Letter to the editor: New reporting requirements bogged with red tape

Published: February 1, 2010
Tags: ABC, contactor, Department of Workforce Development, DWD, payroll, payroll data, Stone

To the editor:

With private construction spending down, policymakers are hopeful that government spending on public projects will spur economic growth. But new regulations accompanying the spending are counterproductive.

Builders who regularly work on public works projects know to expect a certain level of inefficient government regulations. Newcomers, attracted by the increased spending, will be stunned by the red tape.

In either case, the new payroll reporting requirements effective this year will befuddle experienced public works contractors and newcomers alike.

The provision, adopted last May as part of the budget bill, requires non-union contractors working on government jobs to provide payroll data to the state while largely exempting union contractors from complying with the same requirement. The payroll data will then be posted on a state Web site. For the most part, union contractors are only required to submit a copy of their collective bargaining agreement which provides absolutely no indication if the contactor has complied with the law.

Associated Builders and Contractors of Wisconsin has filed an injunction in Dane County Circuit Court to block the implementation of the new law because we feel the Department of Workforce Development is exceeding its statutory authority.

The new law specifically requires contractors to provide four pieces of information; employee name, trade, hours worked and wages paid for employees working on public projects. On Feb. 1 contractors finally were able to see the reporting mechanism. Rather than four pieces of information, the department is requiring nearly 50 different pieces of information for each employee on each project each month. Contractors have until Feb. 7 to comply.

This new requirement is on top of existing requirements. Contractors are already required to maintain payroll records, sign an affidavit assuring that workers were paid correctly and allow the state to review those records upon request. Federal project and certain municipalities require a “slimmed down” version of payroll reporting and this new law would require contractors to submit another payroll report on different form to another level of government. In some cases this could result in three different payroll reports to three different levels of government for work done on a single project.

This is just another example of an overzealous state agency putting more regulation on a struggling industry. It doesn’t create a single job or put a single tradesperson back to work.

Steve Stone,
president, ABC of Wisconsin