GOTHAM'S QUOTA FLASHBACKS GOTHAM'S QUOTA FLASHBACKS
April 5, 2003 -- A big part of Rudy Giuliani's legacy was his commitment to race-neutral gov ernance - specifically, his refusal to use race as a factor in awarding city contracts to small businesses. Now Giuliani's policy is under attack. And the Bloomberg administration seems sympathetic to the attackers. What a pity. Just when the city had made so much progress in treating businesses equally, regardless of race or gender. (Giuliani's term: "One city, one standard.")
Now, Bloomberg's staff is seeking new ways to "market" minority- and women-owned firms to city agencies, to boost the number of contracts these firms get. And some City Council members want to restore Mayor Dinkins' heinous quota system, which actually fixed percentages of city business for which white- and male-owned firms need not have applied. Dinkins' program raised costs to the city, limited the selection of contractors and opened the door to corruption (white-owned businesses used token minority members to snare contracts).
Nor is there any evidence that it increased business-enterprise opportunities for blacks, Hispanics or other groups. Still, its most damaging impact was to further divide the city by race and gender - to pit groups against each other, as most affirmative action programs do. Just what New York needed. Not. Aspects of the program, moreover, were clearly illegal. So it was a relief when Giuliani scrapped it. Why bring it back now? Is there evidence of new systematic discrimination? Uh, well, no . . . But that's not stopping the council from trying to document it anyway.
The body launched a study that hopes to show that agency contracting has a "disparate" negative impact on minority- and women-owned firms. Bloomberg folks, too, like Small Business Services Commissioner Robert Walsh, believe that minority and women firms are poorly represented among contract winners. Which is why his office plans to boost "outreach" to these firms, and better "market" them to city agencies.
But what, exactly, constitutes poor representation? After all, it's not likely that any study will show that minority and women-owned firms with comparable rates, products and services are being passed over on the basis of race or gender. There's nothing wrong with the city trying to broaden its pool of contractors. But race, in particular, has served to rend the city before.
Mayor Bloomberg shouldn't let it do so again--by treating firms differently based on skin color.
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