Local News in Brief : More Minority Business

A proposed ordinance that could substantially increase the amount of business the City of Los Angeles does with minority-owned and female-owned business was unveiled Monday by Mayor Tom Bradley.

The ordinance would require the city’s 30 departments to award at least 20% of the dollar value of all contracts to minority-owned businesses and at least 4% to female-owned businesses. The proposal was based on “empirical evidence” concerning the numbers of such minority-owned businesses within the city, Bradley said.

The ordinance would upgrade--and set in law--previous goals of 18% for minorities and 2% for women set by Bradley in a 1983 executive order. Although Bradley defended his executive order as “highly successful,” many city agencies failed to meet those goals. As a whole, the city in 1985-86 awarded $75 million worth of contracts to minority-owned and female-owned businesses--14% of the $532 million in city contracts for the period.