‘It’s meant to harass’: Kansas City mayor denounces Trump administration probe
In the final days of former President Donald Trump’s administration came a massive request for Kansas City: every piece of information on every construction contract for a decade.
Mayor Quinton Lucas doesn’t mince words in his assessment of the request: “It’s meant to harass. It’s meant to obfuscate, and it’s meant to distort a positive policy.”
Trump’s Department of Justice on Dec. 9 opened an investigation to determine whether Kansas City was violating federal discrimination law. At issue is the city’s requirement that when it enters a contract with a business, a percentage of the work must go to firms owned by minorities and women. For example, 35% of the work on the new single terminal at Kansas City International Airport is supposed to go to such firms.
Then, less than a week before President Joe Biden’s inauguration came a request for three decades’ worth of proof of the racial disparities the city feels justify the program, incidents of prior discrimination and a decade’s worth of bids. Lucas described the letter as a request for “literally everything ever” the city could provide the federal government about the program.
He didn’t see the request as targeted toward any particular potential violation or specific investigation. He described it as launched by “a few political appointees going out the door.”
The DOJ did not return a request for comment on the need for the investigation and whether it would continue under Biden’s administration.
In announcing the investigation, the DOJ said in a release that Kansas City was using set-asides that “favor certain people because of their race and sex and disfavor others,” an apparent claim of reverse racism and sexism. The release said DOJ was looking for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits those receiving federal funds from discriminating.
“All government in this free country must treat all persons with equal dignity and respect and without dividing people into racial and ethnic blocs for the purpose of labeling certain people winners and others losers because of their race,” Eric Dreiband, then an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, said in the December news release.
But Lucas said the construction industry is still dominated by white men. That’s why Kansas City has the program to uplift minority and women contracting companies.
The investigation, he said, doesn’t reflect a flaw in Kansas City’s program, which he stands by, but the Trump administration’s approach to enforcing civil rights laws.
“Typically the Civil Rights Division is looking out for the rights of those who have been historically discriminated against,” Lucas said, whereas he believes the investigations Trump’s DOJ undertook were trying to divide.
Lucas said that he didn’t assume Biden’s DOJ would continue the investigation and that City Hall would try to speak with new justice officials about it in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, the “unduly burdensome” request is due Feb. 15. It requires pulling extensive documentation for the nearly countless contracts the city has signed over the last decade for companies to perform work for all city departments.
Lucas said the city would start by communicating with Biden’s new justice officials, and if necessary, assemble the documents.
Kansas City’s city attorney, Matt Gigliotti, who was named to the post Jan. 19 after serving as interim for months, said federal agencies often issue broad information requests at the start of an investigation before narrowing the scope to a more specific potential violation, making it difficult to know where the inquiry might go.
“I’m not even sure that they have surmised that a violation exists so much as they want to review the program.”
This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
