Affirmative Action Foe Widens Attack : Law: UC regent will challenge state requirements that help minority contractors. He denies benefiting from such rules.

Stepping up his fight against affirmative action, UC regent Ward Connerly said Tuesday he will mount a legal challenge to a state law that was designed to benefit minority contractors like himself.

Connerly, a land use consultant in Sacramento, denounced the law requiring minority participation in state contracts and dismissed media reports that he has benefited from such laws.

His comments came after a newspaper report charged that he benefited from the law when he obtained more than $1 million in business from a state agency. Connerly, who is African American, has denied that his minority status helped ensure the contract.

Connerly leaped into the national limelight earlier this year when he called for the dismantling of race-based hiring and admissions preferences in the University of California system. He also has been outspoken in criticizing minority set-aside programs, telling Newsweek magazine recently that it would be degrading to define himself as “an affirmative action businessman.”

The law, which was implemented in 1990, requires that 15% of the dollars awarded in state contracts go to minority-owned businesses unless a “good faith” effort demonstrates that none could be found to do the work. It also stipulates that 5% of the contract dollars go to women and 3% to disabled veterans.

“There are firms out there that are getting preferences from this. It lends itself to a lot of abuses,” Connerly said.

In 1989, the Energy Commission awarded a $1.15-million contract to the California Assn. of Local Building Officials (CALBO) to conduct a statewide training program for local building inspectors charged with enforcing statewide standards for energy conservation. The association has employed Connerly as its administrator since 1975.

Charles Imbrecht, the Energy Commission chairman, said the contract was awarded without competitive bidding because the association was the only one of its kind in California that could provide the training.

“We would have contracted with CALBO irrespective of who was their executive officer,” Imbrecht said.

In separate interviews, Imbrecht and Connerly noted that the hiring-preference law was not in effect at the time the contract was awarded and that there was no law then requiring that state contracts be awarded on the basis of ethnicity and gender.

A law establishing the requirements took effect in 1989 but was not fully implemented by the Energy Commission until 1990.

Connerly told The Times that in amendments to the contract he signed in 1992 and 1994, he had reluctantly listed his firm as a minority contractor because the new law required him to do so.

He said the first amendment allocated $105,227 from the original $1.1 million for the training of more building inspectors while the second provided another $35,000 installment.

State certification forms, he noted, also asked whether he wanted his company’s name listed on a roster of minority contractors. “We checked the box that said ‘no,’ ” Connerly said.

“That is evidence we were not playing the race card because we checked the box that said, ‘No, we don’t want to be listed as minority contractors,’ ” Connerly said.

However, copies of the documents provided by the Energy Commission to reporters showed no certification form for the 1992 agreement. In the 1994 agreement, Connerly listed his business as 51% black-owned (himself). But left blank was the box asking whether he wanted his business listed on the roster.

Connerly termed the omission “inadvertent.” An Energy Commission official said a search of other documents disclosed that on three prior occasions, Connerly had checked the “no” box.

Imbrecht said the failure to check the 1994 box automatically put Connerly’s name on the commission’s roster of minority contractors last year. Connerly said when he saw his name in the roster, he called to demand that it be removed.

He asserted Tuesday that he now finds himself in the Catch-22 situation that many minorities find themselves in because of affirmative action.

“The classic problem you find is the circumstance in which I find myself,” Connerly said. “I haven’t benefited from it, yet I am being held out for public scrutiny and ridicule.”

“There is this stigmatizing effect I have been talking about since January. The mere fact that there are these preference programs means that women and minorities who have worked hard and succeeded on their own are thought of as products of affirmative action. I can’t think of any better evidence of the stigmatizing effect than this.”

To challenge the law, Connerly said that next week he plans to bid for a $30,000 contract with the Energy Commission to develop and administer a test for local building inspectors. He said he will leave blank the form that asks for minority business certification, which commission officials said will cause the application to be rejected.

At that point, Connerly said, he will file a lawsuit against the commission, challenging the constitutionality of the minority enterprise law.