CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State Senator Bill Cole believes that if a solution can’t be reached in the prevailing wage issue, the Republican-led legislature could repeal the prevailing wage laws in January during the open of the next session.
“I’m not sure, in retrospect, that it’s necessary,” he said on the MetroNews-affiliated “The Mike Queen Show” on the AJR News Network. “I think 18 states don’t have a prevailing wage law and the 32 that do probably most of them deal with it more of a market-type pricing rather than the abuses that went on in West Virginia.”
Cole and House Speaker Tim Armstead issues subpoenas to force WorkForce West Virginia to turn over documents regarding prevailing wage. Cole will let the situation play out, he said, but his concern remains promptly with the tax payer.
“I felt like we had gotten to a good understanding–a reasonably way to in fact identify a proper wage to be paid on these state taxpayer paid jobs,” he said.
Cole said that they had enough votes to repeal the prevailing wage during the previous session, but wanted to reach across the aisle.
“I genuinely believe that the sum of the parts can be certainly greater than the whole,” he said.
But now, there may be some regret in that decision–as he feels that WorkForce has failed to live up to the standards created by the new law.
“We put it to the test, and WorkForce West Virginia was supposed to work arm-in-arm with WVU and Marshall to calculate a new method or means to come up with a proper prevailing wage,” he said. “A true prevailing wage, and not one that has been abused as it had been in the past.”
But the Republican candidate for Governor said that failing to reform the prevailing wage would be unfair to taxpayers.
“I want to be fair,” he said. “I want to be fair in every respect to our workers, but absolutely to our taxpayers.”
WorkForce West Virginia had until 5 p.m. Friday to comply with the subpoena request.