The Math Doesn’t Have a Political Party
Before Cuyahoga County blames Washington, bonding, capacity or Black businesses themselves, its own disparity study deserves another look.
There is a temptation whenever racial equity becomes politically uncomfortable to change the subject.
Sometimes the subject becomes Washington. Sometimes it becomes affirmative action. Sometimes it becomes whether diversity programs have gone too far. In government contracting, the explanation often shifts to something else: minority businesses are too small, they cannot obtain bonding, they lack capacity, they do not bid, or they cannot survive the payment cycle.
Some of those barriers are real.
But Cuyahoga County commissioned a disparity study that gives the public something far more useful than talking points.
It gives us numbers.
And the numbers do not have a political party.
The County Already Documented the Problem
The 2020 Cuyahoga County Disparity Study, prepared by Griffin & Strong, examined County contracting during fiscal years 2014 through 2018.
Its findings deserve to be read slowly.
In construction prime contracting, African American-owned firms represented an estimated 14.87 percent of available firms in the relevant market. They received 0.38 percent of the dollars.
In professional services, African American firms represented an estimated 8.43 percent of availability. Their utilization was 0.02 percent.
Those are not differences that can be dismissed with a slogan.
They are the County’s own commissioned measurements of who was available to perform work and who actually received the work.
The study also reached a broader conclusion. It said earlier race- and gender-neutral remediation efforts had not eliminated the problem. Discrimination still existed.
That matters now because another disparity study is underway, and it will arrive in a very different national political environment.
Trump Cannot Change Yesterday’s Numbers
President Donald Trump and the Republican-led federal government have aggressively challenged diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Those actions matter. They can affect the legal environment in which local governments design race-conscious programs, and Cuyahoga County should be candid about any federal action that limits a remedy it otherwise would pursue.
But that cannot become a retroactive explanation.
The contracting period examined in the County’s 2020 study was 2014 through 2018.
The disparities documented there existed years before today’s federal anti-DEI campaign could be offered as the reason for them.
That distinction is critical.
A federal policy can affect what a local government believes it can do tomorrow. It cannot rewrite what that local government did yesterday.
So when the new study is released, the public should resist any attempt to collapse two separate questions into one.
The first question is: What remedies are legally available now?
The second is: What did Cuyahoga County accomplish during the years when today’s federal restrictions were not the explanation?
Both deserve answers.
This Is Not a Republican Argument
None of this requires becoming a Republican, supporting Donald Trump or opposing either one.
It requires consistency.
Cuyahoga County has long been dominated politically by Democrats. That fact should not be used to argue that Republicans would necessarily produce better outcomes. It should be used to establish something much simpler:
Political identity is not evidence of equity.
A government does not become equitable because its elected officials use the language of inclusion. A progressive reputation cannot substitute for procurement results.
Republican governments should be held accountable for policies that produce inequity. Democratic governments should be held to the same standard.
If a jurisdiction says equity is one of its values, the public has every right to examine where its money actually goes.
That is not partisan.
That is accountability.
The Bonding Explanation Deserves Scrutiny
One of the explanations frequently offered for the limited participation of minority contractors is bonding.
The argument sounds plausible. Smaller firms often face real difficulty obtaining performance and payment bonds, particularly when they have less access to capital and shorter operating histories.
But Cuyahoga County’s own policies complicate that explanation.
The disparity study states that County Code allowed performance and payment bonds to be waived on construction projects below $250,000 when no federal funds were involved and below $150,000 when federal funds were involved, provided contractors met the prequalification requirements. Risk Management also established a waiver process that included training. For non-construction projects, bonds could be waived at the discretion of the Law Department through Risk Management.
The County had recognized bonding as a barrier and created a mechanism to reduce it.
Then comes the remarkable part.
County staff told the disparity-study researchers that bonds had been waived on only one or two projects.
That should immediately change the conversation.
If bonding is routinely offered as an explanation for why Black contractors are not receiving County work, the public should ask how many of the contracts at issue actually required bonds, how many qualified for waivers, how many firms requested waivers, how many waivers were approved and why a program created to remove a recognized barrier appears to have been used so rarely.
“Bonding” cannot be the end of the explanation.
It should be the beginning of the investigation.
Most Awards Were Not Giant Contracts
The study’s own award data makes that inquiry even more important.
More than half of the awards in one threshold table—50.89 percent—were between $1,000 and $5,000.
Another 16.61 percent were between $5,000 and $10,000.
Another 22.76 percent were between $10,000 and $50,000.
By the time awards through $250,000 are included, approximately 95.69 percent of the awards represented in that table fell at or below $250,000.
That does not mean 95.69 percent automatically qualified for a bonding waiver. The waiver rules apply differently depending on the type of contract, federal funding and prequalification.
But it does destroy the usefulness of a vague explanation.
If officials say bonding is a major reason Black businesses cannot participate, then identify the contracts.
Show which ones required bonding.
Show which firms were unable to meet the requirement.
Show which contracts were eligible for a waiver.
Show how often the waiver was offered and used.
