Mayor Jerry Abramson announced today that he’s using his veto power for only the third time in 20 years, saying the ordinance would “undermine Louisville’s efforts to create jobs by imposing new mandates on most private investments that include public funding.”
The ordinance passed last Thursday by a 16-10 votes. Unless sponsors Rick Blackwell and Jim King can gather 18 votes to override the Mayor’s veto, the ordinance as written would die. It’s expected that Democrats will attempt to write a new ordinance addressing labor standards that will be more palatable to Republicans and the Mayor.
Here’s some of the Mayor’s release:
The ordinance would put Louisville “at a serious disadvantage with competitor cities in attracting private-sector jobs and economic investment” at a critical time, Abramson said in his veto letter to the council.
“I am vetoing this ordinance because it creates obstacles to job creation and economic investment at a time when our country is suffering from the longest national economic recession since the Great Depression and our community is grappling with the highest unemployment levels in more than two decades,” Abramson wrote.
“As leaders, I believe now is the time to focus our energies on creating jobs, not obstacles to job creation.”
The ordinance would require private businesses investing tens of millions of dollars to create jobs in Louisville to pay prevailing union wages on all construction work if they received a minimum of $500,000 in public funds.
10 responses so far ↓
1 Rod // May 19, 2009 at 3:53 pm
What a shame that the Mayor has chosen to slap the hard workers of Louisville right in the face. This is not going to change the cost of a single project it will only change the distribution of funds with more going to the top. No longer “Possibility City” the Mayor now favors “Poverty City”.
2 Steve Magruder (I, not D or R) // May 19, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Mayor Jer now has a lot of new enemies… in the Democratic Party.
3 Earl // May 19, 2009 at 4:48 pm
He lost an unfair labor practice complaint to the FOP today too. Remember the car flap?
4 Dino // May 19, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Guess King’s attempt at paying the unions back for supporting his daughter failed.
5 DB // May 19, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Unions and Jer are both unfunny jokes.
6 chris // May 19, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Jerri
Don’t forget your top three reasons for vetoing the labor ordinance:
#3 You didn’t want to actually look like you care for the local working families of the community while hangin around all your elitist buds
#2 Labor would actually be making more money than the kickbacks you get from your fav developers.
#1 It would cost your Baltimore Butt Buddies so much more money that they might never build another bowling alley in Louisville again.
7 Tony P // May 19, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you to the Republicans who also tried to stop this. This would be very bad for this community.
I think the most telling in that the Dems on the Council still voted it through even though you know the Mayor was trying to stop it. They gave him the big F-U!
Look you can pass a law saying workers must be paid a high union wage but if no one wants to come to Louisville to build anything because they don’t want to pay that high union wage than workers get zero $$$ in the end. Brilliant
8 Mark H // May 19, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Nothing like the good ole “man at the top” class warfare angle. It always distills down to the union argument that it is union wages and benefits or poverty. I guess everyone (myself included) who is not in a union, must live below the poverty line.
Oh, and that poverty is always the result of the man at the “top” screwing over the “hard working” man at the bottom. Give it a rest.
Do you really believe that, or is it just the standard spin that is always played? Now for the reality check folks. It’s about competition…..period. Governments compete for outside development and investment, contractors compete for contracts, and workers compete for jobs.
Tony P is absolutely correct in that anything that makes the city less competitive in attracting development and investment will negate the potential for the rest to compete.
9 Sirico // May 20, 2009 at 1:54 am
Ha! Sounds like the Mayor is taking a page right out of George W. Bush’s playbook. We are living in a recession/depression. We should be helping poor and middle class families, not hindering them.
….talk about a race to the bottom!
10 Jim // May 20, 2009 at 4:03 am
Ha. This is a race to the bottom when we have 15,000 people in Louisville that are homeless. Plus another 15,000 that are on a waiting list for Section 8. Some free market economy here in the Peoples Republic. Its a corporate controlled type of economy here with the low wage structure one would find in Louisiana. We live in a state that includes the 48th ranked income state, bottom 5 in health, bottom 5 in schools, bottom 5 in various socioeconomic factors. But to listen to the people in Louisville is that things are going great here. Perhaps for the business community and their lackeys but not for the working poor, minimum wage earners, and the average person of which Louisville consists. So much for real job growth by this mayor. So much for anything outside of being hired for a temp job by the vast majority of these local slimeball firms. So you want to tell me about opportunity. Spend some time at the blog and you can learn something. More coming soon and those of you out there fighting for social justice, keep up the fight.
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