Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
MGM National Harbor helps local businesses
Corporation hiring minorities as part of commitments
It’s not quite 6 a.m., and Carla Truitt is already making the rounds of the 125,000-square-foot casino floor.
She moves from the food court to the bar to the slot machines. She has a long to-do list: Wipe down any dust left from construction. Check. Polish all appliances, glass, stainless steel. Check. Clean floors. Check.
Her crew of 10 workers, dressed in khakis and navy T-shirts, are on a mission to get the new MGM National Harbor casino resort spotless and gleaming for its Dec. 8 opening.
“I came with some torn jeans and a T-shirt and from there the business just grew,” said Truitt, who owns BeClean Cleaning Services, a Prince George’s County, Maryland-based company hired two years ago to take care of the project’s construction trailers and now some post-construction cleanup. “The gratification of all of this is that I am able to give people jobs and opportunities.”
Be-Clean is one of 94 local businesses that secured contracts during construction of the $1.4 billion gaming resort. A minority-owned enterprise, Truitt’s company grew twofold as its relationship with MGM evolved. Her story, she said, is a testament to MGM making good on its promise to give local and minority-owned businesses opportunities.
“Maybe it was luck of the draw, but it worked in my favor,” Truitt said, recalling the first contract she got before the building was erected. “I noticed this big empty space was available with trailers and said, ‘I have to think outside the box. They will need cleaners like anyone else.’ So I left my card and then, I finally got a phone call.”
TAPPING LOCAL LABOR
Since the casino giant received Maryland’s sixth and final gaming license, it has paid local companies $236 million for work related to the facility’s construction, meeting or exceeding goals set in a 2014 community benefits agreement with Prince George’s, according to its most recent quarterly report.
The report, verified by the county and an independent auditor, paints a glowing portrait of MGM’s hiring and contracting practices in the region.
In interviews, government officials and business leaders praise MGM’s outreach to recruit talent in the Washington, D.C., region, particularly among minorities in Prince George’s. They note that the company was able to meet most of the goals despite being faced with a limited number of companies in the county capable of handling a project of the casino’s magnitude and a post-recession shortage of qualified electricians, plumbers and welders in the region.
The project unfolded in a competitive environment for such labor, partly because of a building boom with several large ongoing projects.
Still, with a little more than six weeks left before opening, MGM has fallen short on some commitments, critics say, partly because of the county’s failure to follow through with oversight.
For example, the county and MGM had two years to establish a high school culinary program. A Prince George’s schools official said MGM has said it intends to invest in the district in “real demonstrable ways,” but officials are still looking at potential schools to house the program.
The community benefits agreement also calls for MGM to donate a total of $1 million to the county before the casino opens. But county officials responsible for monitoring compliance couldn’t provide a reporter with a breakdown of where MGM stands in meeting the goal.
According to MGM’s quarterly report, the company has made about $619,000 in charitable donations, but it doesn’t specify whether they were made in Prince George’s. Casino officials said the company is on track to meet the $1 million goal, but neither MGM nor the county would provide a breakdown.
“Some of it is in the works,” said Roland Jones, director of Prince George’s County Central Services and chairman of the committee that provides oversight of the agreement. He wouldn’t respond to questions about what donations had been made to date.
OVERSIGHT CONCERNS
While MGM appears to be meeting or making a good-faith effort to meet the goals, critics say the county needs to do a better job of monitoring things. Oversight is crucial, because if the committee determines that MGM has failed to make its “best efforts” to meet the terms, it could be required to make additional charitable contributions to the county.
It took the compliance committee seven months after the agreement was signed to hire a compliance manager. That person left after just three months in the job and it took the county five months to replace him. The manager reports to Jones.
Asked why the first manager left the job, Jones said, “We won’t get into that.”
Prince George’s officials commend MGM as a top contributor to the local economy.
“They have put forth money, manpower, resources. They have developed relationships,” Jones said.
Some business groups say targeted outreach would have given more small businesses, particularly Hispanicand Asian-owned firms, a greater chance at competing for jobs in the mammoth development. Meanwhile, some black business leaders and activists say that the majority-black county has not received its fair share of the contracts.
But MGM said cash services are strictly regulated and licensed and only a small number of vendors are qualified to do the job.
ABOVE AND BEYOND
For Truitt, the owner of the cleaning company, the MGM contract has helped her grow her business, which she started nearly two decades ago cleaning houses with her mother. A Prince George’s native and daughter of immigrants from Guyana, Truitt had five people cleaning casino trailers two years ago. Now she manages about 20 workers.
“I get mad at those people complaining,” she said. “You have to do your due diligence and you have to be proactive. People just want to sit around and wait for them to call.”
According to the casino’s quarterly report, as of the end of September nearly 40 percent of MGM’s construction payments had gone to minority-owned businesses, exceeding a 30 percent goal. Of the 164 minority-owned businesses that worked on the project, 58 were based in Prince George’s and received $118 million in payments — about 15 percent of the construction payments and higher than the goal of 12 percent.
The numbers, however, exclude nearly $200 million spent on areas such as leases, charitable donations, payments to government, security systems and networking services, and the purchase of furniture and fixtures, gaming equipment, structural steel, escalators and elevators.