Bulldozing Race Conscious Road Work

An overdue overhaul of federal preferences for ‘disadvantaged’ firms

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"Last year a federal judge in Kentucky said this is unconstitutional. “A contract business owned by man from Pakistan receives the rebuttable presumption,” he wrote. At the same time, a business owned by “a man from Afghanistan does not. Why?”

Well, the government sees Pakistani-Americans as Asian, while it deems Afghan-Americans to be white. By the way, the DBE category for “Hispanic” contractors also included those of “Portuguese culture.” These arbitrary government preferences for giving out taxpayer money cannot stand legal scrutiny, and the sums aren’t trivial. In 2021 there were 34,000 contracts committed to DBEs, according to data from the Transportation Department (DOT), and the federal share was $6 billion."

"This summer five Michigan men pleaded guilty to federal charges in a case involving a surveying firm that allegedly falsely obtained DBE status. Prosecutors said the company had a 20% partner who’s a Pacific Islander, and the men pretended he’d attained majority ownership and managerial control."

"“DBE fraud is pervasive,” said a 2020 article in a journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers."

"The DBE program raises construction costs, creates a make-work certification system that’s an obvious fraud target, and steers government money based on a contractor’s personal identity claims instead of whether he’s the best choice to do quality work for the taxpayer."