YOUNGSTOWN SCHOOLS Builders group threatens lawsuit over hiring goals

The provision calls only for good-faith efforts to hire minorities, the board says.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- School officials are upset over letters written by the local builders association and its law firm, which say the association may sue the school board if it attempts to enforce its minority hiring goals in the $182.5 million, six-year schools construction and renovation project.
"We have taken great care to use goals as our phraseology -- goals and aspirations," said Clarence Boles, who leaves the board at the end of this month to become the 6th Ward councilman.
"The letter from the builders association was filled with misrepresentation in terms of goals and quotas," said Al Curry, the school district's equal employment opportunity officer. "We do feel that it needs to be responded to."
School officials expressed their views at a Tuesday board session.
Curry referred to the board's target percentages as goals because they call for only good-faith efforts at achievement. They are not quotas because they are not accompanied by penalties for nonattainment, he said.
The terms
At issue is a resolution enacted by the school board that calls for good-faith efforts by contractors to achieve 20 percent minority, 20 percent female and 50 percent city school district resident participation in the project.
"The association has long opposed minority-based 'goals' or quotas," wrote Kevin Reilly, executive vice president of the Vienna-based Builders Association of Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, in a Nov. 17, 2003, letter to association members.
Reilly and the association's lawyer, Timothy J. Jacob of the Manchester, Bennett, Powers & amp; Ullman law firm of Youngstown, wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled such goals or quotas violate the equal protection provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
Jacob's opinion was expressed in a July 2002 letter to Curry. "Claims of alleged societal or historical discrimination will not justify preferential treatment," Jacob wrote.
Potential for suit
Reilly said the association knows of no contractor who could meet the board's goals, but that a lawsuit could delay work and payments. He urged association members to say they'll "attempt to use good-faith efforts to comply."
"Should you suffer any penalty or significant problem imposed by the school board because of failure to meet quotas or failure to make good-faith efforts, the association will be in a position to initiate a lawsuit on behalf of all members," Reilly advised association members.
When board members passed the resolution, "we emphasized that this is not a quota. It is not a set-aside," said Lock P. Beachum Sr., board president.