Public Works Bills Introduced in Legislature

In addition to the various bills being considered by the Washington State Legislature that I've commented on in earlier blog entries, there are a number of other bills relating to public works projects that have been introduced.

I will comment on them more in the days ahead. For now, however, I want to just list them here and provide a couple of comments on them from my quick skim of them:

• HB 1847 - Changing various bid limit thresholds. I haven't yet had a chance to see how this is different from HB 1198, requested by the Capital Projects Advisory Review Board (CPARB). This is scheduled for consideration at an Executive Session of the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee on February 5, 2009 at 8:00 a.m. HB 1230 also relates to changing bid limits for certain types of jurisdictions.
  
  
• HB 1786 - Defining independent contractor for the purposes of prevailing wages. There appears to be some duplication between this bill and HB 1555 on the underground economy as it relates to independent contractors.
  
  
• HB 1648 - Relating to state contracts with veteran-owned businesses.
  
  
• HB 1641 - Authorizing the University of Washington to establish alternative public works contracting procedures, increasing the threshold for Small Works Roster projects to $1 million, permitting award of design-bid-build, design-build, and GC/CM projects over $1 million on the terms most advantageous to the University, and authorizing the University to pre-qualifiy contractors, all only for public works projects not funded with state appropriate funds.
  
  
• HB 1916 - Appears to contain the same provisions as HB 1641 and also authorizes similar procedures for Washington State University.
  
  
• HB 1690 - Authorizing CPARB to approve any alternative public works contracting procedures requested by a university and to recommend to the Legislature whether such practice should be adopted, and restricting all public bodies only to the alternative public works contracting procedures authorized in chapter 39.10 RCW.

If you are aware of other bills impacting public works or other contracting practices in the State of Washington that I haven't commented on here, please contact me or comment on my blog.