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A
Change Long Overdue
It's
time to end the throwback to the doctrine of "separate but
equal," the perpetuation of one small-business
program for women and minorities and one for everyone
else.
The
boundaries between state governmental agencies and
secretariats seems to be a constant source of debate and
controversy in the Virginia General Assembly.
Each year we see various proposals to reorganize
state government. Last
year, it was a massive reorganization of the information
technology functions into the new Virginia Information
Technologies Agency (VITA).
This year, there is a final push to create a new
Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry out of agencies
currently within the Secretariat of Commerce and Trade.
Also
pending this year is language in the House and Senate budgets
that would merge the Department of Minority Business
Enterprise (DMBE) into the Department of Business
Assistance (DBA). There
is a cost saving associated with consolidation, which is
important but not the real reason for making the move.
At issue is whether we are going to have two different
small-business agencies organized around what should be
utterly irrelevant business criteria -- the ethnicity or
skin color of the proprietor.
Since
Brown v. Board of
Education, the doctrine of “separate but equal”
schools has correctly been discarded in favor of a legal
premise of absolute equality.
Since the Civil Rights laws were adopted in 1964,
the principals in Brown
have been expanded to guaranty
inclusion to all Americans to all public activities (and
by now hopefully most private activities) regardless of
race, religion, gender or national origin.
Certainly, those legal principles are still
violated by ignorant, wrong-thinking individuals, and
the goals of the civil rights movement have not yet been
completely obtained.
However,
for the Commonwealth to maintain an agency solely
devoted to minority business is wrong.
The reason is not that minority businesses
shouldn’t get assistance.
I would argue that disadvantaged businesses – which would include businesses owned by
certain minority, women or economically disadvantaged
individuals -- should get extra government help.
There is a positive return on the state’s
investment when those businesses can create jobs, and
there is a moral benefit in assisting people to reach
their maximum economic potential. But sending those
businesses to a different agency rather than the
mainstream small business agency
is at odds with the principals of integration and
equality. In fact,
because DMBE is resource-starved, it is not even akin to
separate but equal but instead is separate and
deficient.
This
is not putting down what DMBE currently does either.
As deputy and then secretary of Commerce and Trade, I
oversaw DBA and DMBE for four years.
The staff at DMBE does a good job with the
resources it has. However,
separating the agency from DBA, the mainstream
small-business and financing agency, inevitably causes
breakdowns in communication and duplication of effort.
DBA has a much bigger staff, greater resources, a
wider range of programs and greater expertise.
DBA works much more closely with the Virginia
Economic Development Partnership, another important
agency for business growth.
DBA also controls the important workforce
training program that countless businesses use to train
workers to grow their businesses.
DMBE
certifies minority businesses and maintains a list of
those businesses, manages an outreach program, assists
those businesses with VDOT work and has an access to
capital program. Each
of these functions would be handled better in an
integrated agency combining DMBE and DBA resources.
DBA
is the Commonwealth’s small business agency.
A minority- and women-owned business should not
have to choose between the two when seeking business
assistance. I
recall seeing first-hand how businesses would be bounced
back and forth between the two agencies with inevitable
frustration and delay. By
merging DMBE into DBA, the Commonwealth would have one
agency strongly committed to assisting all businesses.
The functions of DMBE would continue, but as an
integral part of the Commonwealth’s overall economic
development efforts. That
would be a good thing.
--
March
1, 2004
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