That is what measurable government looks like.
The County Also Tried to Address Slow Payment
Bonding was not the only barrier the County had already recognized.
Cash flow can kill a small business even when the business has successfully won the work.
In May 2016, the County Executive issued what the disparity study describes as a swift-pay executive order. The purpose was to ensure timely County payments to prime contractors and penalize primes that failed to pay subcontractors after receiving payment for their work.
The report says the County order essentially restated Ohio’s policy requiring primes to pay subcontractors within 10 days after receiving payment.
Ohio law adds significant teeth: according to the study, interest of 18 percent begins on the eleventh day when the payment requirement is violated, and the prompt-payment requirement cannot simply be waived away by contract.
Again, the policy sounds good.
The outcomes are what matter.
The disparity study reported that County staff still received complaints about subcontractor prompt payment. In its survey, only 6.8 percent of MBE respondents reported being paid in less than 30 days.
That raises another uncomfortable question.
If small and minority businesses are criticized for lacking sufficient working capital to survive government contracting, how aggressively did government enforce the policies designed to ensure that those businesses were paid promptly?
A business should certainly be financially prepared to perform a contract.
Government and prime contractors should be equally prepared to comply with their payment obligations.
What If They Just Aren’t Bidding?
Another familiar explanation is that minority businesses simply are not submitting bids.
The County’s study examined that question too.
Its analysis concluded that contracting disparities generally could not be explained simply by differences in how frequently minority firms submitted bids.
That does not mean every qualified Black business bids on every opportunity. Obviously they do not.
It means “they don’t bid” cannot be casually presented as a complete explanation for the disparities without evidence.
There were other warning signs.
In the study’s survey, nearly 73 percent of African American respondents said they believed an informal network impeded their ability to win County work. Less than 30 percent of non-minority male respondents expressed the same belief.
Perception is not proof that every contract was unfairly awarded.
But when such a large difference exists between the experiences reported by Black businesses and their non-minority counterparts, serious institutions investigate rather than dismiss it.
Stop Starting With What Black Businesses Lack
There is a pattern in discussions about minority contracting that deserves attention.
When Black businesses receive very little public work, the first questions frequently concern what is supposedly wrong with the businesses.
Do they have enough capacity?
Can they get bonded?
Do they understand procurement?
Do they bid?
Do they have enough capital?
Do they know how to navigate government?
Those can all be legitimate questions.
But eventually government must subject itself to the same examination.
Were opportunities structured so smaller businesses could realistically compete?
Were bonding waivers actually used?
Were subcontractors paid on time?
Were prime contractors held accountable?
Were certified businesses meaningfully connected to opportunities?
Were procurement officers measured on participation?
Were disparities improving from year to year?
Which recommendations from the previous disparity study were implemented?
Which were not?
And who was responsible?
Equity cannot mean endlessly diagnosing Black businesses while treating the procurement system as a neutral observer.
The Most Important Report May Be the One Coming Next
The forthcoming disparity study creates an opportunity.
It can become another document placed on a government website, discussed at a few meetings and gradually forgotten.
Or it can become a measuring stick.
The public should compare the new numbers directly with the previous study.
What percentage of County construction dollars is going to African American firms now?
What about professional services?
Goods?
Other services?
Architecture and engineering?
Has the gap between availability and utilization narrowed?
How many bonding waivers have been granted since the last study?
How quickly are prime contractors paying subcontractors?
How often have prompt-payment penalties been imposed?
How much County spending reaches Black-owned firms as primes rather than only as subcontractors?
Those questions do not require anyone to utter the letters D-E-I.
They are questions about public money.
The terminology can change.
The arithmetic remains.
Equity Is an Outcome, Not an Identity
This is ultimately why the national partisan argument cannot be allowed to consume the local one.
It is entirely legitimate to criticize federal policies that weaken tools designed to address discrimination.
But local leaders cannot point toward Washington so aggressively that nobody looks at Cleveland.
If Cuyahoga County believes in equity, it should welcome the measurement.
If advocacy organizations believe in economic justice, they should demand the numbers regardless of who controls County government.
If political leaders believe Black-owned businesses deserve genuine access to public opportunity, they should be able to explain what changed after the last disparity study.
And if the explanations are bonding, capacity, bidding or federal restrictions, those explanations should be tested against evidence.
That is the standard.
Not party registration.
Not rhetoric.
Not how many diversity statements were issued.
Not how progressive an institution considers itself.
Results.
The federal government may change what remedies are available tomorrow.
It cannot change the numbers from yesterday.
And before Cuyahoga County asks Black businesses to explain again why they have not received more public work, the County should first explain what its own numbers have been trying to tell us.
The math doesn’t have a political party.
Source Note
The contracting figures, bonding provisions, award thresholds, prompt-payment provisions, survey findings and policy observations discussed in this article are drawn from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio 2020 Disparity Study prepared by Griffin & Strong, P.C. The study examined County contracting during FY2014–FY2018. The article distinguishes those historical findings from the separate legal and policy environment surrounding current federal DEI initiatives.