Bill Allowing Caltrans to Farm Out Jobs Given Equal-Hiring Clauses

An Orange County-sponsored bill aimed at speeding highway construction has become embroiled in a dispute over contracting work out to minority- and women-owned businesses.

Introduced by state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), the legislation would allow Caltrans to contract with private firms for engineering and design work on major highway projects. It was voted to the Assembly floor Tuesday.

The measure is needed, according to Caltrans and county officials, because there are not enough state-employed highway engineers to quickly process new projects, of which there are many in Orange County.

Led by Brown

The minority- and women-hiring formulas were at first attached to bills supporting California’s bid to become the site of the so-called super collider nuclear research project. The amendments to that bill and subsequently to several bond-authorizing measures were made by Assembly Democrats, led by Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco.

Bergeson had said she did not think her bill would be affected. But it, too, was amended to include a specific formula: 15% of the contracts from Caltrans would go to minorities, 5% to women. In other bills, Democrats have insisted on a 20%-20% formula.

In all such legislation, the percentages are stated goals, not actual requirements. But the Deukmejian Administration, Caltrans, Bergeson and other Republicans have strongly resisted the amendments, saying that the actual numbers are unrealistic and not achievable--and would be used later to allege poor performance.

Referring to the dispute generally, Brown said Tuesday that he could do no less for women and minorities than Abraham Lincoln did for slaves.

“There is no way that a Willie Brown speakership should be tarred with the fact that we walked away from projected goals of affirmative action, to something about good-faith (efforts),” Brown said.

Brown was referring to Republican efforts to stay with affirmative action language that urges good-faith efforts but contains no specifics. Brown compared such language with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

“That’s already been signed,” Brown said, adding that it was time to do more.

During debate Tuesday in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, Democrats said that Bergeson, as a woman, should be embarrassed to resist the affirmative action amendments they had attached to her bill.

But the senator countered that if Caltrans is going to be judged on how well it lives up to the goals, the goals should be realistic.

Passed on 12-2 Vote

“There aren’t that number of women architectural design firms to draw from,” she said.

Bergeson’s bill was finally passed to the Assembly floor on a 12-2 vote, with the affirmative action formula still in it.

But because of the formula, most Assembly Republicans--including two from Orange County--would not support the bill in committee. Assemblymen Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) left the committee room during the vote and Assemblyman John Lewis (R-Orange) abstained.

Bergeson said the committee agreed to approve the bill, with the understanding that the dispute over minority- and women-hiring formulas would be worked out in negotiations during the next two weeks.