Of all the Philadelphia agencies, few have endured as much criticism as the Minority Business Enterprise Council.
Now the longtime city official who used to head the agency - before being ousted from his job by former Mayor John Street - is back on the scene.
James A. Roundtree is the new director of construction diversity at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
Until 2004, Roundtree was the director of MBEC, which implements, monitors and enforces the city's contractor diversity laws.
His tenure was not unremarkable.
In 2003, for instance, the council's offices were included among those city agencies whose file cabinets were searched by the FBI in the days following the discovery of an FBI bug in Street's office. Much of that sprawling investigation focused on the awarding of minority work to politically-connected friends of the mayor.
The next year, the city controller's office released a scathing audit stating that the council lacked management controls and had inaccurate and incomplete records.
Roundtree was asked to leave by Street.
"Quite frankly, I think he got a bum rap," said Ahmeenah Young, executive vice president of the Convention Center.
So she has helped Roundtree land his new position, where he is steering the center's newly-established apprentice program. "For me, when you have these jobs that are highly visible and highly political, there are always three sides of a story," Young said. So what was Roundtree's side?
"I don’t exactly know what happened with him at the city," she said, "but as far as I can tell, it wasn’t injurious to any person, and it wasn’t a question of morals or ethics… I think he is an incredible person for this position."
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