Unions seek details on Branstad order

CEDAR RAPIDS - Labor leaders who represent the building trades in Iowa want to know who helped Gov. Terry Branstad write Executive Order 69, which prohibits the use of state funds for public works projects that have project labor agreements in force.

The governor's order - which he put in place on the day he took office, Jan. 14 - has put a $15 million state I-JOBS grant in jeopardy for Cedar Rapids' $76.5 million Convention Complex project. The result for now is a standoff, between Branstad on one hand and the Cedar Rapids City Council and building trades unions on the other, that is likely to end up in court.

Two attorneys representing building trades unions in Iowa now are using the state's open records law to ask the Governor's Office to produce documents related to the development of Executive Order 69.

Branstad's office has responded that the law covers work done after he took office at noon Jan. 14, and not before, according to attorneys Robert Henry and Lori Elrod of Kansas City, Kan. Spokesman Tim Albrecht said Monday that the Governor's Office will make available any “official” documents produced after Branstad took office.

In a letter in response, Henry and Elrod note that Branstad formed a transition team after his election in November to craft policies, including Executive Order 69, to put in place once he took office.

“It would seem incongruent that the Governor could impose an Order as Chief Executive of the State of Iowa and the taxpayers would not be entitled to any information whatsoever about how the Order was developed,” they write on behalf of Bill Gerhard, president of the Iowa State Building Trades.

Henry and Elrod note that the Master Builders of Iowa has posted on its website that it helped Branstad develop Executive Order 69. The Master Builders of Iowa shares Branstad's belief that project labor agreements drive up the cost of public works projects and keep non-union contractors from bidding on them.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett and a majority on the City Council entered into a project labor agreement with the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Building Trades Council, under the belief that it would ensure that many of the workers on the Convention Complex project will come from Cedar Rapids, Linn County and the area around it.

They have noted that such public projects require a contractor to pay the area's “prevailing wage” so that non-union contractors, like union ones, would have to pay union wage rates.

Scott Smith, president of the local building trades council, reported last week that the state now has backed off project labor agreements in place for contracts yet to be bid on the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics' new medical building in Coralville and on a project at the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown.