Regulatory and Funding Issues Among AGC's 2010 Legislative Priorities
Below are AGC’s priorities for the 2010 Legislative Session as recommended by the Government Affairs Council (GAC) and approved by the Board of Trustees. If AGC members have comments or questions about this information they should contact Rick Slunaker AGC’s Director of Government Affairs at rslunaker@agcwa.com or 360-352-5000.
What AGC Will Work For:
• Sufficient resources to address critical transportation safety preservation and capacity needs.
• Financing mechanisms to support essential infrastructure investments needed to repair and replace aging facilities to support population and economic growth and to protect environmental quality for the state and its communities.
• Improvements in the Workers’ Compensation system which allow employers employees and L&I to utilize final settlement agreements to close claims; clarify the definition of occupational disease; and develop a managed care network for injured workers.
• Limited government enterprise activities in public works construction.
• Streamlined environmental permit processes while maintaining environmental protection.
• Sales tax permits renewable every two years (as opposed to the current requirement of every year which was included as part of last year’s legislation that significantly changed the way contractors pay state sales tax).
• Clarification that general contractors are allowed to file an intent and affidavit on behalf of a subcontractor as it relates to prevailing wage avoiding delays in retainage releases.
What AGC Will Work Against:
• Changes that harm Retro programs by limiting flexibility of associations to provide services and benefits which meet their members’ needs or interfere with contractual relationships.
• Environmental proposals which impose unduly negative burdens on contractors or which are not practical or economically and technically feasible.
• Proposals that divert funds from programs such as workers’ compensation unemployment insurance and public works for other purposes.
• Detrimental land-use laws such as vesting rights alterations which make development efforts more difficult and costly.
• Broad authority to implement public construction procurement methods which have not received clear legislative approval and oversight.
• Changes that will increase business taxes or regulations (for example paying prevailing wage on private jobs increase in unemployment insurance benefits employer “gag” rule increased requirements on out of state prefabrication).
• Proposals that would diminish traditional funding sources for transportation.
• Enactment of a false claims act which treats contractors unfairly.