Gov’s union-only project deals co$t

The Boston Herald reports:

Gov. Deval Patrick wants to amend a transportation financing bill because he says its tax and toll hikes don’t raise enough money. But the governor wouldn’t need so much revenue if he weren’t needlessly spending tens of millions of dollars by imposing union-only project labor agreements. PLAs exclude nonunion workers by requiring unions to be the “sole and exclusive” source of all job-site labor. Early in 2012, state Transportation Secretary Richard Davey told a construction industry group that no PLAs were planned on large bridge projects then in the pipeline. Based on his remarks, companies formed the joint ventures commonly used for these large, complex projects.