Council Calls Study of Contracts Inadequate : Hiring: Lawmakers reject report that was 3 1/2 years in the making. The move further clouds future of affirmative action efforts.

A 3 1/2-year study intended to help the city of Los Angeles increase its hiring of firms owned by women and minorities was rejected by the City Council on Friday as “incomplete and inadequate.”

The rejection of the report casts a further shadow over the city’s affirmative action efforts, already clouded last year when a state appellate court threw out a city program that required contractors to enlist women and minorities in their endeavors.

City officials must now wait about three months for a state Supreme Court decision that they hope will revive the outreach program and pump life back into affirmative action efforts initiated by former Mayor Tom Bradley.

Friday’s unanimous council vote ended a long and troubled contract with Cordoba Corp., which was paid $340,000 for a report on the city’s history of contracting with firms not headed by white men.

Cordoba’s contract was extended and antagonism toward the firm grew when press reports said that it would recommend increased contracting with Latino firms while suggesting that African American firms already had a fair share of the city’s business.

Cordoba representatives said the press reports misconstrued their findings. They blamed the city’s poor record-keeping for their difficulty in completing the study.

In the information compiled, the firm found “widespread discrimination in the city’s procurement processes,” according to Cordoba lawyer Tony Zamora. But he said the background data was insufficient to stand up in a court challenge to any affirmative action contracting program.

On Friday, the council conceded that “available city data are insufficient to serve as a basis for reliable statistical analysis,” adding that the report was inadequate “in a number of respects.”

Cordoba will get to keep its $340,000 and both sides have agreed not to sue the other over the failed study. The city also resolved to improve record-keeping, in hopes that a statistical analysis of contracting can one day be completed.

Cordoba has previously had lucrative contracts with the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Southern California Rapid Transit District and has been part of a partnership that demolished buildings after the 1992 riots.

The end of the study came just three days after the city asked the state Supreme Court to preserve its Minority and Women’s Business Enterprise Program, which required all contractors to show a good-faith effort to include minorities and women.

An appellate court in 1993 threw out the 10-year-old program, saying that the City Charter requires contracts to go to the lowest responsible bidder and that other requirements can only be added through voter-approved charter amendments. The city’s program had been initiated by Mayor Bradley’s executive order.

Since the lower-court ruling, the city’s contracting procedures have been in limbo and the involvement of companies headed by women and minorities has decreased, said Charles Dickerson, a senior assistant to City Atty. James K. Hahn.