand the depth of the problem.

“If you remove (CBAs) you see almost a non-utilization of women and minorities; the gap is that great,” he said. “The reason you see such a drastic drop in the data last year is because the CBA projects were winding down.”

Nate McCoy of the National Association of Minority Contractors‘ Oregon chapter told the 91��Ƶ that the data the ECPC used in its presentation didn’t reflect what he’d seen when he worked as a construction manager in the Housing Bureau.

“We didn’t have CBAs and we always hit the numbers,” he said. “The biggest overarching issue is that minority contractors that are smaller still have to compete in a big-boy system that is this low-bid process.”

Two major city projects now in preconstruction – Washington Park Reservoir improvements and the Portland Building reconstruction – have begun and aren’t employing “true” or “pure” CBAs.

This week, city Commissioner Nick Fish told the 91��Ƶ he supports a modified form of CBA – a community benefit plan – that features heavy union participation but is also open to minority-owned open-shop firms.

Fish, a former labor lawyer, said the timing for focusing on the CBA issue was “perfect,” with a new mayor taking over in January and several big-ticket city projects on the horizon.

“I think we have to rethink that commission and bring some new faces in,” he said of the ECPC. “I think that will be an opportunity for the new mayor.”

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Members of Portland’s Equitable Contracting and Purchasing Commission intend to deliver a message to the City Council this week: The city’s record of incorporating minorities into public projects is dismal and becoming worse.

A outlines declining minority participation rates in workforce and subcontracting over the past three years across several demographics, including among Asian men, African-American women and Caucasian women.

Though the declines aren’t precipitous, the total hours worked by minorities are all dwarfed by the share worked by Caucasian men. For example, during 2014-15, African-American men worked 286 total hours, while Caucasian men worked 6,020.

Data has been a buzzword throughout the ECPC‘s first year of existence. Its volunteer members have repeatedly requested information further breaking down participation by race and gender. They’ve said city officials have tried to use misleading statistics to paint a rosier picture than what exists.

The monthly ECPC meetings have been scenes of tension, with members disagreeing over approach and expressing frustration with being stonewalled by city officials. Mayor Charlie Hales eventually attended an ECPC meeting in May, a month before relocating the nine-member panel from under the Office of Management and Finance to the Office of Equity and Human Rights.

The commission’s presentation includes information about seven recent resolutions passed by the City Council concerning equity in city contracting. The ECPC has been allotted 45 minutes before the council on Wednesday, beginning at 2 p.m.

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Mayor Charlie Hales is relocating the Equitable Contracting & Purchasing Commission, the nascent board charged with helping increase minority participation in city projects.

In a letter to ECPC commissioners dated Wednesday, Hales discussed his reasons for moving the nine-member commission from the Office of Management and Finance (OMF) to the Office of Equity and Human Rights (OEHR).

“By moving the commission outside OMF, I hope to provide a broader lens through which ECPC commissioners can view the work of the city,” Hales wrote.

Dante James, head of the Office of Equity and Human Rights, will now chair the commission. He takes over from Bryant Enge, director of the Bureau of Internal Business Services and an employee of OMF head Fred Miller.

ECPC commissioners have complained that city employees and elected officials have been distant with the board since it first met in November. They said they haven’t been given requested data, and that Enge, due to his position at OMF, has been stuck in the middle for some issues.

Hales has responded by sending staffers to meetings. Hales himself attended last month’s ECPC meeting to receive suggestions for improvement.

Commissioner Marcela Alcantar called the relocation a “really, really good decision.” It could help ensure the continued existence of the ECPC after Hales leaves office at the end of the year, she said.

“It’s well overdue,” she said. “The ECPC should have been in existence long ago, so the fact that he took the leadership to do that, it’s very commendable. I know that important things like this take time.”

Alcantar, president of Alcantar and Associates, said James has impressed her.

“We need implementation, and there’s just nothing being done,” she said. “Leadership is key, and I think that’s what is missing right now.”

ECPC Commissioner Andrew McGough, Worksystems’ executive director, said the “jury’s still out.”

“I guess we’ll wait and see,” he said. “If it gives the commission a little bit more autonomy and a little bit more structure, that would be a good thing.”

There are nearly two dozen citizen oversight or advisory boards in Portland city government. As head of OEHR, James oversees only two other boards or commissions – the Human Rights Commission and the Portland Commission on Disability – fewer than Miller oversees.

Contract procurement is seen by social welfare activists as an important battleground for achieving economic and social equity for women and minorities. The ECPC has its roots in the city’s 2009 disparity study, which called for bringing together stakeholders to work on five programmatic areas: workforce training and hiring, DMWESB subcontracting, prequalification, prime contractor development, and professional and expert services.

The city on average awards each year more than 1,200 new contracts with a combined value of more than $200 million.

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Mayor Charlie Hales‘ chief of staff told Portland’s Equitable Contracting and Purchasing Commission he’s ready to “blow up” the city’s procurement system and start over, if that’s determined to be the best course of action.

Josh Alpert attended the ECPC‘s monthly meeting April 21 to ask members to think through new strategies for increasing participation by women and minorities in public projects. The commission’s business has brimmed with tension for most of its short existence, as members have increasingly complained that the City Council isn’t listening to them. Alpert sought to try to refocus the commission in the wake of one especially volatile meeting in February, a reconciliatory retreat this month and several “restless nights” on his part.

“Most of you doing this work have gotten frustrated with the level of process that it takes to get to some kind of resolution,” he told the commission. “When at the end of the day, all we’re all trying to do is create more opportunity for women and minorities.”

But ECPC members questioned how much the mayor’s office could accomplish before Hales’ term finishes at the end of the year.

“I appreciate your comments, but we’ve been at this for almost eight months and we’ve had almost no cooperation from the City Council,” commission member Andrew McGough said. “We’ve spent a lot of time and energy, and we weren’t responded to; we were just ignored.”

Alpert conceded that Hales’ recent attention on housing affordability and homelessness has shifted money and focus from all other issues, including minority participation in public contracting. And those issues haven’t gone away, he acknowledged.

“I’d encourage you use this as an opportunity to blow up the system that we currently have for procurement in the city of Portland and redesign what that system should be,” he said. “We will give you all the resources that you need … Obviously, I can’t promise the council will adopt what that plan will be.”

The commission will bring several items before the City Council in the near term, including the possibility of using Community Benefit Agreements as a way to improve participation. Also, the commission will be part of upcoming discussions about minority participation in the $195 million project to renovate the Portland Building.

The ECPC was formed by a vote of the City Council in February 2015. Its goal is to “investigate and report on” Portland’s efforts toward equitable contracting, and “advise” the council on what it finds, according to its bylaws. Once enough commissioners were selected, it met for the first time in July 2015.

In late February the commission voted “no confidence” against the City Council. The matter received attention after the vote was kept out of the meeting minutes and the city delayed release of the meeting video.

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