D.C. Council at-large member Kwame Brown’s amendment to the Budget Support Act of 2007 would give small, local and disadvantaged businesses preferences in future District-subsidized development. But it’s just an election-year stunt designed to make city residents forget that the council remained mute while Mayor Anthony Williams negotiated a Project Labor Agreement for the baseball stadium that practically guarantees most construction contracts will go to big, unionized companies from out of town. There could well be cost overruns, too.
This has happened before in the District. Despite similar past promises by city officials, qualified local minority contractors and subcontractors were effectively shut out of bidding on the Convention Center because of onerous PLA requirements. Outside firms were imported from as far away as Texas and Canada for the major construction work, so the extra $200 million the project eventually cost (31 percent higher than estimates) did not even stay in the District.
In return for a PLA, developers of the Gallery Place project accepted a $40 million loan to purchase land from the Union Labor Life Insurance Co. — and many small local contractors were again conspicuously absent from the construction site. The same thing is happening again with the new $667 million baseball stadium.
Surrounded by smiling union officials at RFK Stadium last summer, the mayor announced a “state-of-the-art partnership” that requires contractors to hire “bona fide” city residents as apprentices for at least some construction jobs and, for the first time ever, gives them priority status on the union call list. However, if no “qualified” individual can be found by the D.C. Department of Employment Services within 48 hours, the union is free to revert to its normal referral procedures — i.e. call in unionized workers from elsewhere and bypass the 80 percent of non-union local hardhats who could do the work for less.
If other cities’ experience with PLAs holds true, District taxpayers won’t fare much better. Seattle’s Safeco Field posted a 60 percent cost overrun and went $200 million over budget; Miller Park in Milwaukee had a $100 million overrun and worker fatalities that delayed the project a year. Problem is, the District can’t afford the 25 percent cost run-ups that typically accompany PLAs.
In contrast, the Holocaust Museum and FedEx Field were both built without a PLA — as were Camden Yards and Ravens Stadium — on time, on budget, and most importantly, by local tradespeople who weren’t forced to go through a union hiring hall or pay mandatory dues to an organizationthey didn’t freely choose to join.
In signing the stadium PLA, Mayor Williams disregarded the best interests of his own constituents — specifically small and minority business owners, non-unionized construction workers and taxpayers. And too-little, too-late promises by City Council members who let him get away with this betrayal will not undo the damage.
