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Prop. 35 Didn't End Feud Over Contracting Out Highway Design Work
By Dan Walters

Some political issues are like meteors that flash across the sky, burning brightly for a few seconds before becoming just particles of space dust.

Others are more like volcanoes that may lie dormant for decades or even centuries, but never become extinct, and occasionally erupt.

"Contracting out" is one of those political volcanoes, a long-bubbling battle over whether state and local governments may use private contractors for vital services, particularly the design of transportation and other public works projects, or must use civil service - and unionized - workers.

The battle's roots are to be found in the wave of political reformism that swept across the state early in the 20th century, in reaction to the perceived corruption of the Capitol. One reform was the creation of a strong state Civil Service system whose workers would be immune from political interference.

When two Republican governors, George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, attempted to shift highway design work from state employees to private engineering firms, unions representing the workers fought back, culminating in a state Supreme Court ruling that reserved highway design work for civil service workers and effectively canceled private design contracts.

The engineering firms that had defended their contracts in political and legal arenas then shifted to the offensive, sponsoring a 2000 ballot measure that specifically authorized private contracting for transportation projects - no small matter when the state was contemplating a multibillion-dollar boost in transportation spending. The background of the squabble included the chronic inability of the California Transportation Department to fill key engineering positions, hundreds of which had been left vacant.

While proponents argued that Proposition 35 was needed to avoid a slowdown in critical transportation work, opponents raised the specter of engineering firms using their political clout to secure lucrative contracts. The ballot measure duel was settled by voters, who passed Proposition 35 by a strong majority. But that only quieted the volcano.

By the time Proposition 35 was passed, Messrs. Deukmejian and Wilson had been succeeded by Democrat Gray Davis, who had close political ties to public employee unions. Proposition 35 gave Mr. Davis the authority to expand private highway engineering, but would he do it? And if he insisted on public employees doing the work, would Caltrans' engineering vacancies delay work on the transportation projects that Mr. Davis championed to relieve traffic congestion?

Dan Walters
is a McClatchy Newspaper columnist. This column is reprinted with permission from the June 1, 2001 Sacramento Bee.

Governor Davis moved toward expanded contracting out in his May budget revision, shifting the equivalent of 801 personnel-years of civil service work to private contractors, bringing the total to nearly 2,000. But with unions still opposing the practice, the state Senate's version of the budget slashed 315 of those positions, leaving the issue to be settled in a two-house conference committee. Davis will have another chance to push contracting out as a final version of the budget is negotiated this month (June).

Even if the Senate's decision holds and those 315 jobs are moved back to the public sector, it's questionable whether it will be anything more than a paper transaction, since Caltrans can't fill the engineering jobs it has now, much less handle more. Although the economy is cooling, private engineering firms have gobbled up engineering graduates with compensation packages far in excess of what the state's civil service system can offer - a problem that also plagues the state in hiring other professionals, such as nurses.

Ironically, the same Senate budget committee that added the 315 theoretical jobs to the Caltrans payroll also decreed that the state will save $300 million next year by eliminating 5,622 vacant state positions that Republicans had alleged were being maintained without warm bodies just to keep their salary money intact.

There's something odd in the juxtaposition of those actions, another indication that politics are not always grounded in logic or reality.

There's something odd in the juxtaposition of those actions, another indication that politics are not always grounded in logic or reality.