In April, I wrote of the failure of County Administrator , Denny Inman, to follow through on the program initiated by Steve Beckett and other Democrats to promote greater hiring of minority contractors in Champaign County. As I noted at the time, Steve Beckett and Barb Wysocki had made much of this in their Democratic primary campaign. I recall thinking that Beckett would be distressed when he found out about Inman's inaction on an issue toward which he expressed such great concern. So earlier this week I wrote him an email.
Steve,
I wrote about this on Illinipundit in May http://www.illinipundit.com/2007/04/23/minority_contracting_fiasco but never passed it on to you. Mr. Inman of course is well aware of it, but since I never saw it on a Facilities Committee agenda I thought maybe you were unaware of the issue.
The bottom line is that the prequalified vendor program has gone nowhere in the two and half years since it was passed by the Board. I have no desire to speak to the issue, but since I knew it was important to you I thought it would good to let you know.
Mark
He responded
Mark:
I do not read Pundit.
I am aware of the status of minority hiring including this program for the county.
When I met with you, I asked that we communicate in person and not by e_mail.
Would you like to meet to discuss this?
Steve
So now we know that Inman's inaction has come with the graces of Steve Beckett. We also know that Beckett has chosen not to put this issue on the next County Facilities agenda for next week. He knows about it and has decided to not even let the Board know about it. We don't know what he's done about it, but according to Denny Inman's response to my FOIA on the issue, Inman never had any written communications about it with Mr. Beckett.
In addition, the Facilities agenda also contains no information about the delays we've had in submitting our final costs to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. We're spending thousands of dollars on attorney's fees in an attempt to get Denny Inman to do his job, and yet we still haven't gotten this report done. Wouldn't an explanation be a nice idea? Beckett has known about this since before the June Facilities meeting, but has elected to not put it on the agenda.
"I do not read Pundit."
Me thinks he doth protest too much.
:-)
Gordy,
Is not reading the Pundit a capital punishment crime?
To that end, I am, and shall always remain;
Rex Bradfield
Rex,
I don't support capital punishment, even for not reading IP.com.
There is one statement I found telling, mostly because I think the story is usually in the details (not the actual story).
I asked that we communicate in person and not by e_mail.
Now I may be a cynic, but I read that as saying that he only wants to have conversations in a way where the content is not FOIA-able. Am I being unfair?
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j
Part-Time Pundit
John, I don't think he's avoiding FOIA, just generally avoiding any documenation.
Fair enough. Plausible deniability is the mantra
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j
Part-Time Pundit
There's another possibility, too, which is trying to avoid the misunderstandings and flame wars that email-only communication can worsen. Good professional habits include actually talking face-to-face about any complex or difficult issue; it prevents many misunderstandings. That's not the same as not documenting the conversation after it happens--it's just better practice in the first instance for any topic that has the potential to be contentious or difficult. Look at some of the flame wars here, and the escalations that have taken place: these are much easier to avoid in person and much less likely to occur.
Does anybody have a bona fide list of "minority business employers" from this area? I believe you'll find of number of such employers from the Chicago area but I rather doubt the County Board wants to transfer money from Champaign County to Cook County. The same generally holds true for "female business employers". There is a lot of lecturing from certain members of elected government on this topic and the desirability of hiring MBE's and FBE's for taxpayer funded work. The folks doing the lecturing need to produce names of such firms or go bark up a different tree.
The tree they and the rest of us should be barking up is the one where we educate folks to do these kinds of jobs, train them and then actually let them in the trade unions. We fail miserably on all three scores. Education is all about taking standard tests and trade work is not on the tests. Training is part of union apprenticeship. The unions deliberately keep their membership low for their own reasons (and control who joins in the process).