Administration Proposes Limits On Affirmative Action In Contracting

The Clinton administration proposed new rules Wednesday designed to limit and then gradually end preferences for minorities and women in government contracting.

“This proposal constrains and will change the whole range of federal affirmative action in procurement” to comply with a June 1995 Supreme Court decision, Associate Attorney General John Schmidt told a news conference.

The public will have 60 days in which to comment on the proposed rules, to be published in today’s Federal Register. They contain no major changes from plans outlined by administration officials in March.

After any changes based on public comments, final rules could be published and implemented by the end of this year, said Schmidt, who heads the administration’s affirmative action review that produced the rules.

The proposals would extend President Clinton’s suspension last Oct. 23 of programs that set aside a specific percentage of contracts for businesses owned by minorities and women. Set-aside programs could not be resumed unless a review of the new rules after two years of operation showed they had drastically failed to end discrimination. These programs include the largest affirmative action program in the government, the Pentagon’s $1-billion-a-year set-aside program.

The proposed rules also would limit other preferences to markets in which specific, past discrimination can be shown and allow those preferences to continue only until that bias is remedied.

The administration clearly wants to accommodate a political climate that has grown more hostile to affirmative action. Republicans in Congress have begun drafting legislation to eliminate affirmative action.

The proposed rules would install new safeguards against the use of front companies by people not eligible for the preferences.

They would expand efforts to recruit more bids from minority- and female-owned firms through advertising, mailings and technical assistance directed to them.

They also would make it much easier for non-minority businesses to qualify for preferences by showing they, too, have been socially or economically disadvantaged.