Bloom Bill to Deliver Fairness and Cost Savings to Taxpayers
HARRISBURG –Rep. Stephen Bloom (R-Cumberland) today introduced legislation that would make a much-needed update to Pennsylvania’s controversial Prevailing Wage Law, ensuring uniformity and fairness with respect to all taxpayer-funded, public construction projects.
The Prevailing Wage Act of 1961 established artificially high “prevailing” wage rates that must be paid for labor on taxpayer-funded public construction projects, even when contractors are readily available to do the same work for substantially lower market rates. The act previously required workers on public projects costing more than $25,000 to be paid the inflated prevailing wage in their region, but a provision included in
Act 89 of 2013 raised the threshold to $100,000 on locally funded highway and bridge projects.
“While raising the threshold on local highway and bridge projects was a step in the right direction, there remains an urgent and pressing need for additional reform,” Bloom said. “Even under the new law, anything built by any local government entity except highways and bridges is costing hard-working taxpayers 10 percent to 40 percent more than necessary.”
Bloom’s bill, House Bill 1000, would establish uniformity and substantial cost savings by increasing the prevailing wage threshold from $25,000 to $100,000 on any project not already covered in Act 89.
“While I continue to advocate for the full repeal of the wasteful Prevailing Wage Law, raising the threshold in a fair and uniform manner for all public projects will avoid the administrative complexity and expense imposed by a new two-tiered prevailing wage threshold, while allowing school districts and municipal entities, and the taxpayers who fund them, to avail themselves of substantial savings and efficiency,” Bloom added.
Bloom’s bill would allow local governments to further stretch their budgets by exempting, for example, small scale township and borough projects, school projects and recreational projects.
“Now that Pennsylvania has finally decided to stretch local taxpayer dollars into more miles of highways and bridges, we must apply that same commonsense reform to other types of improvements,” Bloom said.
Representative Stephen Bloom
199th District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Abbey Haslam
717.260.6222
ahaslam@pahousegop.com
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