THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 17, 1995 TAG: 9503160208
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Affirmative action is hotly debated on the national and state level. It should be on the local level as well. But late last month - Black History Month - City Council passed two or-di-nances that touch on the subject after a single, albeit spirited, session of open debate among Council members - and be-fore any timely public debate.
One ordinance is designed, say sponsors Meyera Oberndorf and Louisa Strayhorn, to encourage participation in city contracts by minority contractors and employees. The other sets up a Minority Business Council to advise the city re-gard-ing equal opportunity and non-discrimination in pro-cure-ment. Virginia Beach, with a minority population of 20 percent, has a good record of minority participation on capital construction contracts, perhaps even better than the 28.75 percent of total city dollars awarded which city statistics now show. Certainly the city and minority companies could do more business. At issue is how to promote that.
Straight set-asides are illegal. ``Encouragement'' is legal and is, say Mayor Oberndorf and Councilwoman Strayhorn, these ordinances' purpose. But there's encouraging jawboning, which makes minority and non-minority contractors and subcontractors more aware of one another and the law's requirements. And there's encouraging arm-twisting, which implies a subtle ``or else'' that the law can't exact but savvy contractors and politicians can detect.
Under these ordinances, the city's purchasing agent shall keep lists of minority prime contractors and subcontractors, to be provided any interested party on request. Who might be interested? All contractors. Every bidder for city contracts of a certain size must state its ``good-faith efforts,'' past and present, ``to provide for the equitable participation of minority employees and subcontractors.'' A primary contractor must provide documentation of such good-faith efforts before he gets final payment. OK.
But who decides, and how, when a record of hiring, retaining and promoting minority employees is a sufficiently ``good-faith effort''? And when minority participation is ``equitable''? And whether doc-u-ment-ed yet failed attempts to include minorities are enough? Is the Minority Business Council, appointed by City Council, to have a direct role in these determinations? Is the public?
The minority contracting ordinance takes admirable pains to weed out ``front men'' (And women?) whose sole role is their minority status. But the criteria for ``minority'' status - ``socially and economically disadvantaged person(s)'' whose disadvantage ``may arise from cultural, racial, chronic economic circumstances or background, or other similar cause'' - beg definition, too.
These are difficult subjects for anyone to debate candidly, let alone for politicians. But these ordinances, apparently long simmering, came to Council's front burner right fast. The deserved debate over the principles, policies, effects and side effects may have to come in other forums. But come it will. And it should. by CNB