A recently released audit of the $5,268,344.00
contract for repair of storm surge damage to the Galveston Post Office and
Courthouse building during Hurricane Ike found numerous violations by the
principal contractor and its subcontractors of stimulus funding buy American
and Davis-Bacon requirements. Federal government agencies, it seems, are having
at least as much difficulty as various state bureaucracies in complying with
legal requirements for spending funds appropriated under the stimulus passed by
Congress in 2009.
The federal agency responsible for the repair
contract, the Public Buildings Service, has improperly permitted installation
of Canadian manufactured replacement boilers, in violation of stimulus
appropriation “Buy American” provisions. The value of the $35,210.00 boilers
was supposed to promote preservation or creation of US manufacturing jobs, but
instead went north into Canada.
Furthermore, PBS permitted numerous violations of
Davis-Bacon requirements that tradespeople working on stimulus funded
construction projects be paid wages prevailing in the locality of the project
for their specific trades. General contractor Jim Cooley Construction failed on
numerous occasions to even submit to PBS the required certified contractor and
subcontractor payrolls. Auditor interviews of tradespeople employed by Cooley’s
subs demonstrated underpayments of up to $11.91 below Labor Department
prevailing wage rates for the Galveston area.
When Cooley’s trade contractors did bother
submitting certified payrolls to PBS, the required certifications of fringe
benefit payments were often missing or fraudulent. Cooley’s major mechanical
subcontractor, Lakewood Mechanical, Inc., failed to pay fringe benefits of up
to $10.17 per hour for sheet metal workers. As many as 13 Lakewood employees
were underpaid benefits in each pay period. Another Cooley sub, Mechanical
Plumbing, Inc., certified payment of 243 hours of fringe benefits to a benefit
fund that doesn’t even exist.
Texas is an anti-union, right to work state. You
have to wonder whether Galveston PBS bureaucrats were influenced by that fact
in permitting such gross violations of buy American and prevailing wage laws
right under their noses on this construction project.
