State contracts awarded to private businesses owned by women and minorities amounted to about 5 percent of the state’s total contract spending in fiscal year of 2006, according to the Department of Administration.
The figures obtained by a public records request indicate companies owned by women and minorities pulled in $340 million worth of state contracts, while an estimated $7.1 billion was spent on contracts with all types of private businesses.
During the 2006 fiscal year, 15,770 businesses were registered to apply for contracts with the state’s procurement system. Of that number, 8,358 were designated as small-businesses, 1,734 were owned by minorities and 2,838 businesses were owned by women.
In compliance with a 2004 executive order by Gov. Janet Napolitano, state procurement officers are required to collect at least three bids for contracts valued at or below $50,000, with at least one of the three bids coming from businesses owned by women or minorities.
In 2006, a total of 14,719 bids and quotes for state contracts were received by the Department of Administration. About 4,400, or 30 percent, of the submitted quotes were from businesses owned by women or minorities.
Aside from the order, no other state guidelines or regulations based on racial or gender preferring programs exist, and companies owned by women or minorities are not given preference points, nor are there any state contracts requiring that awarded businesses subcontract with such businesses, said DOA spokesman Alan Ecker.
There were no appeals or complaints filed during the fiscal year of 2006 that alleged race or gender discrimination in state contracting decisions, said Ecker.
Max McPhail, treasurer of the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, a proposed ballot initiative to outlaw race and gender-based government preference programs, said percentages themselves are not the key element of the preference debate.
“Even if one percent is benefiting or getting discriminated against then this is important,” he said. “At the end of the day whoever gets the job should be based on price or past performances, not because of the color of their skin or who they are.”
And while the figures may not present a “smoking gun” in the initiative debate, the government’s registering of and keeping statistics based solely on race and gender are troubling enough, said Clint Bolick, a litigator with the Goldwater Institute that is providing legal help to the ballot initiative committee.
“The fact that the government clearly is counting by race and putting a finger on the scale to benefit people not by merit or disadvantage suggests a problem in need of a solution,” said Bolick, who recently released a report on race- and gender-based government programs in Arizona.
But the Reverend Oscar Tillman of the Maricopa County Branch of the NAACP said he views the Department of Administration statistics for the 2006 fiscal year to be a “low figure” that should assuage fears that programs aimed at minorities are not “taking away people’s jobs and positions.”
A member of Protect Arizona’s Freedom Coalition Partners, a group formed to fight the proposed initiative; Tillman said he viewed the proposed initiative as capable of brewing a “major divisive situation” similar to the fight years ago over Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the current heated debate on immigration.
“Do we need another battleground here today?” he asked. “I don’t think so.”