Appeal to Be Pursued in Minority Bid Ruling : Courts: The council will ask appellate judges to reconsider a recent finding that Mayor Tom Bradley exceeded his authority.

Los Angeles city officials voted Tuesday to appeal a recent court ruling that invalidated the city’s affirmative action program for contracting with minorities and women.

The City Council decided to ask the state Court of Appeal to review its ruling throwing out a 10-year-old program that seeks to grant city contracts to companies owned by minorities and women.

If the three-member appellate panel does not change the ruling it handed down late last month, the council said, it will appeal to the state Supreme Court.

A two-member majority of the court ruled that Mayor Tom Bradley exceeded his authority under the City Charter when he issued an executive order making the affirmative action program an integral part of the city’s competitive bidding.

The court called the program laudable in purpose, but illegal because it was imposed without amending the charter, which requires that contracts be let to the lowest and best regular responsible bidder.

The judges said that if the city wanted to impose new bidding requirements it could do so by asking voters to amend the charter--as they did when they prohibited the city from doing business with companies that have ties to South Africa.

The appellate court did not rule on the broader question of whether the affirmative action program was constitutional. The company challenging the law, Domar Electric, had argued that it was unfair and unconstitutional because it imposes a race-conscious program without adequate documentation of past discrimination.

City Atty. James Hahn said Tuesday that the affirmative action program will not be enforced during the time it will take the city to appeal, which could take up to six months. During that period, contracts can be let only to the lowest responsible bidder without measuring affirmative action efforts.

The Minority and Women’s Business Enterprise Program requires contractors to follow a 10-point program to attempt to include women and minorities in their proposals. Among other things, they must identify parts of the job that can be subcontracted to minorities and women, place advertisements to attract such firms, and advise them about how to obtain the bonds and credit necessary to join a bid.

The program does not set quotas.

City officials argue that the court erred by too narrowly defining powers granted under the City Charter. Contractors are required, for example, to provide insurance, even though such a requirement is not specified in the City Charter, said Pedro Echeverria, a senior assistant city attorney.

The city officials said their appeal is important, not only to preserve the affirmative action program but to maintain their ability to interpret the charter broadly without interference from the courts.

If the appeal fails, the program could still be resurrected by asking voters to approve a charter amendment, Hahn said.

The case arose from bidding in 1991 to install a computer system to operate a portion of the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant near Playa del Rey.

Domar Electric presented a bid that was $650,000, or nearly 20%, lower than its closest competitor. But the city’s Board of Public Works awarded the job to Bailey Controls Co. after Domar failed to submit documents in compliance with the affirmative action program.

The company’s lawyer, Bernard S. Kamine, said Tuesday that the documents were inadvertently mailed to the wrong office. He said Domar’s inability to qualify under the program was particularly ironic because its president is a woman.

If the appellate decision is upheld, the firm will return to Superior Court and demand more than $400,000 in profits that it would have made if it had installed the computer, Kamine said.

Kamine said Domar is not trying to eliminate affirmative action, but simply to argue for a more objective measure of a firm’s compliance. He said that in the past, companies that were well-connected politically sometimes gained a bidding advantage by disparaging their competitors’ affirmative action efforts.

Kamine said the city should impose quotas for participation by minorities and women--with documentation of the specific patterns of discrimination that the city intends to remedy. That standard has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court and the city is expected to soon complete a study of previous discrimination in contracting.

“We are trying to eliminate the potential for corruption that exists in the (current) outreach program,” Kamine said. “We are forcing the city to go back to a program that has objective standards--including numerical goals.”