State Rep. Wendell Gilliard Challenges Charleston and Other School Districts To Spend More With Minorities Businesses

The Real Estate and Construction Industry in Charleston is one of the economic engines driving Charleston's economy, and the capital improvement budgets of local government agencies are significant contributors. It is our desire as Elected Officials representing the African- American community that the economic benefits from this spending extends to Black Contractors. We are writing to urge the Audit and Finance Committee to approve funding for the Disparity Study being presented by staff. We also want to encourage the Charleston County School District to continue the work of its task force examining current policies in order to offer recommendations for improvement.

Back in January, I partnered with the Charleston County School District and Channel 4 to produce a forum discussing the affirmative action policies of the Charleston County School District. We learned during this policy discussion that between 2005- 2020 the school district spent $980.6M on capital improvements, but only spent 5.4% with African- American firms. To his credit, the CFO, Don Kennedy, did not make excuses for this dismal performance. On the contrary, he suggested a committee be formed consisting of the panelists that would examine current policies and offer policy recommendations to improve performance.

We look forward to the disparity study's completion, and the report coming out of the taskforce. We stand ready to assist in any way possible so that this economic development tool benefits minority businesses in the Lowcountry. It is our hope that this work can serve as a model to other local agencies in the region looking to improve their minority businesses enterprise performance numbers.

The Clementa Pinckney Crime Bill Update

I want to thank everyone for their support of the Clementa Pinckney Crime Bill. The bill has made amazing strides as the session came to a close on Thursday May 13, 2021. The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to send the hate crime bills to the Senate floor. The fight must continue, I urge everyone to join me and all of the other state leaders in pushing this bill into law. We must rally around this bill and in January 2022 we must push to make this bill law.