Free Republic

SACRAMENTO — Democratic leaders want to impose union-driven prevailing wage rules on new school construction projects despite a critical state report that says enforcing the rules previously has cost tens of millions in taxpayer funds. State regulators spent about $70 million in taxpayer funds during the past three years to recover just $3 million to $4 million in underpaid private workers' wages, according to state documents released last week. Legislative Analyst Liz Hill said in her recent study on the use of voter-approved bond funds that the Industrial Relations Department's Labor Compliance Program spent $18 to $23 for each $1...

Efforts to restore watershed habitats throughout California, including several in the Bay Area, are threatened because the state is using a largely unknown law to force nonprofit groups to pay prevailing wages to volunteers on their publicly funded projects. "This serves as a de facto prohibition on volunteerism as perhaps every community project in these dire fiscal times uses some level of volunteer assistance,'' Michael Wellborn, president of the California Watershed Network, wrote in a recent letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The issue came to a boil after the state Department of Industrial Relations, responding to a labor union's complaint,...