Dick Greco's apology on Thursday night about his comment comparing racial riots in the late 1960's in Tampa to a "panty-raid," has dominated coverage of the Tampa mayor's race the past few days.
Bob Buckhorn said that he was "thankful" that Greco apologized, saying those comments "did a disservice to the victims families, that it did a disservice to the merchants on Central Avenue. That community has never really recovered from those riots in the early 60’s and I take the Mayor at his word for that."
Buckhorn then took the opportunity to contrast his support for the minority community overall, and "not just at election time ,but who's out there everyday." He said Greco during his last term in office "did his very best" to eliminate the WMBE (Woman and Minority Business Enterprises) program.
That appears to be true. In 2001, the city of Tampa commissioned the firm of D.J. Miller & Associates, Inc. (DJMA) to perform a disparity study of the city's purchasing activities as they relate to minority and women-owned vendors. That study said that the program could not be justified to the Supreme Court's "strict scrutiny" requirement.
The Hillsborough branch of the NAACP called the study "deeply flawed," however, since it measured only the number of minority businesses that bid on city work vs. those that had actually received it, and did not account for minority businesses that did not bid on it at all.
Later, Greco ordered a re-examination of the study's finding and recommendations, which led to the program being reinstated.
At Thursday night's debate, Buckhorn said, "I mean Mayor Greco, during his term there did his very best to eliminate the women and minority business program. That gave women and minority businesses the opportunity ,not a guaranteed result, but an opportunity to have a chance. It didn’t guarantee the outcomes but it certainly guaranteed the opportunity. We stopped it, and it was the right thing to do. "
