Walker’s Wisconsin Highway Budget Eliminates Prevailing Wages

Governor Scott Walker’s $6.1 billion highway construction and repair budget drastically cut funding for Interstate 94 improvements around Milwaukee, and also would eliminate the current requirement that contractors on state road projects pay prevailing wages. The prevailing wage requirement on local government road projects in Wisconsin was eliminated by the state legislature in the last budget. Wisconsin Assembly members contend elimination of prevailing wage requirements on state road projects would save taxpayers 1% of construction costs.

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos acknowledges that even with elimination of prevailing wages on state road projects, the legislature should consider increasing state motor fuel taxes and vehicle license fees in order to meet reasonable projections of the state’s future road and bridge construction and repair needs. A recently released state audit of WISDOT was sharply critical of the agency’s dramatic underestimation of major highway project costs by not accounting for inflation and other factors which caused the ultimate cost of 16 major state road projects to exceed WISDOT estimates by over $3 billion since the legislature appropriated funds for them.

Last week the Wisconsin Senate passed a measure which would eliminate the requirement that local government road projects use union labor on their construction, and ends required use of project labor agreements on local road projects. Local units of government may use PLA’s optionally, or not, as they determine what is in the best interests of their taxpayers on a project by project basis.