California Democrats have embraced a new form of favoritism: contracts for businesses that are state-certified as being owned by LGBTQ+ individuals.
required certain CPUC-regulated utilities to submit annual “plans” for buying goods and services from female- and minority-owned companies. Two years later, CPUC California Democrats have embraced a new form of favoritism: contracts for businesses that are state-certified as being owned by LGBTQ+ individuals.
Under a series of Democratic governors, the program has expanded to include gay-owned businesses. In September 2014, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring CPUC to recognize “LGBT-owned businesses” as eligible for supplier-diversity benefits. In the years that followed, CPUC faced activist pressure as it implemented the LGBTQ+ expansion.
BuildOUT California, a since-rebranded LGBT building-industry organization, sent ato the commission arguing that “homophobia” existed within “the ranks of the utility companies. ” The state’s legislative LGBTQ caucus suggested in a 2021$25 million to buy things from state-certified LGBTQ+ businesses: 0.5% of procurement in 2022; 1% in 2023; and 1.5% in 2024 andof qualifications linked on its website.
Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an “LGBT organization” attesting to their sexual preferences; proof that a newspaper identified them as “LGBT”; or three letters from “personal contacts” written “on company letterhead” attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who “falsely represent” their business as gayFive years later, Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded the program, “encouraging” other companies involved in the energy sector to award contracts to gay-owned firms.a training video on supplier diversity.
“Never fear when your Ambassador for Excellence is here,” an animated character says in the video. “I can show you exactly how to source diverse vendors. ”a sign-language interpreter, a kombucha maker, and a “coaching” firm whose services include a “series” to help people “manage” their feelings about “he latest election cycle. ”Proposition 209, which banned the state from granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, or ethnicity in public employment, education, and contracting.
More than two decades later, in 2020, voters” for utilities’ contracting rates: 15% to minority-owned firms; 5% to women-owned firms; 1.5% to disabled-veteran-owned firms; and, most recently, 1.5% to LGBT-owned firms.are not a “requirement” or “quota. ” In practice, however, the agency cajoles utilities into compliance by requiring them to collect extensive demographic data, submit detailed annual reports, list their plans for increasing procurement from favored groups, and explain “any circumstances that may have resulted in not meeting” their procurement “goals.
” Despite the commission’s efforts, however, utilities and businesses don’t seem interested in LGBTQ+ certification. Large utilities’ procurement with LGBTQ+ businessesThe state imposed these rules based on the view that government spending should not merely purchase goods and services, but should also engineer social outcomes. Under this framework, buying a hammer from a firm owned by a black transgender lesbian has more social value than buying the same hammer from a firm owned by a straight white man.
But Californians don’t need an energy system determined by sexual orientation; they need an energy system that works. Utility regulators should be in the business of regulating utilities, not verifying contractors’ sexual preferences. California Democrats have embraced a new form of favoritism: contracts for businesses that are state-certified as being owned by LGBTQ+ individuals. Under a series of Democratic governors, the program has expanded to include gay-owned businesses.
In September 2014, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring CPUC to recognize “LGBT-owned businesses” as eligible for supplier-diversity benefits. Five years later, Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded the program, “encouraging” other companies involved in the energy sector to award contracts to gay-owned firms.
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