What will rules be for public building projects?

CEDAR RAPIDS - Linn County hopes to break ground on an Options/Community Services building by the end of October, but the burning question is who will be allowed to bid on the $12 million-plus project.

It will be the county's first building project since the June 2008 flood, the first of tens of millions of dollars awarded to contractors. The county's supervisors want to make sure only local contractors who train and pay their workers to certain standards are allowed to compete for the contract.

That push has launched competing lobbying efforts by trade unions and contractor associations, and shoved the five-member board into the center of continuing debates over interstate trade, wage fairness and the role of government.

Supervisors will likely vote on some type of document that circumscribes the pool of bidders for county projects - perhaps a project labor agreement - within the next few weeks.

The crucial component, supervisors say, is a preference for companies from the Linn County area. It would be unconstitutional to block out-of-state contractors from bidding, Supervisor Brent Oleson said, but the county can favor local firms.

Without a document that stipulates this preference, supervisors must, by state law, award contracts to the lowest bidder, whether the company is from Palo, Iowa, or Piscataway, N.J.

“We need to put local people to work and make sure that most of this money stays in our community,” Oleson said.

Contractor associations like the Master Builders of Iowa have blasted supervisors for considering a project labor agreement, because, they argue, it means government is telling contractors how to run their business.

The supervisors say they don't want to forge an agreement that explicitly favors union contractors, but the devil will be in the details. The tension will be over wage and training requirements.

Oleson and Supervisor Linda Langston talk about the possibility of requiring contractors to pay prevailing wages, or some percentage of the prevailing wage. Supervisor Jim Houser, a card-carrying union sheet metal workers member - insists on prevailing wage.

Prevailing wages are determined in large part by union wages in an area.

The prevailing - or typical - wage for electricians in Linn County, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, is $29.38 per hour, plus $11.06 per hour in benefits. For carpenters, it is $24.44 - plus $11.18 in benefits - per hour.

That's more than some non-union contractors pay, but Langston said the supervisors will settle on a reasonable wage requirement, not necessarily the one the union wants.

“I'm committed to a fair, decent, living wage, which may or may not be prevailing wage,” she said.

Langston, a Democrat, and Oleson, a Republican who won his election campaign with union support, have been criticized for letting personal politics inform their positions on how to award county contracts. Master Builders of Iowa published a cartoon of the supervisors flipping through blueprints while union thugs watch them from the doorway.

Meanwhile, trade union officials have circulated their own version of a project labor agreement that in Oleson's view is too complex and heavy-handed and too explicitly favors unions.

This is not “some sort of reward for labor unions,” Oleson said. “They're just as guilty as Master Builders, in my opinion, for not being helpful.”