weavemama: W.T Stevens Construction is the black owned business that is doing more than the governme

weavemama:W.T Stevens Construction is the black owned business that is doing more than the government….. hella props to them To be fair, the government is paying them to do the work.Quick civics lesson for those in the USA: when the gov’t wants something done, but cannot do it themselves for whatever reason (don’t have the expertise, the right equipment, etc.), they will set out a process to hire a private company to do it for them. The gov’t entity* will say, publicly: We need Thing A done. Then private contractors can bid for doing Thing A. This is a competitive process. Remember how people make jokes about how the government always uses the lowest bidder (these jokes are usually made in reference to infrastructure, military equipment, and space shuttles)? Yeah, the government is using the peoples money to get something done, hell yes they want it done as cheaply as possible.This is also where corruption can kick in, where Company 23 is awarded the bid, or contract, and incidentally Company 23′s owner also helped to finance the campaigns… of the government officials who are in control of which company is awarded what contract. Another way corruption can kick in is where the gov’t entity does NOT so publicly share that they need Thing A done… they whisper it vaguely someplace, because they already want to award the contract to their buddies in Company 23. Other companies don’t find out until the deadline has passed.The whole process takes time. The gov’t first has to figure out that it has a problem, decide that it can or cannot handle the problem in house, has to carefully legally write up what they want done, then the have to wait to receive bids from companies, then they have to choose, then there’s usually some permitting and stuff, etc. These things are put into place to try to make everything as fair and least corrupt as possible, but the wheels of government are slow. This ain’t China.In the story above, a black-owned construction firm was awarded the contract to fix the pipes of Flint MI, paid for by the government aka the people.Here’s a wikihow on how to bid on government contracts*this happens at multiple levels of government. City, County, State, Federal.  -- source link

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