from Kevin Pedrotti, Legislative Advocate for the Golden State Builders Exchanges
This Week
After getting a budget signed and everyone back on the payroll, the emphasis this week was committee hearings to meet this week’s second house policy committee deadline. Next week will be less busy than the previous two as the legislature winds down for summer recess on July 15. It is the first time in recent memory there has been a summer recess since the budget is normally hanging in the balance.
Several key measures were acted upon this week and the results were favorable for GSBE.
AB 720 (Hall) – Sponsored by CIFAC and strongly supported by GSBE, AB 720 amends the Public Contract Code to prohibit a county who voluntarily elects to operate under the Uniform Construction Cost Account Act (Act) from being able to use “Road Commissioner” authority granted under Public Contract Code. The bill brings clarity to two conflicting provisions of the Public Contract Code. The California Uniform Construction Cost Accounting Act was established to ensure a fair, open and transparent bidding and accounting process for public agencies that volunteered to joined the Act and adheres to its rules, in exchange for more flexible bidding and advertising procedures. The original intent of the “Road Commissioner” authority was to allow rural counties that were unable to get contractors to submit competitive bids in their area a method to get paving work completed. Today, many counties signatory to the Act have abused this authority by doing millions of dollars worth of new road construction annually, without any accountability of cost. Member counties who abuse the “Road Commissioner” authority and use it for new public works road construction projects are eliminating the opportunity for contractors to bid on the work, reducing the job potential for their workers and preventing the public from knowing if they are getting the best value for their tax dollars. AB 720 passed the Senate Governance and Finance Committee.
AB 780 (Calderon) – Strongly supported by GSBE, AB 780 provides that in the event of a future increase or decrease in the state sales tax, public works contracts must provide for an adjustment in a contract that was entered into prior to the tax change to compensate the contractor for the increase that was not factored into the contract and compensate the public agency in the event of an unanticipated decrease in the sales tax. Statute addressing this circumstance was enacted in 1989 and 1991 when the sales tax was temporarily increased but these provisions were not part of the tax bill enacted in 2009, so contractors have had to absorb the additional tax. This bill will only apply to any future adjustment to the sales tax increase. AB 780 passed the Senate Governance and Finance Committee.
AB 1210 (Garrick) - The state requires construction contractors to develop storm water pollution prevention plans (SWPPPs) in order to prevent the contamination of local waterways from a construction site’s storm water runoff. This requirement, as outlined in the Construction General Permit Order 2009-0009, also requires that only qualified individuals prepare and inspect the SWPPP. Qualified SWPPP Developers (QSDs) and Qualified SWPPP Practitioners (QSPs) must meet one of several prerequisite qualifications and are required to attend a state-sponsored or approved training course.
Under AB 1210, only one person is deemed qualified for the QSD – the registered civil engineer. Under AB 1210, no longer could a registered professional hydrologist, for example, be qualified as a QSD or any other qualified person that has taken the approved training course. The State Water Resources Control Board has spent years drafting the Construction General Permit 2009-0009. It also gave the construction industry two years to appropriately train and test employees to conduct both QSD and QSP work. This bill completely negates these two years of training and is unfair to those construction companies and individuals that invested resources into ensuring compliance. The bill was held this week in the Senate Business and Professions Committee after opposition from the construction industry. The chair gave the author the option of trying to address the opposition’s concerns with amendments. Given that the deadline for policy committee has passed, the bill would require a rule waiver which takes a 2/3’rd vote of the house. GSBE opposed this measure.
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