Clearing poisonous lead out of the soil. Reconnecting neighborhoods that highways broke apart. Growing the city’s clean energy infrastructure. These Kansas City projects in the works depend on federal money — which new orders from the White House may have put at risk.
The city’s Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity office sets goals for all projects above a certain dollar amount to involve minority- and women-owned businesses. The new Kansas City International Airport terminal, for example, exceeded its goals of about 35% minority- and women-owned business participation in its construction.
President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting affirmative action and diversity efforts put the city’s major infrastructure projects in jeopardy because they include diversity goals or directly help historically marginalized Black and brown communities.
Fahteema Parrish runs the company Parrish & Sons Construction, which focuses mainly on infrastructure projects like the airport terminal and the streetcar. As a Black woman, she says she’s concerned about losing contracts if the executive orders remain in effect.
“We fought for years just to get into the position to receive the small percentage that we have been getting,” Parrish said. “It is going to rely on us saying, ‘We’re here to perform, what are you going to do as my customer? What are you going to do as city council? How are we going to remain committed to providing equality?’”
Other executive orders targeting environmental efforts put in jeopardy an additional $38 million Congress allocated during the Biden administration for city projects under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
The efforts in jeopardy include:
Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate
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Mayor Quinton Lucas said he has a “very serious concern” that the city’s longtime infrastructure projects and efforts to create equity in development could be pushed aside.
He said the city has already temporarily paused some of its programs while it waits to see if the federal government will disburse grant funding.
“Everything can change, particularly if there is an abolition of affirmative action, minority representation and women representation goals in all contracts,” Lucas said. “That will render a very substantial change on how we do things. And if we even get the money.”
Many of Trump’s executive orders already face legal challenges. In an email sent to city council members last week and obtained by KCUR, Lucas said his office expects more arguments over the effort to not distribute funds since the orders cannot undo legislation passed by both houses and signed by the previous president.
Earlier this week, the Office of Management and Budget called for a pause on payments for federal grants and other programs. The freeze caused widespread confusion and panic among cities and agencies that rely on those funds.
The agency later rescinded its call for a freeze. The Trump administration added to the confusion, saying that only the original memo calling for the pause had been rescinded — not its effort to review federal spending.
In the meantime, Lucas said city staff will follow the law while continuing its work. Staff may reword project goals, such as basing them on certain zip codes instead of directly saying marginalized communities.
“Perhaps the program changes, but we will continue to try to build up that same effort long term to say, ‘How can we make sure that everybody gets to benefit in the success of this city and that we aren’t perpetuating inequalities from the way that we do our procurement?’” Lucas said.
He says the city will stay a welcoming place for everyone and will fight efforts to change that.
Parrish says she’s relying on the city and Congress to take a stand against Trump’s orders as she continues to work as head of one of the leading Black-owned small businesses in Kansas City.
She got emotional thinking of businesses like hers that may lose customers or contracts because of all of the confusion over Trump’s orders.
Parrish says she hopes people realize that it’s “not a level playing field,” and that the city’s programs were an effort to help companies like hers compete.
“This is the reality and it impacts so many people,” Parrish said. “It’s gonna require us to lead with our hearts and accountability and respect so that we as a community are not impacted as hard as it may seem that we might be.”