EdLawConnect Blog

Effective January 1, 2012, the legislature expanded the definition of "public project" subject to the California prevailing wage law with criteria meant to cover Power Purchase Agreement ("PPA") projects built on public property, supplying at least half the generated power to the public property owner.

In a typical PPA the local educational agency ("LEA") agrees to lease LEA land, or rooftops, to a private ...

In a recent case, Greg Opinski Construction, Inc. vs. City of Oakdale (October, 2011), the California Court of Appeal strengthened the position of public agencies asserting notice of claim requirements against contractors in their public works contracts. The Court based its decision on Civil Code section 1511, which expressly permits a public entity to require the other party to give notices of delay claims caused by the party receiving the notice. The key is that the delay claim requirements must be “reasonable,” and, as the court noted, “just.”

Despite opposition from various public agency groups supporting school and community college districts, Senate Bill 293 was signed into law. The new law limits retention on public works projects to five percent. Codified as Public Contract Code section 7201, the limit on retention applies to all contracts entered into on or after 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.

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?