Wisconsin government employees now must contribute to their extremely generous benefits and retirement. Private-sector employees are no longer join unions if they work for a union employer.

The next step in economic reform needs to be the complete repeal of the state’s prevailing wage law.

Collin Roth explains how and why:

Recently elected State SenatorDueyStroebel, a proponent for the repeal of prevailing wage, has been touting two water towers in Grafton, Wisconsin as the perfect examples of why Wisconsin’s prevailing wage laws are a drain on taxpayers.Here is the story in a nutshell.

In 2011, the village of Grafton sought bids to re-paint and maintain two water towers for a 14-year period. The village believed the work was not subject to Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law and contracted with a company in Georgia for a total cost of $712,183 — $326,468 for one tower and $385,715 for the other.

Six months later, after the initial repainting and rehab work has already occurred, the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) came in to investigate. They determined the project was subject to Wisconsin’s prevailing wage law and Grafton would be forced to retroactively increase their compensation and pay a fine.

The village of Grafton challenged the ruling, but lost and a final order was declared in August 2014.

Here is how it broke down:

• Water Tower One Original Cost: $326,468
• Water Tower One Cost Post DWD Ruling: $468,841 ($142,373 increase)
• Water Tower Two Original Cost: $385,715
• Water Tower Two Cost Post DWD Ruling: $551,979 (at least an increase of $166,264)

In addition, DWD levied a $59,169 penalty against the village of Grafton.

Think about this: a community accepts a competitive bid to conduct a project for $712,183. Once the job is largely finished, the state comes in using the hammer of the prevailing wage law and arbitrarily increases the price to $1,079,989 including the fine — an increase of $367,806.

This is $367,806 in taxpayer dollars that are quite simply robbed due to the prevailing wage law. The village gets nothing extra for this arbitrary increase in price. It is simply a penalty of doing business in Wisconsin.

How does this possibly make sense? How can anyone who claims to defend the interests of taxpayers support such an outrageous scheme?

Can the Wisconsin Contractor Coalition defend this? Steve Lyons? John Gard? Bob Welch? Tim Michels?

Can any Republican lawmaker who is considering opposing prevailing wage based on the whispers they are getting from contractors and road builders?

I suspect they can’t.

Here’s a bit of free advice for Republican lawmakers who see prevailing wage as a tough vote: you’re in office to be good stewards of tax dollars, not a tool of campaign donations.

Media Trackers explains how prevailing wage hurts businesses:

Ford Construction, a small business in Waukesha that works on jobs throughout southeast Wisconsin, has an especially frustrating real-life example of the confusion and increased cost associated with the prevailing wage mandate. …

In June of 2013, Ford Construction won a bid from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation Bureau of Aeronautics to build a snowplow building on the grounds of the West Bend Airport. When bidding on the job, Ford Construction used the classification information available on the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development website to classify the job as metal building erection. Using this information, Ford Construction submitted a bid of $418,000 for the building.

Halfway though the job the state told Ford Construction that they were using the wrong wage rate, and that they must use a federal wage rate since the project was funded significantly through federal monies. Ford says he was told, “The federal government does not recognize [that] metal building erectors exist, and so you have to use iron workers [rate].” When he asked how he was supposed to know this he says the response was, “Well the federal government does not recognize metal buildings and you should know that so you should have used iron workers rates.”

The difference between metal building erectors and iron workers rates is over $30 an hour. Ford was told that his only recourse in this was to file an appeal with the federal government. Now, a year after the building was completed, he has been through two appeals, several hundred hours of paperwork, and over $4,000 in legal fees, all with no resolution. Until the issue is resolved, the government refuses to release $29,000 of the $418,000 owed Ford Construction essentially putting a $29,000 crimp in their working capital.

Ford said that the state is “supposed to have a pre-bid meeting to go over the wage rates and possible wage rate questions.” If the state had done this, he contends, “perhaps this could have been avoided.”

So apparently state bureaucrats don’t even know their own law. Meanwhile, it would seem based on Roth’s example that every public works project in Wisconsin has been overpriced by up to 50 percent for who knows how long. It’s up to backers of the prevailing-wage status quo to prove otherwise.

Otherwise, it’s time that taxpayers actually get their money’s worth.