California Attorney General Jerry Brown recently told the state Supreme Court that Proposition 209, the 1996 state ballot proposition that outlaws public institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity, violates the U.S. constitution because it prohibits all affirmative action, and fosters the discrimination it was supposed to eliminate. Brown's opinion, which the court requested in considering a case regarding the legality of a San Francisco ordinance that gives minority and female contractors a better chance of winning city contracts, could reopen the legal debate on Proposition 209.

The San Francisco case, Coral Construction v. City and County of San Francisco, involves the validity of a 2003 ordinance (which has since been suspended by court order) that gave minority- and woman-owned firms a 10 percent deduction in competitive bids. In 2000, the state's high court unanimously ruled that Proposition 209 prohibited a San Jose outreach program that gave minority- and woman-owned firms "preferential treatment" when seeking public works contracts. That ruling cited a 1997 decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that found Proposition 209 constitutional.

Brown says that the state court's decision was too broad. In his letter to the court, he said that Proposition 209 "closes a door to race- and gender-conscious programs that the 14th Amendment allows." Brown's opinion, written by state Solicitor General Manuel M. Medeiros, went on to say, "The 14th Amendment allows such remedies in limited circumstances, and therefore, requires that all groups be accorded equal access to the political process to obtain those remedies, without regard to race or gender."

While it's still unclear what impact Brown's opinion will have on the state's high court decision, affirmative action is likely to become an issue again in Brown's expected campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor.

Ana Recio Harvey, an experienced entrepreneur and recently the president of the Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, has been named associate administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Women's Business Ownership.

Harvey will manage the agency's efforts to promote the growth of woman-owned businesses through programs that address business training and technical assistance, and provide access to credit and capital, federal contracts, and international trade opportunities. Harvey will also direct the SBA's network of Women's Business Centers, which provide training and counseling to thousands of women business owners across the country from 112 centers in nearly every state. Additionally, the program office works with women's business ownership representatives in every SBA district office and the Online Women's Business Center.

Fortune 500 companies are doing business with a surprisingly small number of suppliers, creating potential risks to the supply chain should any of these suppliers be adversely affected by the economic downturn, according to analysis done by CVM Solutions, LLC, a leader in enterprise supplier management solutions. Announced at the Institute for Supply Management conference in April, the findings of the comprehensive, cross-industry supplier management analysis have broad implications to all global enterprises operating today, CVM says.

By using its CVM Master Supplier Database, which includes hundreds of data points per supplier including customer/supplier spend levels, CVM identified a core set of 10,500 suppliers that are recipients of 80 percent of Fortune 500 spending. In addition, only 110,000 suppliers make up 95 percent of the total spend. CVM was also able to identify a relatively small set of suppliers with significant spend, 16,060, that are common among the Fortune 500. Based on this analysis by CVM, it appears that years of strategic sourcing and supplier consolidation has created a dangerously small group of suppliers that receive most of the Fortune 500 companies' spend.

If these common suppliers become "high risk" suppliers, then that risk will likely affect a high percentage of Fortune 500 companies. CVM defines high risk suppliers as having a significant probability of failure in some aspect of their business within 12 months. The potential impact of this increased supplier risk could mean interruptions in business operations, financial loss, and damage to brand reputation, CVM said. For more information, visit www.cvmsolutions.com.