Minority businesses to be tracked

When businesses looking to locate in Utah call the Office of Ethnic Affairs looking for information on minority owned businesses, the answer is, "We're working on that."

With no state method to collect up-to-date information on such business demographics, the agency is coordinating with Legislature and the state Tax Commission to develop and implement a way to track minority- and women-owned businesses.

It's just one of more than 30 goals announced Thursday in a new two-year strategic plan Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. called "historic."

Before signing the executive order re-creating the State Office of Ethnic Affairs, Huntsman called it "the first of its kind ever for the Office of Ethnic Affairs. . . . It's really the beginning of a new role."

Work toward many of the goals are already under way, said Yvette Donosso Diaz, executive director of the state Department of Community and Culture, which oversees the ethnic offices.

"It's a very exciting beginning," Diaz said of the plan that will be available online at ethnicoffice.utah.gov. It pools the resources of the state's Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander Affairs offices, and partners them with state agencies in areas from education to health care. The state Division of Indian Affairs has a separate plan.

Some community leaders, who had not yet seen the plan, hoped it would go beyond past efforts and move into accountability and real results.

AnnaJane Arroyo, said she stepped down from the Hispanic Advisory Council, because "it seemed like we were going over the same issues again and again. Everything is about accountability. It will be interesting to see what they do with the base-line a year from now. Are they going to do anything?"

Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake Branch NAACP, said tracking progress is essential.

"You can develop all kinds of different programs," she said. "You have to have something to measure. If you're not going to be doing that, what are you going to do in reference to make sure the programs are going to work?"

Many of the goals' deliverables aren't in statistics but in programs and participation. For example, the educational goals include recently released recommendations by the Working Group on Student Achievement to improve ethnic student achievement; adoption of ethnic parental involvement programs in schools and districts; and holding a parent reading summit with both day and evening sessions.