Stalling on sub-bid law will cost, MWRA warns. (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority acts on state legislature's refusal to act on a bill to repeal state's filed sub-bill law)

Stalling on sub-bid law will cost, MWRA warns

The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) is warning that a projected $32.8 million in savings on some $328 million of construction contracts will likely be lost because of the Legislature's refusal to act on a bill to repeal the state's filed sub-bid law.

Last January, MWRA executive director Paul Levy released a study that claimed the state's sub-bid law, which requires separately filed bids for 17 categories of subcontractors in addition to the bids filed by general contractors, would needlessly add $250 million to the cost of cleaning up Boston Harbor. At the time, he warned that the federal court order governing the harbor cleanup required that five contracts worth $328 million would be put out to bid by the end of April 1991. Elimination of the sub-bid law would lop 10 percent from the bids.

Separated from deficit

Legislation to repeal the law was included by the Weld administration in its "emergency" plan to cut …