The Augusta Commission held an exit workshop with outgoing City Administrator Odie Donald Sr. whose last day on the job is Feb.25.
The workshop centered on Donald’s recommendations for further use of federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding as well as a preview of the ongoing disparity study.
Racial equity in government has been Donald’s focus in his year-long term. One of his first acts as administrator was to hire a Black-only support staff.
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During the workshop, Donald introduced Rodney Strong of Griffin and Strong, PC of Atlanta, the firm conducting the year-long disparity study, who gave a preview of the company’s findings.
According to Strong, the city of Augusta has made great strides in equity, but there is more to be done, including guaranteeing that more minority-owned businesses are given the opportunity to work as subcontractors.
Strong said his study has determined that minority-owned firms account for only 13% of the contracts given out for city construction and engineering projects.
According to Strong, the percentage could be doubled, and he recommended the city should strengthen the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Department and add to the department’s staff to enable them to force compliance on companies that obtain contracts through the Procurement Department to use more minority-owned firms as subcontractors.
“Because of the disparities and the anecdotal findings we have, we believe there is a legally sufficient basis to move forward with certain narrowly targeted race and gender elements into the current program,” Strong said.
Strong did not elaborate further as to exactly what those added “elements” were.
In 2008, according to press reports at the time, the Augusta Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Department program was found to have been coaching minority owned companies on how to subvert the Procurement Department (which is a separate office from the DBE) guidelines and win contracts even though they were not the lowest bidder.
Investigations at the time concluded that some of the winning minority bids were actual shell companies that did not provide any work, they simply won the contract even though they weren’t the lowest bidder and then subcontracted out to the low bidder to complete the tasks, which cost the city millions of dollars over the years.
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At the time, Procurement Department Director Geri Sams was blamed for allowing such shenanigans, but she was able to prove that her office had followed city policy and part of that policy was accepting a race-based matrix set forth by the DBE of which her department had no control.
Donald also gave recommendations on the further use of Recovery Act funding, urging commissioners to use “community intermediaries” to decide how to spend the $1 million allotments that are to be given for each district and super district in the current plan.
When Donald began talking about using Recovery Act funds to “fill holes in future budget fiscal years,” he began to be questioned by commissioners about the jobs that have been added during the pandemic and the raises given across the board using federal funds.
In his response, Donald said when the federal funds run out in the next two years or so, then the city will have to cover the costs of the positions and the raises or they will vanish.
“I feel like we have beat this horse to death. No one got a raise on paper in the Finance Department. You were providing a supplement, so Augusta remains open. So, if Mr. Donald makes $11 dollars an hour, right now he still makes $11 dollars an hour, but you have put in the budget a supplement using Rescue Act funds that take me to $15 dollars an hour,” Donald said.
Donald finally admitted that the sticker shock on the raises will come when the federal funding runs out. However, he made it clear many times throughout the workshop that the Commission could take or leave his recommendations for the future, because, in his words, “I won’t be here.”
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
