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Groups to lobby for changes to wage rules

Published: March 3, 2009
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Sean Ryan
sean.ryan@dailyreporter.com

Development groups say they’ll spend the next month lobbying for changes to a Milwaukee ordinance increasing hiring and wage requirements after the city’s Common Council sent the item back to committee Tuesday.

Developers don’t want the ordinance to die because they agree with its goal of using projects to help city residents find employment, said Chris Korjenek executive director of the Wisconsin chapter of NAIOP, an association for the industrial, office and commercial real estate trade. But they will spend the next month lobbying aldermen for amendments, she said.

The ordinance would require developments receiving more than $1 million from the city to pay construction workers prevailing wages and have city residents work 40 percent of the labor hours.

The state surveys contractors annually to find how what they pay workers on private projects. It uses the results to set the prevailing wage for each county.

The Common Council on Tuesday voted 12-3 to send the ordinance to the city’s Finance and Personnel Committee to obtain more information about what it would cost to enforce it.

The committee chairman, Alderman Michael Murphy, requested an extra month to review the ordinance after receiving a fiscal note from the city purchasing department saying the city would need to spend $24,940 to hire staff for enforcement.

“It’s not a delay tactic; this is what committees are set up for,” Murphy said when some council members raised concerns a delay could hurt the legislation’s chances of passing. “Somebody handing you — literally two minutes before the meeting — the fiscal note, that’s not the way we do business.”

The Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin, the Wisconsin chapter of NAIOP, and the Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors are lobbying for three changes to the ordinance, said Jim Villa, CARW president.

They want to remove the prevailing wage requirement and make the 40 percent hiring standard a goal, rather than a mandate, he said. They also want the rules to require the city dedicate to construction training a portion of money raised in every tax-incremental finance district.

Villa said the additional review by the city committee means more time for the three associations to drive home their arguments.

“For us, it means to continue to review and meet with aldermen and communicate our concern and illustrate our case,” he said.

Pam Fendt, director of the Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods coalition, said she doesn’t want the delay to lead into a rekindling of the debate over the prevailing wage requirement or other changes to the ordinance.

“I hope it’s just an issue of getting questions answered about the fiscal note,” she said.

Murphy said he doesn’t think there was enough opportunity provided for groups to weigh in on the proposal.

He said his committee will investigate how much it would cost the city to enforce the rules in the coming years and will discuss questions about prevailing wage requirements. Murphy said he heard about the development groups’ requested changes a few days before the Common Council meeting, and he wants to hear more about them.

Fendt said the next month will give residents a chance to tell their aldermen how they feel about the ordinance.

“We still feel really confident that the aldermen are going to see the need for their leadership in the area of job creation,” she said.

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