Report Title:

Public Works; Wages

 

Description:

Exempts public works contracts from the specification that the minimum wage must be the prevailing wage if the government contracting party is the department of education or the superintendent of education.

 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

H.B. NO.

1032

TWENTY-FIRST LEGISLATURE, 2001

 

STATE OF HAWAII

 


 

A BILL FOR AN ACT

 

RELATING TO WAGES AND HOURS ON PUBLIC WORKS.

 

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that a shifting of priorities under the state budget is necessary to provide public school teachers with appropriate salaries. The legislature further finds that steps can be taken to free up fiscal resources presently committed in activities only tangentially related to the goal of providing Hawaii's school children with a quality education. The purpose of this Act is to repeal the requirement that prevailing wages be paid to workers on a state construction project for the department of education.

SECTION 2. Section 104-2, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by amending subsection (a) to read as follows:

"(a) Except as otherwise provided, the specifications of every contract in excess of $2,000 to which a governmental contracting agency is a party, for construction of any public work, shall state the minimum wages that shall be paid to the various classes of laborers and mechanics engaged in the performance of the contract on the job site, and that the minimum wages shall be periodically increased during the performance of the contract in an amount equal to the increase in the prevailing wages for those kinds of work as periodically determined by the director of labor and industrial relations; provided that this subsection shall be applied individually and on a case by case basis to each public work project, including development of housing under section 46-15 or chapter 201G, for which a contract is required under this section, and that specific terms of each contract shall be mutually exclusive of the terms of any other public work contract; and provided further that this subsection shall not apply to experimental and demonstration housing developed pursuant to section 46-15 or housing developed pursuant to chapter 201G if the cost of the project is less than $500,000 and the eligible bidder or eligible developer is a private nonprofit corporation.

For the purposes of this subsection:

"Governmental contracting agency" includes any person or entity that causes either directly or indirectly the building or development of a public work[.], but does not include the superintendent of education or the department of education.

"Party" includes eligible bidders for and eligible developers of any public work and any housing under chapter 201G; provided that this subsection shall not apply to any housing developed under section 46-15 or chapter 201G if the entire cost of the project is less than $500,000 and the eligible bidder or eligible developer is a private nonprofit corporation.

"Public work" means any project, including development of any housing pursuant to section 46-15 or chapter 201G, and development, construction, renovation, and maintenance related to refurbishment of any real or personal property, where the funds or resources required to undertake the project are to any extent derived either directly or indirectly from public revenues of the State or any county, or from the sale of securities or bonds whose interest or dividends are exempt from state or federal taxes."

SECTION 3. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2001.

INTRODUCED BY:

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