Tag: prevailing wage

Senate Repeals Prevailing Wage on Party-Line Vote

The West Virginia Senate has approved a bill to repeal the state’s prevailing wage on a party line vote. The bill now heads to Governor Tomblin for a signature.

Lawmakers voted 18-16 Thursday with only Republicans supporting the legislation.

The prevailing wage is the rate of hourly pay and benefits for workers on state-funded construction projects. Members of the GOP majority say the blanket rate artificially inflates wages and repeal will save taxpayers money.

Democrats, however, maintain the repeal will hurt West Virginia workers.

Tomblin has previously said he will veto the repeal bill.

“Obviously, I’m outnumbered, [but] my position has not changed,” Tomblin said of the repeal. The governor also spoke out against a proposed repeal during the 2015 session.

According to the state Constitution, Tomblin has 5 days, not including Sundays, to sign or veto the legislation. It takes only a simple majority vote of each chamber to override a veto. 

Senate Rejects Two Amendments to Prevailing Wage Repeal

As the vote to repeal the state’s prevailing wage draws closer in the West Virginia Senate, Democratic members of the chamber are not being silent about their opposition. Wednesday, two Senators attempted to amend the legislation on the floor.

Sen. Herd Snyder’s proposed amendment would continue with a repeal of the state’s prevailing wage rate, but replace it with the federally calculated Davis Bacon wage. 

“The state doesn’t have to recalculate anything at all,” Snyder said on the floor. “It’s all done at the federal level and they’ve been doing it for many, many decades and have refined it many, many times.”

Snyder added West Virginia must already pay the federal wage rate on construction projects that use federal dollars. 

His amendment, however, was rejected 16-18 on party lines.

Sen. Mike Romano’s proposed amendment added language to the bill that would give West Virginia workers, laborers and mechanics preference for state construction jobs. If those workers cannot be hired, the amendment would require U.S. citizens to be given preference.

“This amendment is straight forward,” he said in a floor speech. “It just gives West Virginians a fair shot at getting a good job.”

The amendment also failed on a party line vote. 

House Bill 4005, a bill to repeal the state’s prevailing wage, will be up for a vote Thursday in the Senate. 

Prevailing Wage Repeal Set for Senate Vote Thursday

On a party-line vote Monday, members of the Senate Committee on Government Organization approved a bill to repeal the state’s prevailing wage. It was reported to the floor Monday as well, setting it up for a vote Thursday. 

The prevailing wage is the rate of hourly pay and benefits workers are paid on state funded construction projects. 

In 2015, the new GOP majority proposed a repeal, but compromised with Democrats instead approving a recalculation of the wage rate. A year later, lawmakers are once again debating a repeal and controversy has followed the proposal every step of the way. 

In the House, a public hearing drew more than a dozen speakers, only two of which were in support of the repeal. Since it’s passage in that chamber, the opposition has continued to speak loudly against it. 

Three West Virginia contractors were among those naysayers. The three, including Glen Jefferies of Cornerstone Industries, spoke against the repeal during a Senate Government Organization Committee meeting Monday.

“I am asking that we work together with the individuals who represent this industry and find a fair answer that is good for the West Virginia taxpayer, the West Virginia contractor and the West Virginia construction worker,” Jefferies told the committee.  “We need to keep a prevailing wage here in West Virginia.”

Jefferies and others opposed to the repeal say it will cut workers’ wages and increase the rates of workplace fatalities, but supporters say those claims are false. Del. Gary Howell said Monday taxpayers won’t see savings in the form of wage cuts to workers, but in the decreased cost of government oversight. 

“There’s a massive amount of paperwork dealing with the prevailing wage and its scared off a lot of contractors,” Howell said.

“In the brief time [last summer] that the prevailing wage was repealed, we’re seeing a lot of small, in-state contractors that never had the staff to deal with prevailing wage plus these contractors also have lower overhead, they are passing those savings on to the taxpayer.”

Democrats pushed Wednesday for a fiscal note, an attachment to a bill that explains the impact a piece of legislation will have on the state’s budget, and a second reference to the Committee on Finance to prove the savings, but both efforts were denied. 

