Saline Creates Enforcement Mechanism For Honest Contracting

Saline is now enforcing its ordinance to require contractors that it works with to provide information to ensure the safety, quality, transparency and cost-effectiveness of work done with taxpayer dollars. The Responsible Contractors Ordinance covers everything from contractor competency and safety records, to their environmental record and how they treat their workers.

“Now if for some reason a contractor submits their bid documents, or this questionnaire that will now be tacked on to every project that we do [and] any information is falsified, or intentionally misrepresented, then we have tangible enforcement action against them,” City Manager Colleen O’Toole said. “We can cite them for a violation of the city code of ordinances and take legal action.”

The City Council passed two resolutions in August; one which establishes the rules and one which adds regulatory enforcement. This punishment for any contractor who would lie on any license application, contractor certification, bid for work, property registration application or permit application is meant to weed out what the city calls “unscrupulous contractors,” to the general approval of local labor groups like Michigan Labor District Council.

By “legal action” O’Toole means that the offending contractor would be facing a financial penalty of an unspecified amount, and a general ban from contracting with Saline on future projects.

“The ordinance came in two parts. One of the key things to make it enforceable was that we had to mend the language of an existing ordinance – Chapter 58, Article 2, Sections 58-36,” Councilor Jim Dell’Orco said. “This allowed us to include contractor certification and bid documentation as categories in prohibiting false information to the City of Saline. This fits in with existing documentation that we already had in Saline, to include this piece for the contractors’ bids being held accountable for false information, if they were to indeed provide false information.”

If a contractor makes a mistake on their application form, Dell’Orco says that their claim will be judged by the City Manager, her deputy, and the relevant city bureaucracy.