Wilson Backs Use of Private Engineering on Highways : Government: Governor supports Bergeson bill to override judge’s ban on private firms’ work, cites threat to existing public projects and small companies.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Pete Wilson threw his support Wednesday behind an effort by Sen. Marian Bergeson to override a judge’s ban on the use of private engineering firms for work on public highway projects.

In supporting Bergeson, Wilson proclaimed that the ban on private consulting threatened to force the state Department of Transportation to halt work on a multitude of projects now underway in the state and potentially force some small firms to shut down.

“I cannot and will not let that happen,” Wilson said in a prepared statement. He added that he would sign a bill sponsored by Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) as soon as it passed through the Legislature “so that we can keep people working and move these vital transportation improvements forward.”

Wilson suggested that the ban threatened to hurt efforts to use transportation construction to stimulate the state’s slumbering economy. In addition, the freeze could harm attempts to retrofit the state’s freeways to better survive earthquakes, he said.

Bergeson’s bill, which cleared the Senate Transportation Committee on Tuesday, would short-circuit a May ruling by a Sacramento Superior Court judge that Caltrans had violated the state constitution by contracting highway work to private consultants instead of using state-salaried staff.

The Professional Engineers in California Governments has been at odds with Bergeson since 1988, when the senator pushed through legislation giving Caltrans authority to contract out engineering services. Officials with PECG, which brought the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment.

Under the recent Superior Court ruling, the state stands to lose $150 million in contracts to private engineering firms.

Bergeson said the freeze would prove a setback for the state’s efforts to widen highways and provide other transportation improvements, among them reconstruction of the Santa Ana Freeway in Orange County and replacement of the section of freeway in Oakland that collapsed during the Bay Area earthquake of 1989.

Caltrans Director James W. van Loben Sels said the department must cut its level of contracting by 25% if the Legislature doesn’t intervene, a retrenchment that would cost more than 1,200 jobs in the private sector.