Actually, the city is doing well with this program when you consider the demographics of Portland. As someone with a background in this subject, I'd estimate that at least 99.9% of the construction businesses (all but four out of about 5,000 in the city) are owned by white men. With this program, half the contracts went to minority and women. Improvement is possible, but this is progress.

Why do race, ethnicity, and sex need to be considered at all in deciding who gets awarded a contract, or who ought to get special training to become a city contractor? It's fine to make sure contracting programs are open to all, that bidding opportunities are widely publicized beforehand, and that no one gets discriminated against because of skin color, national origin, or sex. But that means no preferences because of skin color, etc. either--whether it's labeled a "set-aside," a "quota," or a "goal," since they all end up amounting to the same thing. Such discrimination is unfair and divisive; it costs the taxpayers money to award a contract to someone other than the lowest bidder; and it's almost always illegal—indeed, unconstitutional—to boot (see 42 U.S.C. section 1981 and comments we submitted to the Colorado DOT here: http://www.ceousa.org/content/view/655/86/ ). Those who insist on engaging in such discrimination deserve to be sued, and they will lose.