How Kane County may create its own prevailing wage
Prevailing wage in Kane County may exist as it always has for only one more year after a discussion Tuesday resulted in the most votes it's ever taken against the state-mandated law.
Inspired by Gov. Bruce Rauner's turnaround agenda, Elburn Republican Drew Frasz persuaded five fellow GOP board members to vote against the prevailing wage ordinance. The resolution, which the state requires the county board to pass every year, sets the hourly wage, benefits and overtime for workers involved in government contracts.
Frasz pushed for "no" votes ever since the county board passed a watered-down version of Rauner's call for reform in Springfield last month. Frasz, a nonunion contractor, said the vote would be a symbolic message to the Illinois General Assembly that Kane County supports a free market when it comes to government projects.
Frasz said the default prevailing wage in Kane County, and Illinois, is based on a union scale that results in government projects costing up to 25 percent more than they would otherwise.
"This is a key component of the Illinois turnaround program that many of us would like to see put in place to restore our competitiveness," Frasz said. "It's time to free our taxpayers of this burden."
Kane County Board members Maggie Auger, Doug Scheflow, T.R. Smith, Susan Starrett and Barb Wojnicki, all Republicans, sided with that reasoning.
But the majority of the board, including several Republicans, voted in favor of the prevailing wage law.
"Where does the money go? It goes into the hands of working men and women," said former Kane County Republican Party Chairman Mike Kenyon. "All they want to do is provide a good home, food and education for their families. It's not wasted dollars."
Aurora Democrat Brian Pollock said states that have abandoned the prevailing wage have seen the median wage drop for their workers in the past decade. Despite Illinois' financial problems, that hasn't happened here, he said.
"The answer to providing good jobs to the people of this county is not to lower the wage," Pollock said.
Despite Tuesday's vote, Frasz, the vice chairman of the county board, said he will work within the existing prevailing wage law to lower the pay rates the county is bound to.
That means hiring a consultant to perform a wage study with local union and nonunion contractors. The county then can use the results of that study in place of the labor department's prevailing wage survey.
Frasz believes the county would be able to set wage rates far below the current prevailing wage.
"The chances of us doing our own survey, I would say, are 100 percent," Frasz said. "The unions will no doubt sue us for doing it. You have to build that into the cost of doing the survey. But we can do it."