Collins airs ad blitz opposing prevailing wage
July 22, 2009
Says Legislature’s pro-union move will hurt projects, wipe out savings from low-cost loans.
Chris Collins today unleashes an advertising blitz to prod Erie County legislators into forgetting about the prevailing wage and adopting his plan to jump-start the expansion projects drawn up by colleges, private schools and assorted nonprofits.
A narrator starts the county executive’s radio spots like this:
“During the worst recession since the Great Depression, nothing is more important than creating good-paying jobs in the Buffalo area.
“Unfortunately, the career politicians and their special-interests friends say no.”
Also beginning today: a series of automated telephone calls — “robocalls” — urging taxpayers to contact their county lawmakers, Chairwoman Lynn M. Marinelli in particular.
Marinelli says Collins is using the issue to set the table for this year’s County Legislature elections. He already has targeted a handful of Legislature Democrats for defeat by labeling them as obstructionists and promoting their challengers.
Aides said that Collins’ new political action committee will spend $10,000 on radio advertising to promote his plan to let an arm of the Erie County Industrial Development Agency offer cheaper, tax-exempt financing to nonprofits for their expansions.
In years past, such financing would have been arranged through the Industrial Development Agency itself. However, the state has not renewed the IDA authority that lets the agency finance civic projects.
State leaders have discussed, among other things, the addition of a prevailing-wage requirement that would force those nonprofit borrowers to pay higher wages to their construction workers.
Collins and the IDA’s lawyers found a way past the state’s delay, by using an arm of the IDA known as the Industrial Land Development Corp.
However, Collins’ plea for Legislature consent also triggered a move to apply the prevailing- wage requirement to the Erie County legislation as well.
Collins says the prevailing wage and other pro-union amendments proposed by some County Legislature Democrats would wipe out the savings from low-cost loans. He’s urging the legislators to reverse course.
The amendments were unveiled by Timothy M. Kennedy, D-Buffalo, a staunchly pro-union legislator and chairman of the Economic Development Committee. The committee meets at 2 p. m. today on the fourth floor of Old County Hall to again discuss the request from Collins and the IDA.
Construction-related unions around the state are pushing to add a prevailing-wage requirement to IDA legislation after stressing that IDAs for years have doled out low-interest money to companies that do not produce promised jobs.
The $10,000 will come from Collins’ new political action committee, Taxpayers First, after a start-up donation from his main political fund, Collins for Our Future, explained Christopher M. Grant, the county executive’s chief of staff.
“Anytime the county can directly impact $200 million in economic development projects and create hundreds of jobs, that’s a no-brainer,” Grant said. “He is willing to put the full force of his political organization behind that to effectively communicate a message to taxpayers.”
While Kennedy pushed the pro-union amendments, Collins blames Marinelli for letting it happen by sending the legislation to a committee and not putting it swiftly before the full Legislature for a vote. The radio ad calls her a “career politician.”
Marinelli and other legislators, however, found the original Collins bill loosely written and confusing. It was unlikely to pass when lawmakers last met July 9.
“It has only been before us for two weeks, and I think there has been a lot of progress in those two weeks,” she said. “If this is such a great idea, let it rise on its merits. Let the legislators ask their questions.”
“Consensus is what people are crying out for in government,” she said. “I think it’s a healthy process.”
