CIFAC's Annual Report - Accomplishments and Findings

In 2010, CIFAC's Executive Director and Field Representatives investigated projects valued at $807 million, bringing the last nine-year total to $5.7 billion.

Since the creation of CIFAC in 1977, CIFAC’s investigations, research and coalition-building have led to eight pieces of legislation signed into law that benefit the public works construction industry.

In the past, public works construction has been the pathway to economic recovery.

Download the CIFAC 2010 Annual Report (PDF)

In 2010, the number one issue for our industry was California’s and the nation’s economic downturn.  Local and state government agencies, strapped for funds, tended to keep work in-house to preserve public sector employment.  Rather than putting new projects out to competitive bid, public works officials tried to use their own in-house staff in order to preserve jobs.  But CIFAC’s position is that putting new public works construction out to bid will allow staff to work on the backlog of undone and/or unfinished maintenance projects.

These are good times to use competitive bidding to ensure best value, transparency, quality guaranteed work and is just good public policy.

In the area of legislation, CIFAC sponsored a bill that was authored by Assembly Speaker John Perez (L.A.) to curb the uncapped authority of County Road Commissioners to do all road construction using in-house staff. Despite the best efforts of our remarkable coalition of contractors associations and labor unions working together, our bill, AB 1409 (Perez), did not make it through the legislature and has been reintroduced again as AB 720 (Hall) in the 2011-2012 session.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds were appropriated to help stimulate the economy by providing funding for public works construction jobs. ARRA guidelines clearly call for these projects to be competitively bid, yet many jurisdictions were applying for waivers in order to do the work with in-house staff. CIFAC’s tracking and intervention resulted in the recommitment by the Federal Highway Administration and Caltrans to require the City of Los Angeles and other local governments to competitively bid ARRA funded projects.  In the case of Los Angeles, this meant nearly $20 million. CIFAC staff continues to monitor the projects funded by ARRA to ensure they are properly bid.

Other issues that CIFAC identified in 2010 that need resolution include: Improper advertising of new projects or no advertising at all; the loose interpretation of what constitutes an "emergency;" public agencies rejecting all bids to do the work less expensively with their staff, only to find that it is actually more expensive; and public agencies buying large stocks of equipment and supplies and actually competing with contractors.

These are examples of the range of potential breaches of force account and contract code law that CIFAC pursued in 2010. Thanks to the contributions of our members and supporters this has been a successful year. Every year we continue to challenge ourselves to create additional achievements on behalf of our members, supporters and the taxpaying public.

I join our Board of Directors and officers in thanking our network for their continued support.David A. McCosker, President