[Superman]

Fair 'nuff, Lendaddy. Yesterday I was stressed. Thx for the reply. Let me offer this:

PW law exists, not so much to protect workers as to protect local contractors. States are not permitted to restrain interstate trade, but PW laws are acceptable. Senators Davis and Bacon were responding to a situation where their highway money was taken by an out-of-state contractor, along with jobs, etc. The contractor imported the labor.

If PW rates are set low, or mid-level large, efficient local contractors lose, and the law gets repealed. Those large contractors pay high wages (due to market, rather than regulatory, forces), and a mid or low PW places them at a bid disadvantage compared to their smaller and lower-wage competitors. Further, it is the large, efficient contractors who build the best roads. In most countries the lowest bidder is NOT selected. Since we are focused on this lowest-bidder thing, we use PW regulation to level the playing field. In this way, differences in bids reflect differences in efficiencies (how to "run the job"), which is exactly the competition you want to see. I expect Unfixed to chime in here with vigorous support since he administers these contracts. And finally, government buys one fifth of all construction services, and those contracts are, hands down, the largest contracts in the market. In the absence of PW regulation, contractors would do their best to drive wages down, including import of cheap labor. Don't suggest they won't. They do. And this depressed local wages and puts pressure on local public assistance programs. Very costly for the state.

When I made prevailing wages, I knew they were flexible downward for two reasons:

1. Ties always went to the high wage. If I had an option, I went for the high wages, largely because of the principles above, and party for the politics. This is compex and I won't waste room here with further explanation.

2. If I had had the survey resources, I could have collected more data. The unions were very good at making sure I received ALL union hours and wages. So, all additional data I might have collected would have been non-union and lower wages. Non-union companies were not good at responding but again, any additional resources for surveys and I could have reached that data. So, the players in the survet game (unions, union contractors, non-union contractors) conspired in a way to maximize wages.

There is no doubt in my mind that some reasonable survey resources would have cause better "estimation" of local wages. PW rates would fall. Unions and union contractors would stop supporting the law since PW rates would be putting them at a competitive disadvantage (see above), and the law would finally be ripe for the repeal that the non-union sector so desperately hopes for. You know why they are not going to do that? You know why they don't see this opportunity? Because they are still using their favorite weapon. They underfund programs they don't like. It's a complex game, with what appears to be Simpletons at the helm.

Turbo, good question. Check it out. Your question has an answer, I just don't know what it is. You can find out where the money goes. It's your money. Write public record request letters to Superintendents or higher, and 'cc' everyone you can think of.