Mayor Bowser Rebukes Council for PLA Bill
In her July 10 letter, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) rebuked the D.C. Council for approving Bill 25-469, the Revised Project Labor Agreement Act of 2024. The bill lowers the threshold for PLA-mandated projects from $75M to $50M. Specifically, Mayor Bowser criticized the Council for taking a head-in-the-sand approach to the additional costs imposed by PLAs on the District’s capital budget. Higher costs directly reduce the number of capital projects that the District can afford each year and, as pointed out by the Mayor, “mean fewer school modernizations, fewer updated recreation centers, and a reduced ability overall to meet our capital needs.” (emphasis added)
Bowser reminded the Council that the District’s independent Chief Financial Officer projected that PLAs would raise District construction costs by 10% on average. That amounts to $23.2 million in added costs on the four school modernization projects and $15.8 million in added costs on two non-school projects covered by the bill. That’s nearly $40 million in avoidable costs that the Council has now pushed on to District taxpayers.
At the second reading of Bill 25-469, the Council, led by Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (Ward 1), used a fiscal scheme to circumvent the requirement to appropriate these additional funds. Nadeau’s amendment excluded current projects in the capital plan from the PLA mandate. This merely pushes these costs on to future projects, which, as Mayor Bowser pointed out in her letter, only delays these inevitable additional costs. And not by long. Bowser told the Council the increased costs imposed by Bill 25-469 will be felt as soon as next year’s budget.
