The federal government will look into a civil rights complaint against the Brent Spence Bridge expansion project.
The Coalition for Transit and Sustainable Development (CTSD) filed that complaint in 2023. The Federal Highway Administration's Title VI office accepted it this May and will be in Greater Cincinnati this month to interview people in minority communities near I-75 about the $3.6 billion project's potential impact on air quality, noise pollution, displacement and other issues.
The coalition held a meeting Wednesday night in Covington to hear from residents about those topics. But attendees had another issue in mind: the project's minority contracting.
Chris Packer is a local ironworker. He says he's concerned about whether minority-owned firms will get enough of the contracts as the project moves into its construction phase.
"We would like to have an equal cut of whatever goals there are," Packer said about the project's Disadvantaged Business Enterprise and Diversity and Inclusion goals. "And quite frankly, the goal is too low anyway."
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Ohio Department of Transportation Director Jack Marchbanks said last year he's committed to making sure federal minimums are met — meaning minorities make up at least 9% of the design workforce and 7% of the construction workforce. Those efforts will include job training programs.
"This project can change lives," Marchbanks said.
So far, officials with the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet have contracted with Walsh-Kokosing for the design phase of the project. Construction has yet to start on the bridge, however.
CTSD, the coalition that brought the Title VI complaint, is made up of 19 organizations including the Cincinnati Preservation Association, Seirra Club of Ohio and the Devou Good Foundation, which advocates for better transit and pedestrian safety.
Mackenzie Mason is an organizer for CTSD. She told attendees at the Covington meeting the group is hoping to find people to speak to federal investigators about environmental justice and other civil rights concerns named in the Title VI complaint.
"They want to interview minority individuals that are going to be impacted by this project," Mason said. "They want to know a lot of things to see if ... this expansion is in fact discriminatory."
The history of America's highways is fraught with racial issues. Those include the demolition of Cincinnati's southern West End and the displacement of more than 25,000 Black residents there in the 1960s for I-75. Some current and former residents in that community have asked how, exactly, the new project will benefit them.
No residents who attended the Covington meeting spoke publicly about the specific concerns cited in the Title VI complaint. The coalition will hold another meeting next week in the West End.
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Packer says the group brings up valid issues, and that he's all for more environmentally friendly approaches to the project. But he wants concerns from Black tradespeople looking to work on it heard, too.
"You're advocating for the air, which is great — we all need air," he said. "I think they heard something else they could advocate about, and that's how the dollars are being spent into the communities, into jobs, into the workforce and contracting opportunities to build the bridge."