Below is my column in USA Today on the use of set aside categories based on race, gender, or other criteria for government contracts. While the set aside issue arose in the recent controversy over Braulio Castillo, there are legitimate questions that should be discussed over the efficiencies and equities of the system. There is also the question of self-identification on these issues. Veteran’s status is easier to confirm, though in the Castillo case we saw the definition can be wildly out of whack. However, we have seen controversies involving people who self-identify as having minority status based on questionable basis such as the controversy over Senator Elizabeth Warren who listed herself as a minority due to Native American blood. There is presumably some criteria for such claims when made in government contracts but I am not sure who where that line is drawn. The real question is whether it would not be better for Congress to directly fund programs to help minority groups rather than require special treatment in government contracting. Hopefully, we can have such a debate without rancor and personal recriminations. There are good-faith reasons to debate whether government contracting should be based solely on the best price and product determination in my view. It is not questioning the purpose of this policy but the means used to achieve it.
Braulio Castillo seemed exactly what the government was looking for. He was CEO of a Virginia company who was listed as a service-disabled veteran. That status allowed Castillo to secure $500 million in government contracts under special rules. Castillo described his terrible disability as just one of the “crosses that I bear due to my service to our great country.” Others now describe it as a shameless scam.
Castillo, 43, was a U.S. Military Academy Preparatory School student when he hurt himself playing football. Decades later, he filed for service-disabled veteran status with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Bizarrely, the VA granted it, even though Castillo went on to play football for the University of San Diego and never served in a military unit. With this status, he was awarded a half-a-billion dollars in contracts despite little experience.
Castillo is certainly not the sole measure of the programs that give preferential treatment in government contracting based on race, sex, geography, business size and disabled status. However, his case shines a light on the system’s darker side.
For years, contractors have complained that companies game the system by adding front owners with the right status. Such was the case of the Virginia company GTSI, which won contracts for IT and integration services in part because one of its partners was considered a “small business.” One e-mail, cited as from a GTSI vice president, revealed that the subcontractor was “very open to the concept of GTSI doing ALL the work” and just taking the money as a front.
The main reason for concern is not fraud, however. It is efficiency. The set-asides downgrade competence, performance and price in government contracts to focus competition for public money on the special status of corporate owners. In writing the laws governing government contracts, Congress simply threw in elements unconnected to the merit of government contracts while demanding reports on the percentage of contracts benefiting these groups.
For example, in 1994, Congress mandated that at least 5% of contracts go to businesses majority-owned by women. Today, roughly 3% of contracts are set aside based on the gender of the owner. Similar set-asides and preferences are accorded by race and service-related injuries. At times, the world of government contracting preferences has become so bizarre that set-aside groups have fought about preferences within preferences. In one case, 25% of the set-aside for small businesses were further set aside for minority-owned or women-owned businesses, but minority businesses objected that woman end up getting too much of the contracting pie.
Good intentions
There is no question about the laudable goals of these programs in expanding minority and women-owned business. Rather, it is the means used to achieve those goals that is the problem. Like special deals in the tax code, it is easy to create such preferences for particular groups without the need to appropriate any money directly to benefit a group. Laws and regulations stretching across dozens of federal departments and agencies have the special set-asides or preferences for “veteran-owned small business, HUBZone small business, or women-owned small business.” Agencies further mandate special treatment for “African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, (American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, or Native Hawaiians); Asian Pacific Americans (persons with origins from Japan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea, Samoa, Guam, U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Laos, Cambodia, or Taiwan, Asian Indian Americans; and members of other groups designated from time to time.”
Few are prepared to question the wisdom of such an approach out of fear of being called misogynistic, anti-veteran or anti-Samoan. Agencies are left dealing with a tangle of detailed rules while the public expects them to be quickly and efficiently carrying out government business. It is a recipe for inefficient government, a frustrated public and little accountability.
As for Castillo, his contracting days are over. Not because of any reform, mind you. Last month, police charged him in the death of his wife in his Northern Virginia mansion. Despite his classification as 30% disabled, police say he was able to use the other 70% to beat his wife to death and then hoist her to the ceiling to fake a suicide.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.
May 7, 2014
Paul Schulte
Obama is already killing vets at the VA hospitals.
…
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Where would you prefer that he kill them?
It would save taxpayer money, your number one thingy, if he just killed them at the cemetery.
Right?
I mean, even though seminary (is that sexist?) might be a holier place … I still think the cemetery would save the most money.
Cause we could do they seminary stuff onsite.
Do you have a doctor of divinity degree of any sort?
Let’s get together and submit some bids.
Who did Obama kill?
I guess a decades worth of mortality data in MA and published in a highly regarded medical journal, The Annals of Internal Medicine is not good enough for Paul.
*sigh*
Obama is killing people? Yikes, Obama is killing people! Why the delay on impeachment? Let’s call Issa.
Nick Spinelli
Great piece, Jonathan. Of course, it means you are a racist, bigot, sexist..in some eyes here.
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Glad you pointed out that the eyes and back slappers have it.
I am working on a post based on 86 scientific papers (caution Paul says this science does not exist), six of them with the ink just drying.
