Letter to Olive Press

I just sent this letter to the editor of the Olive Press, Paul Smart.  Onteora High School is located in Boiceville, New York, a few miles from my home.  The name "Onteora" is a name for the Catskill Mountains, reportedly derived from Mahican Indians, although Onteora may have referred to an area further south, according to this site.

Dear Editor:

One of the many corrupt, big-government scams in New York State is the fruit of a son of Olivebridge, Arthur H. Wicks. Wicks ran a laundry company in Kingston before being elected to the New York State Senate, in which he served from 1927 to 1956. He later became Lieutenant Governor, but was forced to resign when he was discovered making frequent visits to convicted Machinist Union president Joseph S. Fay while Fay was vacationing in Sing Sing prison. Fay had been convicted of extortion on construction sites.

Arthur Wicks remains a legendary name today because the Wicks Law bears it. The Wicks Law was originally passed in 1912, but it was amended during Wicks's tenure as Senate Majority Leader. The Wicks Law prohibits any public entity in New York State from hiring a general contractor (GC). Four separate categories of contractors, (a) heating, ventilating and air conditiong, (b) plumbing, (c) electrical, and (d), all other, must be hired and supervised directly by the state or other public entity. At the state level, agencies like the Department of Transportation, the Office of General Services and the Dormitory Authority oversee construction. It is well known that they lack the competence to do so because GCs of the caliber needed to manage large-scale construction projects have out-sized salaries that do not fit civil service pay scales. But as Olive citizens who work in construction know, general contractors limit waste. The lack of a GC opens the door to abuse, crime and law suits. Studies have found that the Wicks Law increases construction costs in the state by 15-30%. No one except construction unions and public contractors supports the Wicks Law. In the 1980s, Mario Cuomo had appointed an anti-crime commission that found that the Wicks Law fosters organized crime.

The Wicks Law serves as a long lived example of why government does not work, and why political decision making on a large scale fails. At a point in time when the state needs to cut spending, a law like this would seem to be a logical place to start. Yet, at a recent meeting of the Tea Party here at the Shandaken Gun Club, a Republican candidate, who is aware of the Wicks Law and who owns a construction firm, did not mention it as a potential area for cutting. Instead, he advocated raising cigarette taxes. Of course, it goes without saying that loot-and-spend Democratic Party Assemblyman Kevin Cahill has no interest in touching the Wicks Law with a ten foot pole. Cahill roars with delight wherever massive government waste occurs.

Hence, low quality, mismanagement, waste and incompetence are part and parcel of big government New York. Add to which neither Democratic nor Republican candidates have the vocabulary to question any of it. The speaker at the Tea Party was so lacking in vocabulary that he could only speak in terms of a spending freeze. The vocabulary of freedom on which the nation was founded has been lost, and the Republicans appear to be as much in the dark as are the Democrats. Perhaps the nation should give its government a two year vacation and spend the two years re-learning what the now-forgotten anti-federalists like Sam Adams had to say. Given the low quality of today's public figures, Americans have every reason to fear for their childrens' future. The problem starts with the benighted public schools, which are purveyors of ignorance, ideology and suppression. The first place to look for anyone interested in change is Onteora High.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Acid Test for New York State Candidates

A friend will be interviewing Steve Levy, a prospective New York State candidate for governor, as part of a Republican group. Levy is a Democrat who is considering running as a Republican. Although I am skeptical of over-zealous emphasis on partisanship in part because there have been too few differences between the parties for too long, I am also somewhat skeptical of cross-party candidacies, basically for the same reason. If a Democrat is really for reducing government, why on earth is he or she in the party of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack H. Obama?

But I am not dogmatically opposed to Levy and may in fact support him if he can prove himself as a small government or at least a reduced government candidate (the GOP's other best bet, Rudy Giuliani, is hardly a small government man--although there were no large increases in New York City government during Giuliani's incumbency there were no large reductions either and it is hard to know because of accounting shenanigans).

At first I suggested that my friend ask a wide range of questions, but I realized that only one are two are necessary if there is too little time. One very good litmus test is Levy's position on the Wicks Law. Senator Arthur Wicks was a Republican from Kingston, the very city in which I am a member of the County Committee. This is what I wrote to my friend:

All you have to ask him is about whether and how he will repeal the Wicks Law. The Wicks Law has been on the books since 1912. The law is named for Senator Wicks who amended it. Wicks, I believe, was from my own Town of Olive in the Village of Olive Bridge which is a few miles from my home in West Shokan. Ultimately Wicks was forced to resign as Senate Majority Leader and acting Lieutenant Governor because "it became known that he had made frequent visits to convicted labor leader Joseph S. Fay while the latter was incarcerated at Sing-Sing prison."

The Wicks law says that the state or any other public entity (New York City, Town of Olive) may not hire a general contractor (GC). Four separate categories of contractors, (a) heating, ventilating and air conditioning (b) plumbing (c) electrical (d) all other, must be hired and supervised directly by the state or other public entity. The lack of a GC opens the door to abuse, crime, coordination problems and law suits. Government officials lack the knowledge and experience required to supervise mammoth construction projects. That is why private sector developers hire GCs. Studies find that the Wicks Law increases public construction costs in the state by 15-30%. No one except construction unions and public contractors supports the Wicks Law. Even the New York Times has editorialized against it. Mario Cuomo had appointed an anti-crime commission that found that the Wicks Law fosters organized crime. When I served on the State Assembly staff in 1991 I attended a meeting at Alan Greenberg's office in Bear Stearns. The meeting was meant to devise cost cutting strategies. Presidents of the leading construction firms in New York City were the majority of the participants. I asked one privately about this and he told me that public construction in New York is so corrupt that he never bids on any public contracts.

Compounding the Wicks Law, if you have time there is a second issue, the diffusion of responsibility for construction in four or five different state agencies. These include the Dormitory Authority (whose existence in itself is an outrage) and the Office of General Services. There are two or three others. What happens is that the actual costs of construction are back charged to the agencies on whose behalf the construction is done. So if the Dormitory Authority does work for SUNY it gets charged to SUNY. This buries the true construction costs around the state. Openly comparing the construction costs in one agency would prove embarrassing to the state because the costs are so high, much higher than other states. The state avoids this.

See:

http://www.acecny.org/PDF/WicksLawPosition.pdf

http://www.stopthetaxshift.org/procurement/60-the-wicks-law