The bill will be on first reading Tuesday and likely up for a vote in the chamber Thursday.

Delegates Vote to Repeal Prevailing Wage

Members of the West Virginia House of Delegates voted 55 to 44 Wednesday to repeal the state’s prevailing wage as dozens of union members looked on from the gallery.

The prevailing wage is the hourly rate and benefits workers are paid on state construction projects. House Bill 4005 calls for a full repeal of the wage rate which could come as early as May.

Members debated the bill on the floor for more than two hours, arguing a repeal would save tax payer dollars. On the opposite side, members said a repeal will lower the wages of workers across West Virginia, both union and nonunion. 

“No longer will our taxpayers be held hostage by big labor, no longer will our West Virginia taxpayers have to pay for an artificial wage rate set by unelected government bureaucrats who cater to big labor. You see today is that day you will decide to stand for the taxpayer or to stand with the union bosses.” – Delegate Eric Householder, R-Berkeley

Before the vote, the bill was only discussed by one committee, the House Committee on Government Organization, but was also the subject of a public hearing. At that hearing, two of 18 speakers spoke out in support of the repeal. 

“Unions made this country a middle class that could afford to buy homes with people that could go to college, and now all of a sudden that’s somehow not popular. Let’s pile on. We’ve got coal miners that are worried about losing their jobs, and now we’re talking to the union trade people, and we’re saying we’re gonna cut your salary, too. Who do you think is gonna be left in West Virginia?” – Delegate Nancy Guthrie, D-Kanawha

The bill will now be sent to the Senate for the chamber’s consideration. 

House Democrats Attempt to Amend Bill to Repeal Prevailing Wage

The House of Delegates will put a controversial bill to a vote tomorrow. The bill calls for a full repeal of the state’s prevailing wage. Democrats…

The House of Delegates will put a controversial bill to a vote tomorrow. The bill calls for a full repeal of the state’s prevailing wage.  Democrats attempted to put a limit on the length of repeal.

House Bill 4005 was on second reading in the chamber Tuesday, a phase that allows lawmakers to amend the bill on the floor.

House Minority Leader Tim Miley proposed an amendment that would limit the repeal of the state’s prevailing wage to just five years. After that five year period, Miley’s amendment calls for an economic study of its impacts.

Miley: “And the purpose of doing that is to actually measure whether what we are doing as a body to repeal the prevailing wage has all of the benefits that it’s claimed to have.”

House Speaker Tim Armstead determined the amendment wasn’t relevant to the bill. The unchanged bill will be up for a vote by the full chamber Wednesday.

House Moves to Make Morrisey Policy Law

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is facing some criticism after the Charleston Gazette-Mail ran an article saying he paid an outside law firm $600,000 more than his policy on paying legal fees dictates.

Still, Morrisey told lawmakers last week his policy has saved West Virginians 300 thousand dollars since its implementation in 2013. Lawmakers are now trying to make that policy law.

When Attorney General Patrick Morrisey took office, he put a new policy in place to govern how the state should hire outside counsel when his office needs help on a case. The policy implemented a bidding process and also capped the legal fees those outside attorneys can collect. Members of the House of Delegates are looking to turn his policies into law with House Bill 4007.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Shott says the law simply makes the process of hiring outside counsel to represent the state clearer for the Attorney General’s Office in the future.

“It was felt that it made sense that since the Attorney General went to a great deal of trouble to come up with a process that’s formalized now, but it could change with the next Attorney General. And because of the criticisms in the past, as to how that was handled and how loosely it was handled, and how it resulted in what a lot of people thought was excessive compensation that ordinarily would’ve been state money go to outside council; it was felt it was a good idea to put that process in the law, so it would apply in all future, to all future Attorney Generals,” Shott explained.

House Bill 4007 passed out of the House 96 to 1.

Eight more bills were read on the House floor Monday, including House Bill 4005, repealing the state’s prevailing wage rate, which will be up for a vote on Wednesday.

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