By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist
Published 2:15 am PDT Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Here's some good news, for a change: Californians will soon be welcome to volunteer on public projects again.
State legislators and the Schwarzenegger administration have agreed to sweep away a legal glitch that has blocked public-spirited people from offering their time and labor for free to help their fellow citizens.
This was a ridiculous dispute to begin with, and it shouldn't have taken as long as it did to fix it. But a bill to repair the law has now passed both houses of the Legislature and is on the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is expected to sign it.
The problem stems from the long-standing requirement that government contractors pay prevailing wages, which often means union wages, to anyone who works on a public works project. Historically, that has meant endeavors such as building a highway or a new government office building.
A companion law, on the books since 1989, strictly limited the use of volunteers on public projects. Free labor was allowed only when the work in question was performed entirely by unpaid people, the project was to be used primarily by community organizations, and the work would have no "adverse impact" on paid employment.
Combined, the two laws were a bureaucratic disaster waiting to happen. But as long as public works were thought of as major undertakings, it wasn't much of an issue. You don't see too many volunteers driving earthmovers on your average freeway project.
All of that began to change in 1999. In a series of rulings, state labor regulators started cracking down on nonprofit groups that used a mix of public and donated money, and paid and volunteer labor. Citing their mandate to protect workers from exploitation, state officials decided that volunteers, rather than being a credit to society, were a menace. They had to be stopped.
And so the Santee Sports Council in San Diego County was blocked from trying to renovate a local ball field. The Dunsmuir Garden Club, the state ruled, couldn't use free labor to develop a park in that Northern California town. And the Lobrero Theater Foundation was hamstrung in its attempt to rehabilitate a building in Santa Barbara.
These isolated rulings were frustrating local groups, but nobody was picking up on the trend. Then came the tipping point.
The Sacramento Watersheds Action Group last year used state grant money to clean up Sulphur Creek, near Redding. The group cleared the stream bed of brush, repaired culverts and installed rock beds to slow erosion. Some of the work was done by students from nearby Shasta College, who earned course credit for classes in watershed restoration.
After a local labor organizer noticed the work and filed a complaint, the state investigated and found that 60 workers, including the volunteers, should have been paid between $12 and $50 an hour for the labor. The group was fined $33,000.
Word of the Redding ruling spread quickly through the environmental community, which uses dozens of small grants every year to do this kind of work. The irony is that the grant applications themselves required those receiving public funds to demonstrate community support for their projects by recruiting volunteers. Now they were being told that using free labor would disqualify them from receiving the aid.
And it wasn't just streambeds. Groups that built housing for the poor, or repaired fire-damaged wilderness areas, grew concerned that they, too, would run afoul of the law.
Months of negotiations ensued, with environmental groups, labor lobbyists, legislators and the governor's aides struggling to find a compromise. The result, happily, appears to be a big win for volunteerism. The new law, in fact, should be even better than what was on the books before the controversy arose because it repeals all the silly hoops through which nonprofit groups were forced to jump.
The measure, AB 2690 by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, clearly exempts volunteer labor from the prevailing wage standard. It defines volunteers unambiguously as anyone who offers their labor "freely and without pressure and coercion" from an employer. It allows nonprofits to provide meals, lodging and transportation, and to pay volunteer coordinators to supervise the labor. The only caveat is that workers not volunteer on the same project on which they are employed, a reasonable restriction meant to prevent contractors from forcing their workers to, say, volunteer one day out every five on the job.
"This is going to get people back out there," Hancock told me. "People who are really motivated by a desire to serve, a desire to create something for their community, can go out and do it."
The bill does not expressly exempt student volunteers. But Rick Rice, a Schwarzenegger aide in the labor agency, says he believes they will be covered as well.
"We're pleased," he said. "It's amazing sometimes how difficult common sense can be to attain."
It is amazing. The delay has probably stalled dozens of projects that were set to go this summer and now won't have time to be completed. But at least the nonsense is about to end. At last.