Harold D.Shepard, President of ABC Data Entry, Inc., is a disabled Vietnam veteran that owns his own business.Jose More/Chicago News Cooperative
Veterans with service-related disabilities who own businesses will have a better chance to win Cook County government contracts under legislation to be introduced this week by a county commissioner.
Commissioner Joseph Mario Moreno said the proposed law, which he plans to present Wednesday, sets the goal of giving 3 percent of the total annual value of county contracts to disabled veterans injured while in the military. Mr. Moreno hopes the change would give tens of millions of dollars in business to service-disabled veterans.
The proposal would add veterans to the list of business owners, including women and members of minorities, who are given preferential treatment in the awarding of contracts.
Mr. Moreno said a friend of his in Chicago who owns a company gave him the idea for the veterans’ proposal, telling him that the federal government has a similar program. In 2004, President George W. Bush issued an order to try to give not less than 3 percent of federal contracting and subcontracting to businesses owned by service-disabled veterans.
Veteran-owned businesses have struggled in Cook County, said Hinsley Njila, 32, of Rogers Park, an Air Force veteran and chief executive of Realfocus Capital.
“Credit is incredibly difficult to come by, so we focus our efforts a lot more on sustainability than expansion and growth,” Mr. Hinsley said in an e-mail.
Especially in Cook County, he said, there are few opportunities for businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. “In the rare event that one does exist, they’d typically have a narrow focus,” said Mr. Hinsley, who was injured in combat in Iraq.
In 2007, Illinois was home to 80,719 businesses in which veterans owned at least 51 percent of the company, according to the Office of Veterans Business Development. Another 38,459 businesses were owned half by veterans.
In 2008, 86,153 service-disabled veterans lived in Illinois, 23,977 of them in Cook County. There were 85 Cook County businesses owned by service-disabled veterans registered last week with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mr. Moreno is not a veteran, but he said his father had been in the Army and his brother in the Marines. “I figured it was the right thing to do for our veterans looking to go into business,” Mr. Moreno said. “They put their lives on the line. They are entitled to some special treatment.”
To qualify under the proposed legislation, at least 51 percent of a business would have to be owned by one or more service-disabled veterans who manage and run the daily operations. The veterans would not have had to be injured in combat, but the disability must have been incurred or aggravated during active service. In some cases, a spouse or caregiver could manage the daily business, according to the legislation.
Harold D. Shepard, 62, a Vietnam veteran from Oak Park who is president of ABC Data Entry Inc. in the West Loop, was skeptical that the county would follow through on any promises to aid the veteran-owned businesses.
“There is always lip service,” said Mr. Shepard, who served in the Army from 1968 to 1970 and said he had suffered from post-traumatic stress and exposure to Agent Orange, a toxic chemical used in the Vietnam War. “I’ll reserve judgment on that. I’ve lived in Chicago a long time — we don’t have enough money, clout.”
He said more local work would make his business easier to manage because he would not have to travel as much as he does now to do business.
A Web site, veteranownedbusiness.com, has a national registry that lists businesses in Illinois owned by service-disabled veterans. A longer list is available at a registry from the Department of Veteran Affairs at vip.vetbiz.gov.
Clay Graham, 45, an Iraq war veteran and owner of the Chicago construction company Opcon Inc., said he hoped the registries would draw people to his business, which he started in September. While in the Navy, Mr. Graham renovated schools and assessed work on hospital and water treatment plants in Iraq, where he injured his knee.
But Bob Collins, 61, a Vietnam veteran and owner of Collins Consulting in Schaumburg, said he had been so displeased in past dealings with local public agencies’ contracts that he would not take a county contract.
In 2005, Mr. Collins said, the Chicago Transit Authority sent him a letter saying that his back problems from service in the Marines did not qualify him for certification as a disadvantaged business owner.
“I wouldn’t bid on any of their work even if they said they would do it,” Mr. Collins said of the county, although it is separate from the transit authority. “No interest in wasting my time trying to bid on something I don’t believe would ever occur.”