Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk ahs vetoed a pro-union law - The Morning Call

Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk says he won’t support a controversial ordinance that would tighten requirements for city contractors unless it’s amended.

On Tuesday, City Council members Cynthia Mota and and Daryl Hendricks told The Morning Call that Tuerk vetoed the ordinance. City Clerk Mike Hanlon also said he considered Tuerk’s non-signature a veto because Tuerk indicated he would not allow the bill to automatically become law after 10 days without his signature.

Tuerk sent a memo to City Council on Friday that said while he was “broadly supportive of legislation that would improve quality of life for our workers,” his concerns about the ordinance “make it impossible” for him to sign the bill as presented.

Allentown’s responsible contractor ordinance would require all construction contractors in the city to have an apprenticeship program in place for at least five years. Critics say that would unfairly benefit some contractors over others and increase costs of construction projects for the city, but advocates argue it would encourage workforce development and ensure fair pay and working conditions.

Under the ordinance, some city contractors would no longer qualify to work on city construction projects. According to a finance department analysis, of 42 contractor bids the city received on 17 recent construction projects, 25 would no longer be eligible to work with the city under the new ordinance.

Tuerk told council in the Friday memo that the bill’s sponsors, Josh Siegel and Ed Zucal, must correct the ordinance’s references to Lehigh County and remove parts of the ordinance that required city authorities such as the parking authority and the housing authority to adhere to the new requirements.

Council was expected to consider an amended version Wednesday, but it is no longer on the meeting agenda. Siegel and Zucal could re-introduce the ordinance at the March 16 meeting. Neither Zucal nor Siegel could be reached for comment.

“It would have been nice to know that it was a veto ahead of time,” Mota said. “Because it has been a headache since the beginning.”

Tuerk said Tuesday that he would sign into law an amended version of the ordinance with the corrections he suggested.

Mota, Hendricks and Candida Affa voted against the ordinance, which narrowly passed by a 4-3 vote last month. Siegel, Ce-Ce Gerlach, Zucal and Natalie Santos voted for the ordinance.

At an Allentown Parking Authority Board meeting last month, that board unanimously requested Tuerk veto the ordinance. Board chair Ted Zeller said that the ordinance’s requirements would have “grave impacts” on some of the construction projects the authority has planned.

“[The ordinance] would eliminate competition on many different levels for us,” Zeller said. “If we’re delayed an additional six months to a year to have to go through these additional processes, it really is going to hamper our ability to keep up with development, and honestly, too, in these inflationary times, the inflation of the added time alone is going to increase costs.”

source: https://www.mcall.com/news/local/allentown/mc-nws-allentown--20220301-pjddriek6vdlfgvqjjhs6qgmbu-story.html

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