Group gives “D” grades to Senate,
Governor on racial issues

ByBy Bay City News

An Oakland-based advocacy group has given “D” grades to Gov. Schwarzenegger and the state Senate for their handling of legislation affecting communities of color, and a “C” grade to the state Assembly for what it describes as racial justice.
    Tammy Johnson, one of the authors of a report issued by the Applied Research Center, said, “Gov. Schwarzenegger lacks the political will, and the Legislature a cohesive plan, to address the needs of California’s growing majority - people of color.”
    Johnson said the group’s 2005 Legislative Report Card on Racial Equity evaluates and grades the governor and members of the Legislature on their responses to 18 pieces of legislation that would have the most direct positive impact on communities of color. The report card is broken down into five issue areas: educational equity, economic justice, health equity, civil rights and criminal justice.
    State Assemblywoman Wilma Chan (D-Oakland) said, “While the governor wastes time and money pushing unfair initiatives in special elections, he consistently rejects attempts by the California legislature to address historical and persistent racial disparities.”
    Chan said, “While paying lip-service to the needs of black, Latino, Asian and native communities, he has rejected at every turn the policies that can make those promises a reality.”
    The report says Schwarzenegger vetoed 8 of 18 racial equity reforms.
    Schwarzenegger’s office did not have any immediate comment on the report.
    Applied Research Center spokesman Andre Banks said two key pieces of legislation that were vetoed by Schwarzenegger were Chan’s “Health Access for Kids” bill and a bill that would have raised the state’s minimum wage.
    However, an analysis of minimum wage legislation that was prepared by the Senate Rules Committee last year said most minimum wage earners are teenagers, young adults and adult women who are relatively unskilled, have limited work experience or work part-time, so higher wages for them might not be justified.
    Opponents of increasing the minimum wage say that such an action would dramatically increase employer costs and employers would have no choice but to cut jobs, resulting in a loss of jobs among the lowest-paid workers, including minority workers.
    Applied Research Center officials said the state must do a better job of achieving racial equity because high school graduation rates are only 60 percent for Latinos and 57 percent for blacks; only one in four high school graduates of color is college-ready, compared to 40 percent of white graduates; and blacks and Latinos are nearly three times more likely to live in poverty than whites. Half of Latinos, 43 percent of blacks and a quarter of Asians live in or near poverty.