Engineers’ Feud May Stall Plan to Unsnarl Traffic

Just as Gov. Gray Davis has made an unprecedented multibillion-dollar commitment to easing traffic headaches around the state, a controversy is brewing that could derail his plans.

An initiative headed for the November ballot would make it easier for state and local entities to contract privately for engineering and design work.

The initiative has reignited a 20-year-old debate that pits private engineers against their public counterparts at Caltrans, with both sides arguing that, if the other prevails, the public can expect lengthy delays in key transportation projects.

The private engineers who are sponsoring the ballot measure contend that, despite a recent hiring binge, Caltrans lacks sufficient personnel to handle the billions of dollars in transportation projects that are expected to hit the state in coming years. They note that 40% of the people on the agency’s staff have less than three years’ experience.

“Caltrans can’t do it because they don’t have enough skilled, veteran engineers,” said Gene Erbin, a lobbyist representing the Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California. “We have all these engineers with plenty of experience in the private sector who are ready and willing to go to work.”

The union representing the state highway engineers counters that, if voters approve the initiative, the state will have to develop new procedures that could take 18 months or more to complete. In the meantime, they say, transportation projects would slow to a crawl or simply halt.

“It’s a serious threat,” said Bruce Blanning, executive assistant of Professional Engineers in California Government, the union that represents 11,000 engineers, architects and land surveyors employed at state agencies. “These engineering firms . . . know there’s billions of dollars coming into the pipeline and they want to get their snouts deeper into the trough.”

The dueling groups--a bureaucratic version of the Hatfields and the McCoys--have battled each other for more than a decade in court, in the Legislature and at the ballot box. In recent years, each side has turned to the initiative process in hopes of winning a definitive victory.

The November initiative is much broader in scope than transportation. Its passage could affect who gets to engineer and design everything from sewage systems to prisons and public schools.

Resolving the long-standing dispute has taken on new life in the Legislature this year because Davis has made a six-year, $6.8-billion commitment to funding congestion relief projects around the state.

Garry South, Davis’ top political strategist, said in an interview that he believes it’s possible the initiative will be a moot point in November if an agreement can be negotiated. Davis has not taken a position on the initiative.

“If our level of transportation spending and the number of transportation projects envisioned under the governor’s plan come to fruition, there’s going to be more work in California than every single engineer at Caltrans and every single private sector engineer can handle,” South said. “There’s plenty of work to go around.”

Attempts by Democratic lawmakers to negotiate a compromise fell apart late last week, however.

The private engineers balked at a proposal that would guarantee job protection for 10,500 Caltrans employees in exchange for Caltrans’ being allowed to contract out as much as 30% of the growth of engineering and design work to private firms.

“The measure we were asked to endorse would have been, in some part, a bureaucratic protection act,” Erbin said.

In the 1999-2000 fiscal year, Caltrans awarded 26 contracts for engineering and design work worth $131 million to private firms. By comparison, the agency had a construction budget of roughly $2 billion.

Assemblyman Fred Keeley, the Democrat from Boulder Creek who led the failed negotiations, said the gap between the two groups was too large to bridge, given the time they had to work with.

“I certainly believe there is enough work for public sector and private sector interests to share,” Keeley said. “You don’t have to side with one to the detriment of the other.”

Rebecca Long, a senior fiscal and policy analyst with the independent legislative analyst’s office, added that Caltrans is facing constraints in terms of staffing and facility needs. “Without a change in contracting out practices, it may be very difficult for Caltrans to meet its ambitious project delivery schedules over the next few years,” Long said.

The agency also is short about 600,000 square feet of office space, which amounts to roughly three 15-story buildings, Long said. Space demands are expected to grow by another building of the same size when staffing for Davis’ transportation plan is included.

Negotiations are scheduled to resume when the Legislature returns from a monthlong recess in August. Should those efforts fail, a multimillion-dollar battle over the November ballot initiative is certain.

The state highway engineers sponsored Proposition 224 in 1998, which would have abolished no-bid private contracting by state and local governments on contracts using more than $50,000 for preconstruction engineering, design and environmental impact reporting work. The measure was defeated.

The private engineers have dubbed their current initiative the “Fair Competition and Taxpayer Savings Act.”

Their opponents are calling their counter-campaign “Californians Opposed to School and Road Delay.” Recently the Caltrans engineers angered their private-sector counterparts, whose Internet address is https://www.celsoc.org, by buying the World Wide Web site address https://www.celsoc.com.

Visitors who signed on to https://www.celsoc.com were connected to the Web site opposing the initiative. An amused Blanning said the site was only up for a few days.

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LIMITING POLITICAL GIVING

Ballot measure aims to control campaign contributions, but critics are skeptical. A3