Rising Expectations Ensnare Advocate

Minority Go-Between Defends His Contracting Record

Ron Adolph learned the ropes of contracting at environmental services giant Waste Management, rising to the post of president of a $100 million division in the $10 billion company.

Even then, he planned for that achievement to be just a steppingstone to his own conglomerate. He now runs a trucking business and a consulting firm to help bring more women and minorities into business deals. He has plans for other ventures as well.

His firm, the TAC Cos., is under contract to help find minority contractors for the intercounty connector. But one of his biggest clients these days is the developer of the National Harbor project, and by Adolph's estimate, he's helped connect nearly $350 million of $820 million in contracts to women, minority and local firms.

Though TAC does not award bids, it has helped identify many of the local and minority companies that have won them and served as a mediator when issues arose. That is why Adolph never imagined he'd find himself targeted by critics who say he is blocking for a white developer who hasn't done enough to help local businesses.

"I've never been accused of being anything but a strong advocate for black folks, black businesses," said Adolph, an MIT-trained civil engineer who has lived in the District, then Prince George's County since 1983. "As a black person trying to achieve in this county, you get caught in the middle. This is very new ground to me."

At 49, Adolph is tall and broad-shouldered. It's been more than two decades since he started his construction and renovation firm in the District and then moved into school construction. After his company's merger with another contractor soured, he went the corporate route, working his way up through Waste Management as it grew.

In the summer of 1999, he bumped into Northern Virginia developer Milton V. Peterson at a backyard barbeque in Prince George's, and the two men -- both self-made and blunt-spoken -- hit it off. Peterson hired Adolph to handle the tracking and oversight of minority and local contracting for his National Harbor project, as did Gaylord Entertainment, which built a convention center and 2,000-room hotel within the $4 billion development.

Local economic development officials have held up Adolph as a success story. The Prince George's County Economic Development Corp. invited TAC to coach local businesses on winning contracts.

Charlotte Ducksworth, director of the county's small business initiative, said TAC "will assist brothers and sisters in corporate America as we rise up through the ranks and are able to begin hiring and promoting ourselves."

"So often we go through the door and we shut the door," Ducksworth said in welcoming business people to a recent 10-week seminar. "But if you get through that door, you better have 25 people you're pulling in behind you."

Whether Adolph has succeeded in bringing enough others along is a point of contention. Earlier this year, some Prince George's officials expressed concern about the number of minority contractors hired at National Harbor, and a rancorous debate erupted behind the scenes when one suggested that TAC be fired. Detractors latched onto a report TAC produced in May that showed of 361 contracts issued to build the National Harbor development, 12 went to minority-owned businesses in Prince George's County. Under 2004 agreements the county made with Gaylord and National Harbor, the developers were to give 30 percent of the work to local or minority-owned businesses. The developers met the goal, but officials complained that the local minority numbers were so low they flaunted the spirit of the agreement.

Adolph finds the discussion frustrating. If local officials are not satisfied with those numbers, Adolph said, that doesn't negate the fact that the companies met the terms. Although the National Harbor and Gaylord projects offer the greatest contracting opportunity Prince George's County has seen, the pool of qualified local and minority companies is smaller than local officials believe, he said. But in a county that has a national reputation as the most affluent and educated black-majority jurisdiction in the United States, a dearth of qualified businesses is difficult to take.