Wilson to Order Cuts in Affirmative Action : Government: He seeks to assume national leadership role on issue. Edict will dismantle wide range of policies.

Seeking to establish himself as the political leader of the movement to abolish racial preferences, Gov. Pete Wilson is preparing this week to begin dismantling a wide range of affirmative action policies affecting everything from higher education to state hiring practices.

Wilson will use his executive authority to wipe out affirmative action policies as narrow as those governing the hiring of 2,000 summer forest firefighters and as broad as those dictating how goals are established for the employment of new workers in state government jobs, aides say.

Even higher education--once thought to be immune from gubernatorial fiat--will be affected. In a separate letter, Wilson will call on the governing boards of colleges and universities to use their authority to eliminate dozens of programs designed to diversify faculties and help minorities gain access to a college education.

“We need to start over with a system based on merit, and this is the first step. We plan to make it clear affirmative action is no longer the standard; the standard is merit,” said Leslie Goodman, Wilson’s communication director.

As he attempts to re-energize his presidential effort, the Republican governor is counting on the executive order to firmly establish the elimination of affirmative action as one of his defining issues. Earlier, Wilson became one of the first public officials to endorse a proposed 1996 ballot initiative abolishing affirmative action in state government hiring, contracting and university admissions.

With a state forestry headquarters as backdrop to symbolize the abolition of diversity goals in the summer firefighter program, Wilson will sign the executive order Thursday at a carefully staged media event in Los Angeles.

So important is the issue to Wilson that the governor and his advisers have decided to hold the event even though his vocal cords have not fully healed from throat surgery in April. They concede that the event may lose some of its punch because the governor will not be able to deliver his own address and will be forced instead to stand by silently while a surrogate reads a short speech.

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The order will not target any particular program or state agency by name. But the governor’s aides say department heads this week will be told to eliminate or alter affirmative action policies or programs that are not anchored in federal or state law or that exceed the requirements of those laws.

This will trigger the following actions, according to interviews with state officials:

* The California Department of Transportation will abolish an informal policy in seven districts that encourages officials to award small contracts of $500 or less to women- or minority-owned businesses. In one district, 47% of the dollars spent on small contracts went to women and minority-owned businesses in the last year.

* Caltrans, which is required by agreement with the federal government to spend 20% of its major contracting dollars on minority- or women-owned firms, also will be directed to negotiate a new agreement lowering that goal to 10%. In the meantime, the agency will be ordered not to exceed the 20% goal, as it did last year when it spent 27% of its funds on “disadvantaged businesses.” This year, 24% of its contracting funds have gone to such firms.

* A program in the California Department of Forestry that has a 50% goal for the hiring of women and minorities as seasonal firefighters will be eliminated. Last year, of the 2,078 firefighters hired for the summer, 59% were women or minorities.

Woody Allshouse, the president of the firefighters union, said the program has been a source of pride within the department, and he is saddened to see it eliminated. “I don’t want to see the pendulum swing so far the opposite way,” he said. “I don’t want to see us lose ground. We’ve done a lot of hard work, and we don’t want to get dragged into a political battle.”

* The Department of Water Resources will remove hiring goals for student interns, many of whom become full-time employees. Under the goals, Administration officials said 76% of the interns hired last year were women or minorities.

* The system of setting hiring goals for full-time permanent state jobs will be scrapped. That system, which many legal experts believe to be unconstitutional, bases goals on the percentages of women and minorities in the overall work force.

It would be replaced by procedures that would determine goals based on the percentages of women and minorities in a particular job category. The result for many job categories--particularly higher level jobs--is expected to be a lowering of the goals.

* All state departments will remove incentives for state workers to meet hiring and contracting affirmative action goals, and they will abolish more than 200 boards created to advise agencies on diversity issues.

The governor has no direct authority to order policy changes for colleges and universities, but aides say he intends to make clear to his appointees on the governing boards of the community college, California State University and University of California systems that he wants them to adopt the provisions of his order on their own.

His appointees hold a majority of seats on each board and, if they comply with the request, Wilson Administration officials estimate that nearly 40 affirmative action programs may be eliminated.

This would include programs to provide scholarships for African Americans and Latinos and to promote diversity in faculty and upper-level administrative positions.

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Wilson’s speech will hammer away at one of his main themes--that he is the first political figure in the nation to do something concrete to stop affirmative action. It is a message intended to resonate most strongly with his core supporters--white rural and suburban males--and to help convince Republicans in other states that, despite Wilson’s support of abortion rights and gun control, he is a solid conservative.

Political opponents and affirmative action supporters have already sought to downplay Wilson’s announcement, arguing that his order will have only limited impact because the governor has no direct powers over big affirmative action programs such as those governing state contracting and university admissions.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) reminded reporters at a news conference recently that the governor cannot abolish any programs established by state and federal law--and most of California’s programs have been created that way.

But Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles), who like Brown is a staunch supporter of affirmative action, said that the symbolic impact of Wilson’s directive could be far-reaching and help erode the moral authority that has encouraged the proliferation of diversity programs. What he will accomplish, she said, is a change in the mind-set of the state bureaucracy, which for 30 years has been pushed to provide more jobs and contracts for women and minorities and now is being told that that is no longer a priority.

“The harm is really to the state,” she said. “He’s going to pit people against each other. He’s going to put us in a place where he says that Californians have chosen who are good guys and who are bad guys. He’s going to send a message that the good guys are white and the bad guys are people of color and women.”

Such an assertion angers the governor’s advisers, who argue that Wilson’s intent was never to be divisive but to reinvent a system that he believes has gotten out of control and that now commits the very errors it was created to stop. It often discriminates against white males in favor of less qualified minorities and women, his aides say.

To signal this change in direction, Wilson’s edict will rescind executive orders by former Govs. Ronald Reagan, Edmund G. Brown Jr. and George Deukmejian that were intended to direct the bureaucracy to do whatever possible to promote affirmative action.

Wrote Reagan in his 1971 order: “Time and experience have shown that laws and edicts of non-discrimination are not enough; justice demands that every citizen consciously adopt and accentuate a personal commitment to affirmative action which will make equal opportunity a reality.”