Posted on 01/31/2007 10:23:30 AM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO — Democratic leaders want to impose union-driven prevailing wage rules on new school construction projects despite a critical state report that says enforcing the rules previously has cost tens of millions in taxpayer funds.
State regulators spent about $70 million in taxpayer funds during the past three years to recover just $3 million to $4 million in underpaid private workers' wages, according to state documents released last week.
Legislative Analyst Liz Hill said in her recent study on the use of voter-approved bond funds that the Industrial Relations Department's Labor Compliance Program spent $18 to $23 for each $1 of wages recovered, mostly on school construction projects financed with bonds approved by voters in 2002 and 2004 — many of them in the Bay Area.
The nonpartisan analyst said the program's "weak" oversight — focused so far on many school buildings in the Bay Area constructed with bonds approved by voters in past years — means lawmakers should seek other options for ensuring payment of proper wages on public projects or overhaul the current program.
"Each dollar spent on administrative costs within a bond program is one less dollar thata is available for infrastructure projects," according to Hill.
"In this instance, the $70 million in Labor Compliance Program spending would have been able to fund about 200 new classrooms if it had instead been directed to construction," she said.
Her report came as Democratic legislative leaders push the same wage legislation for public works projects that will be funded with $43 billion in new infrastructure bonds approved by voters in November.
Senate leader Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, already have introduced a bill to extend the wage enforcement and recovery program to the $10.4 billion in new education bonds,
"The speaker is a strong supporter of protecting workers and enforcing the state's labor wage laws," Nunez spokesman Steve Maviglio said Tuesday via e-mail. "If there are ways of making these programs more efficient, we're all ears."
Hill noted, however, that the programs are intended to educate contractors, as well, and acknowledged she has no yardstick to measure what potential violations the program headed off.
Nevertheless, she suggested other options for ensuring payment of proper wages or an overhaul of the current program.
Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said that his group "thinks this (wage-enforcement legislation) is horrible public policy."
"They are arcane and foolish rules," Coupal said. "There are a multitude of studies showing that prevailing wage rules not only increase the cost of projects to the taxpayers but also limit the pool of the otherwise qualified contractors to work on these projects."
Unions, in arguing for wage-enforcement programs on public works projects originally in 2002, said they were needed to "support greater enforcement of state labor laws" and provide "the proper oversight to protect workers," according to the legislative counsel's office, which says unions' positions haven't changed.
Democrats, who dominate the Legislature and count labor among their strongest supporters, pushed through the original prevailing-wage enforcement system on education bonds, with close votes, along party lines, at the hectic end of the 2002 legislative year.
The new bill by Democratic legislative leaders to impose the wage-enforcement program on the latest school construction bond is pending before a Senate committee.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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