Does Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan’s Secretly-Negotiated Construction Deal Have To Come Back For A Final Vote? Kamala Harris Says “Yes” It Does.
Posted by Dave Everett on June 24, 2023
As I wrote about last week, at the June 14, 2023 Irvine City Council meeting, Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan sprung a secretly negotiated construction deal on the city’s residents that will block 80% of the city’s construction workers from working on city construction projects in Irvine. The normal public process for these sole source, no-bid, multi-year contracts for all construction labor is where there is one vote to start PLA negotiations and a subsequent vote to approve the final PLA language that is “negotiated.”
One of the questions I asked at the meeting was “Does this secretly-negotiated construction deal have to come back to the Irvine City Council at a future meeting for a final vote?” Staff and the four Democrat members of the City Council appeared to believe that the PLA does NOT have to come back for a final vote. Unfortunately for Mayor Khan, former Attorney General Kamala Harris says “Yes” it does need to have a final vote because otherwise it would have been “negotiated” in secret/in closed session.
Begin forwarded message:
Date: September 21, 2015 at 4:45:08 PM PDT
To: OPINIONLIST@AGPROD2.DOJ.CA.GOV
State of California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General Kamala D. Harris
September 21, 2015
Published Attorney General Opinion No. 14-302
The following opinion is now available on the Attorney General’s site:
The labor negotiations exception to the open-meeting requirements of the Ralph M. Brown
Act does not permit a community college district’s governing board to meet
in closed session with its designated representative to discuss the negotiation of a project
labor agreement because the contractors and laborers covered by such an agreement are not
district employees.
Download the published opinion (PDF) by clicking the Opinions Search, which contains
published opinions from 1986 to the most current.
Coincidently, this opinion was requested by Irvine’s current Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner. Below is a 2015 article in the Orange County Register by then-Assemblyman Don Wagner about negotiating PLA’s in “Closed Session.” The article reiterates the opinion of California Attorney General Kamala Harris when she ruled that you can NOT negotiate a PLA in closed session. It is interesting that she would confirm an anti-union position in the middle of her run for the U.S. Senate to replace Barbara Boxer.
Another non-union construction association, the Associated Builders and Contractors, asked Assemblyman Wagner to make the written request to the California Attorney General to get a ruling on the issue, because our local community college had tried to negotiate a PLA on their $198 million dollar construction bond. The ruling forced the college to vote publicly on the final deal.
Hopefully, the City of Irvine will also make an effort to act transparent and take a final vote on this special interest deal. The public deserves to know how this deal for sole source, no-bid, multi-year contracts for all construction labor became policy in the city and how Mayor Khan’s political donors (Big Labor union bosses) were involved.
Transparency Extends To Construction Deals / Oct. 1, 2015
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/public-685473-act-brown.html
BY PHILLIP YARBROUGH and DON WAGNER / Contributing writers
“…The fight for transparency continues today, and a recent ruling by California Attorney General Kamala Harris reaffirms the protections of the Brown Act. After learning of some improper closed-door negotiations, we asked the Attorney General’s Office to clarify whether government construction contracts that exclude nonunion firms are subject to the Brown Act.
Government construction contracts that require union-controlled hiring practices are commonly referred to as project labor agreements. By restricting government construction contracts to PLAs, contractors must sign an agreement subjecting their employees to union oversight. In order to receive a contract, a company must submit its employees to union controls and force employees to pay union dues, whether or not they are union members.
Monopoly hiring power is given to unions under the provisions of PLAs.
Many local government officials, unfortunately, have wielded their authority to grant the lopsided privileges of PLAs to union-only firms. It is these same union-only firms, and their affiliates, who have then made substantial political contributions to these same officials. This was all done under the cloak of closed-session negotiations, where public opinion and scrutiny was unwelcomed…”
-Phillip Yarbrough is a Rancho Santiago Community College District trustee; Don Wagner is a state Assemblyman representing parts of Orange County.
OC Political 
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