CITY HALL CONTRACT DRAMA
Lightfoot wants to look into giving LGBT-owned businesses a leg up, but some aldermen, citing the movie ‘I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry,’ fear it’ll lead to fraud and fewer opportunities for people of color
In 2007, Adam Sandler and Kevin James made a movie about a pair of New York City firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple to secure health insurance coverage for one of their children.
Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) on Tuesday made reference to that film, “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry,” during a City Council debate about the possibility of creating set-asides for gay business owners in Chicago.
Chicago’s first openly gay mayor has ordered up a study that, she hopes, will be a prelude to revisiting the politically volatile idea of giving gay-and-transgender-owned businesses a leg up on city contracts.
Sixteen years ago, Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) broached the subject of gay set-asides only to drop the idea like a hot potato after plenty of pushback from inside and outside the gay community.
Critics argued then that Chicago already had contract earmarks for businesses with owners of color and women and that carving out another piece of the pie for gay-owned companies would benefit one rather privileged group: gay white men.
The same controversy surfaced Tuesday before the City Council’s Committee on Contract Oversight and Equity agreed to launch the mayoral study.
Burnett said he was worried about the possibility of someone fraudulently claiming they were gay to take advantage of the program.
“I think about that movie about the two firemen where they were faking like they were gay … to get benefits. That’s a concern of mine. How do you distinguish that?” Burnett said.
Burnett noted the controversy has been a hot topic on black talk radio ever since Lightfoot proposed the study.
“They’re concerned this is another way for white males to get more contracts. … That was the same concern that some African Americans had about white women being considered a minority. And after that, we started getting fraud where white women were fronting for white males. We found a lot of corruption,” Burnett said.
“Women are already considered a minority. African Americans, Latinos and Asians — all of them are considered a minority. The only ones in the LGBT arena that are not considered as a minority is the white male.”
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, was equally concerned about fraud and about the possibility that gay set-asides would come at the expense of African Americans.
“When it comes down to procurement and dollars, I do have some concerns [about] … creating a situation where individuals could fraudulently assert themselves to be something that they’re not in order to get a financial gain [by claiming] something that has a lot of subjective qualifiers, but there truly is not an objective point ... to affirm someone’s sexuality.”
Little evidence of fraud, business group says
Jonathan D. Lovitz, senior vice president of the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, argued that fraud concerns are unfounded.
“In 20 years of certifying with every major Fortune 500 company that you can think of, we’ve yet to come across a situation where there was fraud of any kind, misrepresentation of any kind, because the certification process is so thorough,” Lovitz said, noting that a “photo with my boyfriend” is nowhere near enough.
Lovitz argued that similar programs across the country demonstrate that gayowned businesses “don’t participate unless you call out a community by name and add that check-box ... to procurement programs the way you do women, people of color, veterans, etc.”
Lovitz said California saw a 240% increase in certifications of LGBT business enterprises (LGBTBEs) when the state launched its program.
Discrimination against gay and transgender people is still not illegal nationwide, he said.
“There’s only 15 states in the entire country where an LGBT person can walk into a bank [to] get a loan and not be threatened with discrimination from a bank manager and have it be perfectly legal.”
Lovitz argued that the Chicago study is only “the beginning of step one” toward gay set-asides.
‘‘This is thoughtful, conscientious study in close partnership with the city,’’ he said. ‘‘For all of the reasons you just laid out, we want to be methodical about this.”
Lightfoot has made no bones about her desire to create gay set-asides in addition to the 26% and 6% of city contracts already earmarked for minorities and women.
But the resolution approved Tuesday is only a first step.
It calls for technical assistance and training programs to build capacity and “increase the potential for successful bidding on city projects.”
More important, it states that the city’s chief procurement officer, in consulting with the department of law, “shall gather all relevant data that may assist the city in determining the need for a citywide program to promote opportunities in city procurement for LGBTBEs.”
The resolution sets a Sept. 23 deadline for submitting a written report to the mayor.