It’s time now for a fact-check of North Carolina politics. This week we’re looking at a claim made by state House Majority Leader Brenden Jones related to the state’s guidelines on hiring minority-owned businesses amid Hurricane Helene cleanup. While discussing a bill in committee in April, Jones said this:
“This really stemmed from some of the hurricane disaster relief work that's being done, and that contractors are being rejected because they cannot meet some of these so-called quotas.”
For more, I’m joined now by Paul Specht of WRAL.
Marshall Terry: First let’s get a little context. Jones made this claim during discussion over a bill which he introduced. What would it do?
Paul Specht: His bill would sort of prevent state agencies from having and implementing using diversity, equity and inclusion policies, known as DEI — many people hear it that way. In fact, his bill is titled "Equality in State Agencies/Prohibition on DEI."
Terry: So during discussion over this bill, Jones cited state law on hiring minority-owned businesses for state work. What does that state law say?
Specht: Right. There was sort of a back and forth here between Jones, who's the Republican majority leader, and Robert Reives, who's the Democratic minority leader. And Reives was asking him, what statute are you referring to here, and how did this come up?
And in the meeting, Jones read off G.S. 143-128.2 which says, "the state shall have a verifiable 10% goal for participation by minority businesses in the total value of work for each state building project, including building projects done by a private entity on a facility to be leased or purchased by the state." That's the end of that quote.
Terry: OK, but goal is not the same as a required quota, right?
Specht: That's right. And that's one thing that the Democratic minority leader pointed out. He said, well, this text says "goal." Jones said in his interpretation that [it] was a quota. And he mentioned some online dictionary and how that fit the definition of a quota.
So we reached out to Jones about that statement multiple times actually, and his office never got back to us.
So we turned to the state Department of Administration — and it does what it says — it sort of administers the state's contracts and operations. And we asked: It says it's a goal. But is there some sort of requirement that we're not seeing? Is it what Jones says? Is it a quota? Do we have to meet, basically what he said, a racial quota for the state contracts?
And the department said: No, it is merely that, it is a goal. And that they're not aware of anyone being turned away from state projects, particularly in western North Carolina, for failing to be a minority business or failing to meet the terms of that goal.
Terry: So Rep. Jones said contractors are being rejected from doing Helene relief work because they cannot meet — in his words — "some of these so-called quotas." How did you rate that claim?
Specht: We rated that false. We can only go by what the state says based on what we have. We reached out to Jones. He didn't provide any evidence of any contractor being turned away. We also reached out to the House speaker, Destin Hall, who's a Republican, and two Republican chairmen of the House Committee on Helene Recovery. And [we] asked them, are you guys aware of any contractors being turned away from working on Helene because of this statute that Jones mentioned? And no one got back to us. No one cited any evidence of this happening.
And so, without that evidence, we're left with what the Department of Administration says, which is, "there are no required quotas for including minority-owned businesses on state contracts." That's from an email from their spokesperson. And that left us with no other option but to rate it false.
