A bill to align state-contracted construction wages with federal standards has been deadlocked in the Senate on a procedural hang-up since Thursday and might be dead for this session.
The Senate Rules Committee tied 3-3 on a vote to move the bill to the Senate Economic Development Committee for consideration. Without a majority in favor of taking up the bill, the proposal will languish, unless it ends up as an amendment to another piece of legislation.
“But that’s harder to do,” said Senate Economic Development Committee Chair Kevin Mullin, R-Rutland, and several other key lawmakers Tuesday.
The challenge is one of transparency and process, because last-minute amendments do not receive full public hearings the way bills do.
Labor Commissioner Annie Noonan, who with Gov. Peter Shumlin and the House and Senate Democratic caucuses supports the intent of the bill, said Tuesday that next steps had not been determined.
The senators who voted to hold up the bill in the Rules Committee say they did so as a matter of process: A “crossover” rule requires bills to pass the House or Senate by a certain date before crossing over to the other chamber for consideration. Crossover this year was March 14. The prevailing wage bill passed the House on April 10, missing the crossover deadline by about four weeks.
Sen. Bill Doyle, R-Washington, sits on the Senate Rules Committee and cast the deciding vote to not release the bill for further consideration. He said that in addition to procedural grounds, his vote also was based on what he heard from contractors.
“People I know and respect made a case that the bill was not ready for prime time,” Doyle said Tuesday. Contractors, he said, urged him to hold up the bill for fear it could harm their businesses.
Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Chittenden/Grand Isle, also voted against releasing the legislation to the Senate Economic Development Committee, one of two likely destination committees. He said the Rules Committee had decided early in the session to be strict about making exceptions to crossover.
“We agreed to release as few bills as possible, unless a chair came in and made a good case for it,” Mazza said Tuesday.
Mazza, Doyle and Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, who also voted against advancing H.878, said the legislative session could be extended by a week or more if they let more bills through.
Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell, D-Windsor, told Mullin the prevailing wage bill likely would go to his economic development committee. Mullin scheduled testimony in anticipation, but canceled it when he learned that the bill didn’t make it through rules. Mullin did not go to the Rules Committee to request the bill.
Sen. Peg Flory, R-Rutland, who chairs the Senate Institutions Committee, heads up another of the bill’s potential committees of jurisdiction. She said because of her concerns about the bill’s impact on businesses, she would not request it.
Doyle said if there had been an advance agreement between leadership in the House and Senate chambers, he would have been more inclined to vote to release the bill.
That was the case with H.552, a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage, which did not pass the House until April 8. The Rules Committee released H.552 on April 16.
Mazza and Doyle described a significant amount of public interest and momentum that had built up around minimum wage, securing its way through the legislative process.
“You were not going to not act on the minimum wage,” Mazza said. He said the prevailing wage and a number of others that have come before his committee, on the other hand, will not hasten “the end of the world” by waiting another year for full legislative consideration.
Prevailing Wage
H.878 would replace Vermont’s formula for determining prevailing construction wages with the federal formula.
It wouldn’t mean workers in Vermont would get paid the same wages as workers in New York City, for example. Rather, the federal prevailing wage accounts for the cost of health insurance, pensions and other benefits when calculating the “prevailing” wages in a given region. Vermont’s current method of figuring state prevailing wages does not account for such fringe benefits.
The construction workers whose wages are in question are only those employed on a subset of capital construction projects in the state. Transportation construction, as well as projects funded by school grants, would not experience wage changes. The prevailing wage rules do not apply to privately funded construction.
Supporters say H.878 would “level the playing field” between contractors who offer health insurance, pensions and the like to employees and those who don’t. Generally, lower cost bids win state contracts. By changing to the federal Davis-Bacon prevailing wage system, contractors who offer benefits would be more able to compete for state-funded jobs.
Rep. Don Turner, R-Milton, the House minority leader, said his caucus opposes the bill because members believe it would undermine require some employers to raise wages, which would jeopardize their competitive advantage.
“When it comes to these bills that we don’t support, any way that it could die is good for us,” Turner said Tuesday.
Senate Majority Leader Philip Baruth, D-Chittenden, voted along with Campbell and Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison, to release the federal prevailing wage bill from rules.
Baruth said the option of attaching the federal prevailing wage proposal to another bill may be “a different ball game.” On the other hand, he said, it would be a new game with many of the same players holding the same positions.
