D.C. Council Committee Recommends Delaying PLA Requirement

The District’s PLA requirement costs between $78 million to $138 million over the 6-year Capital Improvements Plan.

Yesterday, the D.C.  Council Committee on Public Works & Operations recommended approval of the “Project Labor Agreements Amendment Act of 2025,” proposed by Mayor Bowser, as part of the Committee's recommendations for the District’s Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget. This subtitle of the larger Budget Support Act would delay the District's statutory requirement for project labor agreements (PLAs) on construction projects over $50 million until 2032.  The provision would also increase the cost threshold for the requirement from $50 million to $100 million when the requirement would resume in 2032.

The PLA requirement threatened to blow a hole in the District’s capital budget. Estimates varied, but the Mayor, who oversees the 6-year capital plan, estimates that the PLA requirement will cost $138 million unless the Council postpones it as recommended. The District’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) estimated the cost to be $78 million.  Nonetheless, the added costs of PLA forced the hand of Committee Chairwoman Brianne Nadeau (Ward 1), who, despite citing cherry-picked studies funded by unions claiming that PLAs are cost-free, was required to either appropriate the funds to strike the Mayor’s postponement or recommend its passage by the full Council. 

“Without the funds to pay for the cost of striking the subtitle, the Committee must include the subtitle in the budget,” said Nadeau.

Independent, peer-reviewed studies show PLAs consistently drive-up construction costs while adding project completion time, costing taxpayers more for less. This is because they stifle competition and effectively steer public contracts to a handful of unionized firms.  For example, in 2024, the RAND Corporation’s Center on Housing and Homelessness found that a PLA requirement added 21% to cost and 27% to completion time on an affordable housing unit in Los Angeles.  The authors found that, on average, Los Angeles received only four units for every five units it paid for due to the PLA requirement.

Moreover, PLAs do not raise worker wages or benefits in the District of Columbia, making their added costs a total waste of taxpayer resources.  The District is covered by the Federal Davis Bacon law, so all contractors on DC-funded projects are required to pay the prevailing wage.  In fact, PLAs make it harder for DC residents to work on projects funded by their own tax dollars.

The DC Department of Transportation’s report on the PLA used for Ward 8’s $480 million Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge – published in September 2022 and submitted to the Federal Highway Administration in June 2023 – found that between Q1 2021 and Q2 2022, only 22 of the 216 “new hires” (just over 10%) were DC residents. In total, only 20% of the entire workforce was made up of DC residents. Just one new hire on the $480 million project came from Ward 8 itself. This case highlights the failure of PLA mandates to deliver on their promise of local hiring.

Building Victories commends the committee’s choice to approve the mayor’s proposal, even if reluctantly. This subtitle will preserve urgently needed school investments, save taxpayers millions, and expand employment opportunities for DC residents.

The full Council will vote on the Budget Support Act on July 14.