Insurer to Supply Names of Minority Builders : Riots: Farmer’s is applauded for move. Protesters said firms steer work to contractors outside South Los Angeles.

Farmer’s Insurance Co., the largest commercial insurer in the parts of Los Angeles heavily damaged by rioting, announced Monday that it will begin supplying policyholders with a list of minority contractors available for reconstruction work.

Representatives of contractors who have demonstrated at construction sites, demanding that property owners and insurance companies hire minority contractors from the area, said Farmer’s move was important--but only a beginning.

“We accept that as a step in the right direction,” said Danny Bakewell, head of the Brotherhood Crusade, which has organized many of the protests. “We applaud it for what it’s worth. It’s certainly not enough.”

The minority contractors have argued that insurance companies steer work to a preferred group of firms from outside South Los Angeles, shutting contractors in the area out of lucrative construction and demolition jobs.

But officials with Farmer’s said that the company does not refer commercial customers to contractors “except in those rare situations where a bid is clearly excessive, a contractor is clearly unqualified to perform the work required or a customer is for some reason unable to locate a contractor on his or her own.”

Farmer’s spokesman Jeff Beyer said there was a great deal of “misinformation and confusion” about insurers’ roles in the hiring of contractors. “In essence we have no role,” he said. “The hiring of contractors is something done by our customers.”

Of the 1,038 claims that Farmer’s has received since the riots, the hiring of contractors has been handled by the property owner in almost every case, said another company spokesman, John Millen.

Bakewell disputed Farmer’s claims and urged the company to “use the past as a road map as to what sins not to repeat in the future.”

“They might not have an official list, but they certainly have a list of people they do business with,” he said. “The best thing Farmer’s can do is not debate the issue but just do right in the future.”

The list of minority contractors will be offered to property owners who request it, Farmer’s officials said.

Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden praised Farmer’s and encouraged other insurance companies to follow its lead.

“I believe we’re well on our way to providing an opportunity that’s been denied in the past,” said Holden, who attended a news conference at which Farmer’s announced its plan. “I think that’s a giant step forward.”

Separately, Bakewell announced Monday that an African-American subcontractor has been hired to work at a site that Bakewell and the United Minority Contractors shut down a week ago, charging that there were no African-American employees on the job. At the time, Bakewell and the contractors walked out of a meeting with state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi to stage the protest.

Bakewell said Marvel Construction will be hired to do trucking work, and two African-American laborers will work alongside the Korean-American and Latino workers already at the site of a fire-damaged market and coin laundry on West Adams.