Another Example of the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act Costing Taxpayers

Via the Chicago Sun-Times and Better Government Association, we have yet another example of how the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act undermines responsible public spending by making projects more expensive than they need to be. This time the hit is being taken by the state's Urban Weatherization Initiative, which is a program intended to train and put people to work weatherizing homes:

Many of those who have gotten work through the program are being paid not at the $20 an hour expected rate for these relatively unskilled jobs but instead at the scale the state sets for skilled carpenters — as much as $49 an hour. That’s because the program’s architects failed to recognize salaries would need to be in accord with the state’s Prevailing Wage Act, which doesn’t have a category for weatherization workers. With each home limited to repairs of no more than $6,500, the inflated pay has eaten up money intended for the improvements.

“Contractors are running away from this” because of the high pay, says Kerry Knodle, executive director of the Illinois YouthBuild Coalition in Rockford, a nonprofit agency involved in the project. 

“It’s killing the program,” says Percy Harris, chairman of the volunteer state board Quinn appointed to oversee the initiative.

The weatherization program is part of the $31 billion Illinois Jobs Now infrastructure investment program. Whatever one might think of the program, it's abundantly clear that Illinois' current prevailing wage rules sometimes appear to do a better job of compensating workers than actually maximizing taxpayer dollars to achieve targeted goals. 

The Illinois Prevailing Wage Act needs to do a better job of balancing wages with results-oriented objectives.