EdLawConnect Blog

For those school and community college districts (and other public agencies) that have opted into the California Uniform Public Construction Cost Accounting Act ("UCAA"), at Public Contract Code Section 22000 et seq., your flexibility just increased.  Back on July 1, 2011, Assembly Bill 943 increased the formal bidding threshold amount for public agencies that have opted into UCAA from $125,000 to $175,000.  Correspondingly, the safe harbor triggered when all bids received exceed the formal bidding threshold, and the governing body of the public agency adopts a resolution by a four-fifths vote to award informally within the safe harbor, rose from $137,500 to $187,500.

Starting on January 1, 2012, local air quality management districts, aka air pollution control districts ("APCDs"), will have the ability to grant funds to school districts to help retrofit emission control equipment and replace natural gas tanks on school buses, as well as enhance school districts' existing natural gas fueling stations.  These funds will come from surcharge fees collected by APCDs through the Department of Motor Vehicles.  Once APCDs implement the surcharge, and collect it from the DMV, the resulting funds must be used for specific programs as set forth in Health and Safety Code sections 41081 and 44229.  Now, with the passage of Assembly Bill Nos. 462 and 470, APCDs will have three new options for spending a limited portion of the surcharge starting in January 1, 2012:

The Office of Public School Construction ("OPSC") recently announced that the State successfully sold bonds on October 19th yielding "approximately $1 billion for School Facility Program projects."  OPSC expects the State Allocation Board ("SAB") to include disbursement of the available funds "to projects on the unfunded list with valid priority funding certifications" on its December 2011 agenda.  As OPSC noted, 187 school district certifications for 504 projects (306 modernization projects, 136 new construction projects and 62 projects from additional programs) are on the unfunded list.  These 504 projects comprise a total of $1.34 billion.  Accordingly, it appears that with about $1 billion in revenue becoming available, and $1.34 billion worth of projects on the unfunded list, there will be projects with valid priority funding certifications on the current unfunded list that still will not have money available.

On October 9, 2011, Governor Brown signed AB 1156.  The law, similar to AB 9 (also approved by Governor Brown on October 9, 2011, and about which we previously reported), is an anti-bullying measure aimed at giving victims of bullying priority or special consideration for interdistrict transfers.  The law amends Sections 32261 (Interagency School Safety Demonstration Act of 1985), 32282, 32283, 46600, and 48900 of the Education Code.

Recently, the Department of Industrial Relations (“DIR”) announced that, effective September 1, 2011, it “discontinue[d] separate approval of third party LCPs.”  A third party LCP is a DIR-approved provider of labor compliance services that provides those services, by contract, to an awarding body.  DIR is, in their own words, “ending the existing approval of private [LCP] programs and grandfathering those approvals over to awarding bodies,” and will only be granting new approvals to awarding bodies going forward.  While DIR’s notice will have minimal impact on awarding bodies such as school and community college districts that maintain and enforce their own approved LCPs with their own personnel, the impact on awarding bodies that rely on third party LCPs is more significant.  How does this affect your district?