Solid Waste Agency may battle Branstad over project labor agreements

Bring it on, Gov. Branstad.

That was the message from Brent Oleson, Linn County supervisor and a member of the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency board, as Oleson on Tuesday pushed to incorporate a project labor agreement into the agency's upcoming $14-million project to build a new Resource Recovery Center at its landfill north of Marion.

Immediately upon taking office in January 2011, Branstad issued Executive Order 69, which prohibited the use of state funds on construction projects with project labor agreements and prohibited project labor agreements on state projects.

Oleson said the fear of a lawsuit from the Governor's Office should not stop the Solid Waste Agency from moving ahead with a project labor agreement.

“I don't think we should let that scare us,” Oleson said.

The agency's nine-member board consists of six Cedar Rapids City Hall representatives, two Linn supervisors and a Marion representative.

Cedar Rapids council members Chuck Swore and Justin Shields, both advocates of project labor agreements, nonetheless Tuesday recounted the city of Cedar Rapids' seven-month standoff with Branstad in 2011, during which the Cedar Rapids City Council put a project labor agreement in place on its Convention Complex project only to have Branstad announce he would hold back $15 million in state I-JOBS funds from the project.

With the dispute dragging on and unions fighting Branstad in court, the city in June 2011 backed down and the local labor groups, which had signed the project labor agreement with the city, agreed to set the agreement aside. In trade, the city put in place a project labor agreement on the city's hotel renovation project next to the Convention Complex, which is receiving no state funds.

“Every legal opinion I've had has said, ‘No, you won't prevail,'” Shields, a Cedar Rapids area labor leader, told Oleson and the rest of the Solid Waste Agency Board.

Swore characterized the city's unsuccessful fight with Branstad this way: “We got our hand slapped.” But Swore said the city has come up with other ways to try to make sure that mostly local workers, not out-of-state ones, work on city building projects, which is the central benefit of project labor agreements, advocates of the agreements, Oleson and Swore, said.

Swore said the city requires contractors to attend pre-bid meetings and the city breaks project bids into smaller bid packages as a way to give local contractors a chance to compete against big out-of-state ones. The city also requires contractors to operate a drug-free workplace and certify that employees have completed certain safety training and skill  training. As a result, local and area employees and contractors predominate on city projects, he said.

Oleson and Ben Rogers, a Linn supervisor and chairman of the Solid Waste Agency board, noted that Linn County has had five post-flood construction projects, all of which have benefitted from project labor agreements, they said. All five, though, were put in place before Branstad took office and issued his executive order.

Oleson called Branstad's order “overly broad” and worth fighting.

Karmin McShane, the agency's executive director, provided the board with legal opinions from the Cedar Rapids city attorney and an outside legal firm, both of which had her conclude that using a project labor agreement likely would mean lengthy litigation.

Board member Mark Jones, the city of Cedar Rapids' manager of solid waste and recycling, said his reading of the legal advice to the board was to “be ready” for court. Jones noted that he has had served on the agency board for some 15 years, during which he has seen plenty of delay-causing litigation over, for instance, the siting of a new landfill.

McShane noted that the agency has been locked in litigation for 30 months in a dispute over the use of methane gas that is produced by the agency's Mount Trashmore landfill next to the Cedar River near downtown.

McShane said the agency's upcoming $14 million construction project, the biggest piece of which is a new Resource Recovery Center building, is positioned to use $850,000 in state funding. In addition, the state provides the agency with its operating permits, so the agency likely must follow Branstad's executive order even if it was not receiving state funds, McShane said.

In the end, the agency board put the matter on hold for a month and told McShane to prepare to let bids on the construction project in June without a project labor agreement. The board can insert the requirement for a project labor agreement into the bid specifications next month if the board decides to do that, board members said.