Litigation threat in air by trades council over Branstad’s Executive Order 69

CEDAR RAPIDS - The threat of litigation has been in the air for a couple weeks now over Gov. Terry Branstad's Executive Order 69. And now the threat is in writing.

In a letter to the Iowa Board of Regents on Tuesday, the attorney for the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Building Trades Council says the council will sue the board if it continues with its plan to set aside the project labor agreement signed by the board and council for work on the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinic's new outpatient clinic at Iowa River Landing in Coralville.

The governor's executive order, which he put into place immediately upon taking office on Jan. 14, prohibits the use of state funds for contracts yet to be bid on public-works projects with project labor agreements. To date, the board has bid contracts worth a little more than $7 million on the Coralville project with the project labor agreement in place, but the board now proposes to set aside the agreement to bid the remaining construction contracts on the $72-million project.

In his letter to the board, attorney Robert Henry, of Blake & Uhlig of Kansas City, Kan., reminds the Board of Regents that it entered into a “legally binding contract” with the trades council that the governor's executive order provides no grounds to nullify.

“If the Board is unwilling to abide by its contractual obligation, the (trades council) will have no choice but to file a lawsuit for breach of contract,” Henry writes.

He says any lawsuit will seek monetary damages, rescission of any contracts executed without a project labor agreement, injunctive relief and the rebidding of any contract without a project labor agreement.

Contractors may decline to bid on contracts without project labor agreements because of the possibility that such contracts later could be found void, Henry states.

Henry also has written to the Governor's Office in recent days and weeks on behalf of the trades council to persuade the governor to allow the release of $15 million in state I-JOBS funds for Cedar Rapids Convention Complex project, which also has a project labor agreement in place.

The trades council's threat of litigation against the Board of Regents on the Coralville project, no doubt, means the council has a similar idea to defend its project labor agreement in Cedar Rapids.