Affirmative Action Curbed in California

LOS ANGELES, JUNE 1 – California Gov. Pete Wilson (R), vowing to lead a growing conservative movement to end three decades of racial and gender preferences as an antidote to discrimination, today signed an executive order abolishing a wide range of affirmative action programs affecting hiring and contracting in state agencies.

Wilson, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, eliminated or sharply cut back scores of affirmative action policies or programs that are not mandated by state or federal laws or that exceed those laws. He also abolished 118 boards and commissions created to advise state agencies on ethnic and gender diversity issues.

Although he has no direct authority to order policy changes for public schools, colleges and universities, Wilson told his appointees on state educational governing boards that he wants them to dismantle race and gender preference programs that are not required by law.

As mayor of San Diego in the 1970s, Wilson championed affirmative action, adopting a plan to increase the hiring of minority workers and requiring major city contractors to adopt similar programs. But opposition to affirmative action has become a common theme of the Republican presidential candidates and many Republicans in Congress.

Flanked today by a group of Forestry Department firefighters from various minorities, who the governor's aides said symbolize Californians who resent a public perception that they were hired on the basis of preferential treatment, Wilson said affirmative action is "not only unfair, it stigmatizes the achievements of those it was intended to help." His order repeals affirmative action orders signed by three previous governors, including Republicans Ronald Reagan and George Deukmejian.

In a statement released earlier, Wilson said "great societal guilt" had stimulated the creation of affirmative action programs in the 1960s and would undermine the "very foundation of the American dream" if hiring and contract programs based on race and gender preference were not rolled back.

Wilson blamed the "misfired good intentions" of leaders dating back to John F. Kennedy for programs he said unfairly discriminated against certain ethnic groups to compensate others for past injustices.

The Republican governor said he would aggressively pursue further cutbac...

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...by Wilson, who said they had "encouraged the gradual development of racial and gender-based preferences and set asides." Among the agencies affected by Wilson's order is the state transportation department, Caltrans, which is required by agreement with the federal government to allocate 20 percent of its contracting funds to minority-owned firms. Wilson ordered Caltrans to negotiate a new agreement lowering that goal to 10 percent. He also ordered Caltrans to abolish an informal policy of awarding small purchase contracts of $500 or less to women or minority-owned firms and to make such decisions based on non-preferential competitive pricing.

The governor ordered the Department of Forestry, which has a 50 percent goal for the hiring of women and minorities as seasonal firefighters, to eliminate that program and hire on the basis of merit.

He eliminated a requirement that the racial and gender ratio on job interview panels for civil service and career executive positions mirror that of the population as a whole, and directed the Department of Water Resources to end its practice of setting aside two-thirds of all student intern openings for minority candidates.