Panel OKs ballot measure on discrimination

A House panel agreed Wednesday to do something that voters last year did not: Put a measure on the 2010 ballot to outlaw any sort of government preferences on race or sex.

The 6-3 vote came after a plea by Ward Connerly, a former member of the California Board of Regents, who engineered a similar successful initiative in his home state in 1996. Connerly, who is black, said the special programs billed as helping women and minorities actually work against them because it presumes they can't compete without special privileges.

"This initiative, it seems to me, is designed to bring Arizona into the forefront of saying that everyone in this state ... will be treated as an equal," he said.

Most immediately, it would overrule bid preferences that some cities provide to businesses owned by minorities and women. In Tucson, for example, eligible firms can get an "adjustment" in their bids for products or services that actually allow them to charge up to 7 percent more than another firm and still get the contract.

Less clear is how it would affect other programs like Women in Science and Engineering at Arizona State University, which seeks to attract women into those disciplines where they now are underrepresented.

And the two law schools at state universities consider race, ethnicity and other factors in determining who to admit to create what college officials say is a balanced class.

Connerly said if the state wants to help those who need, it can take a different approach.

"We can look at people's needs, their income, their social condition rather than presuming, as we do now, that my brown skin means that I can't compete with you, that you have to somehow, in your benevolence, give me something not on the basis of my accomplishment but on the basis of your generosity," he said.

HCR2019, if approved by voters, would make it unconstitutional for any level of state or local government, including the universities and schools, to discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to anyone based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, education or contracting.

It is virtually identical to a 2008 initiative drive that failed when backers did not collect enough valid signatures. Having the proposal referred by legislators eliminates the need to circulate petitions.

Rep. Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, said the change is not necessary. He pointed out there already is a constitutional provision that bars enactment of any law that gives special privileges to any individual or group that is not given to all.

Connerly said that clearly doesn't work - at least not the way he wants. "It certainly does not seem to be a barrier to the city of Tucson allowing contractors who are 'minority' getting a 7 percent bid preference," he responded.

That contracting preference, though, is different than the 7 percent adjustment made for goods and services. Instead, any firm that wants to bid on city projects has to meet certain goals in hiring women and minority subcontractors to be eligible to bid in the first place unless they get a waiver.

Connerly said that practice, too, would be illegal if this measure passes.

Much of the debate surrounded the question of what discrimination remains. Connerly, born in Louisiana in 1939 and raised in the days of separate water fountains, said minorities do have equal opportunity.

Rep. Anna Tovar, D-Tolleson, disagreed.

"We are in a society where things are not equal," she said. "There's still discrimination, there's still disparity." And Tovar said she is the beneficiary of some programs that reached out to minority youngsters to show them "what they can be," programs that an amendment like this would eliminate.

Rep. Frank Antenori, R-Tucson, said Tovar is half right. He said discrimination does exit.

"But the way to deal with discrimination is not to use the 'two wrongs make a right' analogy," he said. "The way to deal with discrimination is to root it out and punish it."

Rep. Adam Driggs, R-Phoenix, said the key is to create programs that are aimed at helping people based on their need, not based on sex or race.

"We don't know who is receiving the benefits of this government program," he said.

"It could be a middle-class minority getting a preference over a very, very low income white person," Driggs said. "Is that meritorious?"

And Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, who is sponsoring the proposal, said he was just following the principles of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in concluding that people should be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

Wednesday's vote sends the measure to the full House. If it is approved there and in the Senate, it would go on the 2010 ballot.