Earthquake Reconstruction
* Re “City Housing Department Violates the Public’s Trust,” Feb. 2.
The Los Angeles Housing Department has financed the reconstruction of 1,562 buildings damaged in the Northridge earthquake. In your Feb. 2 editorial, in which you sharply criticized the Housing Department’s monitoring of federal Davis-Bacon wage requirements on these projects, there were essential misstatements of fact that should be corrected.
* You state that contractors who violate Davis-Bacon requirements are not turned over to the city attorney for criminal prosecution. This simply is not true. In fact, the city attorney is routinely apprised of projects with wage compliance problems. Per agreement with the city attorney, after the Housing Department has completed its investigation and begun recovery of underpaid wages, it will turn egregious cases over to the city attorney for criminal prosecution.
* You state that I admitted mistakes under fierce questioning recently from the City Council. In fact, I was not questioned by the City Council at all recently or for the last six months. But for nearly a year, I have admitted that the Housing Department’s wage monitoring was inadequate in the face of the huge volume of the department’s Northridge earthquake recovery program.
The facts are that we stumbled on wage monitoring, and we corrected the problem. We are monitoring current projects appropriately, we are retroactively enforcing wage requirements on completed projects, and we are preparing cases for criminal prosecution. Thus far we have identified 807 violations and collected over $496,000, which has been paid to over 200 construction workers.
It’s a big job, and we have a lot of work to do, but the city Housing Department is not violating the public’s trust. What we are doing is spearheading the reconstruction of housing damaged in one of the largest natural disasters in the history of the United States, and we are doing a good job.
GARY W. SQUIER
Squier is general manager of the Los Angeles Housing Department
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