Here is a quote from one:
(Jeffrey D. Holmes, “Impression management pressures on racial attitude surveys”, The Social Science Journal, 2014).
Here comes the reading comprehension test.
What this shows is:
1) the way to get rid of racism is to let people decide themselves if they are racist or not;
2) social scientists are less competent because they spend more time studying that realizing racism is rampant in the U.S.;
3) The higher the education the less racist one is;
4) None of your buisness science guy;
5) None of the above;
6) all of the above.
Paul Schulte
Looked at the study …
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That is the problem, you are supposed to read them.
jonathanturley
Dredd, I found some of your comments in moderation and posted them. I also have deleted a comment under the civility rule for name calling directed at another poster.
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Long coffee break. 😉
Thanks for the go-ahead to directly engage.
You had asked a while back to ignore the ignorati.
I like it better this way. 😉
Let me at ’em …
Dredd,
I have again had to delete a series of your comments for violating the civility rule on this blog due to personal attacks. This is not how some of us want to send our afternoon. Very few of our commenters have ever had deletions. Please comply with our rule or move on.
Annie,
I just landed and found a bunch of your comments in the spam folder. I have released them so you should be good to go. WordPress seems particularly glitchy today.
Virtually ANY company who gets a govt. contract is going to do their worst work, whether they be a quota contractor or low bidder. You get govt. contacts by bribing err..lobbying. You are not required to perform as long as you keep bribing and schmoosing the govt. pig farmer you can feed @ the trough w/ impunity. That so many people here and elsewhere aren’t aware of this is mind boggling.
Looked at the study and it is flawed in that it deals one, with expanding Medicaid and two, it fails to take into consideration the group most needed to make Obamacare successful, the young who really don’t need the insurance. The author of the article seems to mix apples and oranges to try to get grapefruit.
Paul S
There is a big new study out on Romneycare that refutes your assertion that ACA will kill people.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/the-deadliest-republican-policy-yet-106453.html#.U2upZqIlmkx
Obama is already killing vets at the VA hospitals. The same model is used in the UK. They are killing people on a regular basis. Obamacare cannot work as advertised unless it kills people.
I see no easy answers to bidding out government contracts. There is just too much larceny in the hearts of men. And lowest bidder contracts make me very nervous. They invite cutting corners. And what could ever be worse than awarding contracts to Blackwater.
Wprse than awarding a contract to Blackwater would be awarding a contract to Jeri Wright.
I guess it worked well enough that it is driving the Republicans crazy.
And Obamacare will be killing people down the road. There is no way this model works without cutting care.
It is time to end affirmative action for any person — as we know it.
The set-asides are a good idea but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. It’s more of the same: those who generally get what they want feel entitled to game the system to get more. Cleaning up the implementation is a good idea but I’d rather see the energy go toward cleaning up the procurements of the really big contracts, those that are no-bid, those that are cost plus, those where the specs are written so that only one company can qualify, and others that just eat up billions without accountability.
I see a resemblance to cutting welfare for the poor while handing out big bailouts to the fraudulent banksters who should be going to jail rather than getting bonuses, not continuing unemployment checks while cutting infrastructure spending that would put the unemployed to work.
It’s more of going after the little guy as a diversion from going after the really big thieves.
Obamacare was a no-bid contract. How did that work out?
I hope these reforms will alleviate the abuse of the contracting system.
Great song Dredd!
This guy is bad to the bone. Too bad (for his wife) that his own wife was his last victim, who knows maybe she threatened to divorce him and testify against him.
Breaking…
The cousin of President Barack Obama’s 5th period gym teacher has been charged with a misdemeanor drug possession. Rep. Issa plans an investigation and says impeachment is possible.
You can make fun all you want, but she is probably going to serve at least a week in jail. Looking forward to the sentencing.
And just for clarification, injury suffered while playing football at USMAPS does count as “service-connected” because it was incurred while engaged in activities authorized or required as part of his assignment to the school. In contrast, someone who has an injury due to activities off-base while off-duty may have a problem showing service-connection.
“he say 1 an 1 an 1 is 3” … “he got feet down below his knees …”
First of all Castillo is a certifiable jerk, at the most charitable characterization..
That being said, the standard for disabled status is not whether one is immediately disabled at the time of the injury. The question is whether at the time of the application, the veteran is disabled on account of an injury or condition incurred while on active duty.
There are a lot of conditions that worsen over time or don’t manifest themselves for years. Agent orange exposure is probably the most well-known of them — there may be no symptoms at all for a few years, and then lots of strange things start to happen.
It’s entirely plausible that his injury worsened over time — no one disputes that it was service-connected. The question is did he have a disability at the time he applied. That’s a different question than whether a person with his level/type of disability should have received preferential treatment in government contracting.
If there is to be any set-aside, there probably should be some standard for percentage of disability. (Maybe there is — I don’t know.) There are a lot of veterans in their 50’s and 60’s with service-connected hearing loss and/or tinnitus. That carries a 10% disability rating (the lowest available). Much as I personally would like to receive a $500 million government contract on the grounds that I am an old, hard-of-hearing veteran, I don’t really see that as likely or justifiable — besides, if every old, hard-of-hearing veteran got a $500 million government contract, I think it would swallow the gross national product,