Tom Warne Report, 9 October 2013
Negotiations are continuing in the Pennsylvania House over a transportation funding plan. Republican House Speaker Sam Smith is working through the head of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to propose to labor unions that the only way to bring life back to the multi-billion plan to repair transportation infrastructure is to alter the state’s prevailing wage law.
This would result in a cost reduction for what projects pay for road construction and maintenance projects. Labor unions have fiercely opposed prevailing wage changes in the past, most recently this past spring when House Republicans repeatedly requested to include these changes in a transportation funding measure.
PennDOT Secretary Barry Schoch, on behalf of the Corbett administration, said he did not want to merge the two issues together in one bill. However, Speaker Smith said this week that more Republicans would get behind a bill that raises the gas tax and motorists fees to fund transportation work if unions could make some concessions.
He said if the labor unions refused to make some concessions, transportation negotiations would die completely until after the 2014 election. Some sources say the real push is actually coming from Senate Republicans, who approved a $2.5 billion funding bill earlier this year to pay for transportation. A House committee revised the bill to $2 billion in spending, which then stalled in the House.