Affirmative Action Kills Highway Bill

SACRAMENTO —  In the closing hours of the legislative session, negotiations to save an Orange County-sponsored bill to speed new highway construction broke down, shelving the measure until next year.

The bill, which would have allowed the California Department of Transportation to hire private firms for design and engineering work, died when the Assembly GOP continued its opposition to affirmative action provisions.

As a result, two- to four-year delays will continue to plague Orange County highway projects, according to state and county transportation officials.

Gov. George Deukmejian said he was disappointed the bill wasn’t sent to his desk.

‘Bill Is Still Alive’

“We would have preferred to have gotten that at this session,” Deukmejian said of the bill during a Saturday news conference in Sacramento. “But the bill is still alive and may come back in January.”

“It’s a tragedy,” said the bill’s author, state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach). “This is one of the most important issues facing Orange County right now, as far as the traffic problems go. . . . Even if we are successful with the bill in January, it wouldn’t take effect until January, 1989.”

Former Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande, a member of the state Transportation Commission who helped organize business community support for the bill, angrily criticized Orange County’s GOP assemblymen for rejecting it. “They’re absolute fools,” he said. “This measure was too important to be sacrificed over their desire for ideological purity.”

Orange County business leaders, including members of the influential Lincoln Club, a GOP volunteer group, have said they will try to end all business community support for Assembly Republicans who failed to support the bill. They also will try to end the financial support by business of Project ‘90, a caucus campaign to win more seats and wrest control of the Legislature from the Democrats by 1990.

Caltrans now contracts with private construction firms, but the agency faces legal uncertainty and opposition from the California State Employees Assn. on the issue of allowing non-state employees to do architectural design and engineering work.

Faced with continued opposition to her bill from Assembly Republicans, Bergeson allowed it to die without a final vote on the Senate floor as senators ended their legislative year at 3 a.m. Saturday.

Although the governor supported the bill’s intent, he had indicated to lawmakers that he wouldn’t sign it as long as Assembly Republicans opposed it so strongly.

“The governor was not supporting it at this point,” said a bleary-eyed Bergeson. “It’s apparent that partisanship prevailed, and we have to go to work now to see that we can get the bill together by next year.”

The bill stipulates that 15% of the contracts should be awarded to minorities and another 5% to women. The governor accepted the same quotas in legislation supporting the state’s bid for the federally sponsored, Super Collider atom-smasher project.

Bills containing the quotas, including Bergeson’s, present the percentages as goals, not requirements. They roughly equal Caltrans’ performance on construction contracts.

Orange County business and civic leaders tried to jawbone Assembly Minority Leader Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) and the county’s own GOP assemblymen into accepting the quotas with a barrage of letters, phone calls and telegrams Thursday and Friday.

“Obviously it didn’t have any results,” Bergeson said. “It didn’t move the bill.”

Times staff writer Doug Shuitt contributed to this story.