Panels Urge City to Oppose Anti-Preferences Initiative

In a joint session, two City Council committees Wednesday recommended in a 3-0 vote that the council go on record against the proposed ballot initiative that would eliminate most affirmative action programs in California.

Meanwhile, members of the city Affirmative Action Task Force told the committees they worried that an as-yet unreleased executive directive by Mayor Richard Riordan on affirmative action might dilute current policy.

Members of the governmental efficiency and personnel committees also expressed frustration at both the mayor’s office and the city attorney’s office for not having finished a report analyzing how the “California civil rights initiative” would affect the city’s programs and policies.

The city attorney’s office, which has been working on the report for a little over three weeks, has finished most of the research but needs another 10 days to write the report, said Pedro Echeverria, an attorney in the office. “There is just too much work to do,” Echeverria said.

But Councilman Joel Wachs said the council should oppose the initiative, even without the legal analysis, because it meddles with the city’s home rule, forbidding local government agencies to formulate and carry out their own affirmative action policies.

Assistant Deputy Mayor Reginald Jones-Sawyer said the mayor has firmly supported the city’s affirmative action programs, citing a Feb. 4, 1994, directive that stated: “I am proud to reaffirm the city’s commitment to the Affirmative Action Program and look forward to the future benefits it will bring to the city organization and to the people of Los Angeles.”

However, Rose Garcia, president of the Affirmative Action Assn. for Women and a member of the affirmative action task force, said the mayor has paid them little attention for more than two years. “He refused to meet with us in the first year,” she said.

According to Garcia, Jones-Sawyer called her Wednesday morning to say the new directive is “a much more neutral statement,” which Garcia interpreted to mean less supportive of affirmative action.

“I didn’t want the [joint] committee to be misled that the presidents of the minorities organizations were in support of this statement that we’ve never seen,” Garcia said.

Noelia Rodriguez, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said the new directive, which is at the city attorney’s office for review, does not contain much that is new.

“A lot has happened since the ’94 policy was issued,” she said. “These issues are at the top of a lot of people’s agendas. . . . People need to be reassured that the mayor supports the city’s affirmative action policies.”

Rodriguez did not say when the directive would be released.

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Times staff writer Jean Merl contributed to this story.