Contractor ordinance and coincidences

From the BCCT.

Ordinance could have resulted in lost grants
By DANNY ADLER
STAFF WRITER

It all came down to money and one clause.

Morrisville council voted down a responsible-contractor ordinance after its attorney said a clause in the eight-page proposed law could prevent the borough from receiving some federal money.

The ordinance’s downfall was a provision that would have required all public construction and maintenance contracts worth at least $10,000 be awarded to firms that participate in an apprenticeship program.

The council voted 6-1 against the ordinance Monday night after solicitor James Downey warned the board the borough could lose community development block grants with such a provision. He said he received a letter from the Bucks County Department of Community and Business Development after an article about the proposed ordinance appeared in this newspaper earlier this month. The solicitor said he was told that the Department of Housing and Urban Development determined years ago that another borough’s nearly identical ordinance restricted competition. That borough was then disqualified from receiving the grants.

He also noted that neighboring Falls missed out on some of those funds because it would not waive its ordinance for the block grants. Still, Falls Supervisors Chairman Robert Harvie lauded his borough’s ordinance while talking to Morrisville’s council at the Monday night’s meeting.

“We have had nothing but success with this,” Harvie told Morrisville officials.

Council President Nancy Sherlock and Councilman Dave Rivella wanted the solicitor to tweak the ordinance to make it work. That could happen or the issue could be dropped entirely at next month’s council meeting.

Others, including a handful of audience members who bashed the proposal within the last week, simply disagreed with the requirement.

Rivella, a union worker, cast a “symbolic” vote in favor of the bill. Councilman Edward Albertson, another union man, was absent from the meeting.

The apprenticeship requirement not only limits work to union shops, opponents say, but it would exclude smaller local businesses from bidding on borough work and push up prices. Supporters of the ordinance disagreed, saying it ensures that companies have qualified, welltrained workers and has no impact on project costs.

The rest of the ordinance would require contractors to confirm they hadn’t defaulted on any project or been prohibited from bidding on any federal, state or local government contracts in the last three years. They also would have had to confirm they’re free of “willful violations” of federal or state safety laws; that all employees are U.S. citizens or legal aliens allowed to work in the country; and that they adhere to prevailing wage rates and fringe benefit requirements, among other things.

Councilman Stephen Worob, who said he was a union chairman in New Jersey for several years, said there’re good things about unions. But sometimes, he said, “they go too far. And I think in this case, you’d almost have to be blind not to see the union influence here. It eliminates competition. And if you eliminate competition, you inevitably are going to raise the cost of projects.”

Councilwoman Eileen Dreisbach said she would have considered voting yes if there was no apprenticeship clause, but she didn’t feel that all local contractors should put all their workers through an apprenticeship program.

Councilwoman Kathryn Panzitta didn’t see it the same way. She said apprenticeships create a standard for a qualified worker.

Rivella, who has said that the proposal was not an attempt to promote union work, maintained his support of it.

“I think it’s a good ordinance,” Rivella said. “It has a lot of merit. I would feel even better supporting it if Mr. Downey had the opportunity to tweak it one more time.”

Residents chimed in during public comment, expressing a mixed bag of opinions. Some said the proposal discriminated against contractors and tried to “fix a problem we don’t have.” Others said it ensured that those doing borough work were trained and would prevent flyby-night contractors.

One woman, Morrisville school board member Marlys Mihok, said Sherlock, Rivella and Panzitta should have abstained from voting because the three Democrats were running in the 2007 election when the Morrisville Democratic Club accepted $10,300 in campaign contributions from unions. That was the same year Sherlock introduced the idea in the borough’s ordinance committee.

“There are no coincidences in Morrisville,” she said.

At the end of the meeting, Sherlock said the accusations implied “that these contributions were made by various unions so that the (responsiblecontractor ordinance) would be implemented, which is really further from the truth.”

“Those contributions were made to the party because they believed in the team that was running,” she added.

Sherlock said officials were not approached by union representatives about the ordinance and that some officials became interested in the proposal several years ago when other municipalities were considering a responsible-contractor ordinance.