Culver wants to 'push forward' on prevailing wage; lawmaker offering 'softer' legislation

By James Q. Lynch 

The Gazette

DES MOINES – Gov. Chet Culver encouraged lawmakers to make run at prevailing wage legislation that resulted in a three-day standoff in the Iowa House last year as majority Democrats struggled to find a 51

^st

vote.

“I still believe we need to push forward,” Culver said Wednesday after signing an executive order telling state agencies to consider using project labor agreements on large-scale construction jobs. “We're talking about paying a carpenter, a pipefitter a couple more dollars an hours at a time when, again, families need more income, they need to work, they need to have good wages and that's what prevailing wage will do.”

Although there's been no action on prevailing wage this year, House Labor Committee Chairman Rick Olson, D-Des Moines, is having a bill drafted he thinks might be more palatable to the so-called “six-pack” of Democrats who refused to vote for prevailing wage last year.

House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, kept the voting machine open for 68 hours last March waiting for someone to change their vote to give Democrats a majority on the prevailing wage bill. It didn't happen.

“It's what you might call a softer bill,” Olson said, explaining it would require the state, regents and community colleges to pay prevailing wage on projects of $100,000 or more. However, local government – cities, counties and school districts – could opt-out of paying prevailing wage on a project-by-project basis, Olson said.

His bill also would set prevailing wage -- the hourly wage, usual benefits and overtime paid to the majority of workers, laborers and mechanics for each trade and occupation in a given area -- on a county-by-county basis. Typically, prevailing wages have been set by region, but some lawmakers said wages paid in an urban area inflated wages paid in rural areas in the same region.

“I think I addressed a lot of their problems,” Olson said, referring to members of his party who didn't support his bill a year ago.

So far, it hasn't swayed House Republicans, according to House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha.

“Call it ‘prevailing wage light' if you want, but anything that adds pressure to the taxpayer is going in the wrong direction,” he said.

The impact would be felt in Eastern Iowa, where communities are rebuilding from floods and tornadoes, Paulsen said.

“Why would we want to artificially make those projects more expensive?” he asked.

Culver's project labor agreement executive order could have the same effect, according to Scott Norvell, president and CEO of Master Builders of Iowa.

“Project limitation agreements,” as he calls them, are never appropriate because “they inflate the cost and decrease the opportunity to put people back to work.” Unemployment in building trades is at levels Iowa hasn't seen since the 1980s, Norvell said.

However, Culver called his executive order a “bold step” toward good wages.”

“I'm going as far as we can in terms of my executive authority,” Culver said. “We're sending a clear messaged about how much we value these hardworking families.”