Thursday, June 11, 2009
Ballot item to bar equal opportunity advances
Arizona Daily Star: After an initiative to outlaw government preferences on race or sex failed to make the 2008 ballot, a House panel agreed Wednesday to give voters a say on the issue in 2010. 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 said the special programs billed as helping women 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 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 allow them to charge up to 7 percent more than a non-minority or woman-owned firm.
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. HCR 2019, if approved by voters, would make it unconstitutional for any level of state or local government, including the universities and schools, from discriminating against or granting 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 because there is already a constitutional provision barring laws that give 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. 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.
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