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June 17, 2004

Activists blast gov’s affirmative action changes at RCC meeting

Yawu Miller

When the Governor’s Council on Affirmative Action held its scheduled meetings, turnout was scarce — 15 people in Worcester, 18 in Springfield and fewer than 25 at the State House in Boston.

Those meetings, which were intended to cull feedback on the governor’s proposed changes to the state’s affirmative action law, drew criticisms that the Romney administration has done little to seek public input on the proposed changes.

Monday, the Legislative Black Caucus held their own meeting on the governor’s affirmative action program where more than 250 people came to Roxbury Community College to give testimony and quiz state officials and members of the governor’s advisory committee.

There, the Romney administration’s policy was roundly criticized by attorneys, activists, elected officials and concerned citizens from across the commonwealth.

Ayer Selectwoman Faye Morrison drove an hour and took two trains to get to the RCC cafeteria before using much of her allotted three-minute talk time to criticize the Governor’s office for failing to translate the document into Spanish.

“If we’re having public hearings, there are a lot of people who are being excluded,” she said.

Morrison also criticized the new plan for its lack of a watchdog entity, one of several charges echoed by many of those who testified.

Monday’s meeting comes a year after Governor Romney’s June 2003 executive order that critics said gutted the state’s affirmative action program. Romney’s plan, executive order 452, was derailed under heavy opposition from elected officials and civil rights groups.

Romney then convened a panel of activists and business leaders to devise a new affirmative action plan. Their plan, due to go in effect this month, does not include specific language about affirmative action for minorities, according to Horace Small, who heads the Union of Minority Neighborhoods and has spearheaded opposition to the plan.

Under the new plan, according to Small, state department heads are responsible for creating their own hiring goals and are to report to the state’s director of personnel. Under the current affirmative action guidelines, all department heads are required to report directly to the State Office of Affirmative Action, a separate watchdog agency whose director reported directly to the governor.

“When you have the director of personnel being the person reported to, that sends a message to the Commonwealth that this policy has been relegated to another personnel issue,” said City Councilor Chuck Turner.

Turner and other critics say the new policy takes the teeth out of the old policy, leaving secretaries of state departments to set their own standards and voluntarily report to personnel.

“If you don’t have clear, specific, measurable standards, you can’t get anything done,” Turner said.

The Commonwealth’s personnel director, Ruth Bramson, said Romney’s aim was not to gut affirmative action, but rather to strengthen it.

“The governor wanted to consolidate the executive orders that were written over the last 20 years,” she said at the beginning of the hearing. “While our ideas on the process may differ, our goals are aligned.”

But as the hearing progressed, it became clear that there was little or no support for the proposed plan.

While many questioned the proposed implementation of the policy, school teacher and ex-Mormon Lani Gerson questioned Romney’s qualifications for overseeing the drafting of an affirmative action policy, noting that the Mormon church, in which Romney is an elder, has cited the women’s rights movement as a threat to its survival.

Gerson recounted for the audience a visit she received from Romney in the early ’80s notifying her that she was ex-communicated from the church.

Also testifying were representatives from a number of organizations opposed to the governor’s plans including the National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The governor is expected to finalize the affirmative action plan by June 24.

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