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Friday, November 28, 2008 10:25 PM CST
Discouraging donors is bad side effect of law
Our View
By JG/T-C Staff
sports@jg-tc.com
Describing what is at the heart of what some Stewardson-Strasburg booster club parents recently discovered could involve a quote from Ronald Reagan: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
As most Americans have experienced, government often can be a hindrance when it is intended to be a help. Many laws are like that — and the Prevailing Wage Act has those kinds of drawbacks that flabbergasted some Stew-Stras parents this fall.
Supporters of Stewardson-Strasburg, a parents’ booster club for the rural school district, raised money to install an electronic sign in front of the financially strapped school. The club bought the lighted sign from a Teutopolis electrical business, and booster volunteers helped install the addition to the Stew-Stras campus.
Now the Illinois Department of Labor is investigating if the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act was violated. That law can make it a tricky situation for public school districts or other local entities to accept volunteer labor and other donations. The law “requires contractors and subcontractors to pay laborers, workers and mechanics employed on public works construction projects no less than the general prevailing rate of wages (consisting of hourly cash wages plus fringe benefits) for work of a similar character in the county where the work is performed.”
After spending countless hours raising money for the project via a concession stand at St. Louis Rams football games, the 45 members of the Stew-Stras booster club are frustrated by the IDOL probe.
We agree with Angie Helmuth, president of Supporters of Stewardson-Strasburg, who said: “I think it’s crazy — we donated a sign. I’m just so blown away.”
She told an IDOL official: “Now you’re telling me anything that was donated, I would have to pay prevailing wage on it? Then why would I want to donate anything?”
Certainly anyone can agree that a law ensuring fair payment for workers has a good intent.
It’s unfortunate that one side effect of the Prevailing Wage Act is that school districts and other publicly funded services must sometimes discourage volunteerism in order to avoid possible violation of this law. It is especially discouraging at a time when schools are struggling to make ends meet due to funding shortfalls.
If parents want to assist with projects for their community’s schools, they should be able to do so without fear of retribution from the state. This is a law that has good intentions but needs to be revamped to eliminate such bad side effects.
It’s up to us as a people to make government a help, not a hindrance. Let’s hope lawmakers in this state can add such improvements to their to-do list and take the “terrifying” portion out of measures like the Prevailing Wage Act.
— JG/T-C Editorial Board
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Poster51 wrote on Nov 30, 2008 6:55 AM: