Spurred by reports that L.A. city departments have been hiring contractors with problem histories, city officials are setting up a program to weed out these poorly performing businesses.

However, the city’s effort has sparked concern from the contractor community, especially from non-union contractors who fear the program could be used by labor officials to unfairly target them with complaints about their performance on the job.

The program involves creating a comprehensive database of all city contractors, containing a report card on each of the several thousand companies doing business with the city. It would indicate how well each contractor meets performance, budget and timing goals laid out in the contract.

“We have contractors who have had significant problems in a contract with the city who end up getting hired again for another contract by a different department,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who has been pushing for a contractor evaluation program for the past year. “Several cases of this have been brought to my attention. It’s a practice we need to step back from, and that’s why it’s essential to have a database that each department can go to.”

Chick said she is not at liberty to disclose the names of specific problem contractors or contracts. However, one city official said the Recreation and Parks Department recently awarded a contract to a company that was later learned to have had performance problems on a project administered by another city department.

Long timetable

In June, the City Council authorized setting up a contractor database; initial funding for staff to compile the database was approved on July 12. Over the next several months, city officials will lay out the criteria by which contractors will be evaluated. Then they will assemble the contractor database, which could take anywhere from six months to a year to complete.

A similar database is now being compiled by L.A. County officials for hundreds of contractors who do business with the county; that database is expected to be complete by the end of this year. The county program is being used to evaluate contractors who are doing work farmed-out under the recent privatization of county services, as well as contractors awarded information technology and construction contracts.

So far, only one company has officially been barred from county contracts as a result of this program, according to Patrick Joyce, general manager of purchasing and contracting for the county’s Internal Services Department.

Joyce said he could not immediately identify that banned contractor.

The fact that few county contractors have been barred isn’t placating representatives of non-union shops. They point to a provision in the county program that allows allegations of labor law and safety violations to be entered into the database, which means they could be unfairly targeted by unions.

“It’s part of a trend we’re seeing,” said Thomas Lenz, an attorney with the Cerritos law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, which represents contractors and management in labor issues. “Organized labor tries to screen out contractors that do not sign union agreements. They scrutinize them and are very aggressive in pursuing complaints not all of which are based on fact and bringing them to the attention of government officials.”

A spokesman for County Supervisor Gloria Molina, who pushed through the county program, said the provision including labor complaints on the database was added because cursory checks with other agencies often missed allegations of contractor violations of basic labor and health and safety laws.

“We want to hold companies accountable in following basic labor laws, as well as in job performance,” said Molina spokesman Miguel Santana. “A lot of companies were falling through the cracks in our checks with other government labor and safety offices.”

Keeping the process clean

However, L.A. City Councilwoman Chick said it is not her intention for a city contractor database to target non-union contractors.

“I want to make sure politics is taken out of the process altogether,” Chick said. “That’s why we’re trying to come up with standardized performance measures that everyone including the private sector can agree upon, so that there are clear, objective criteria to judge the contractors on.”

To that end, the ordinance approved by the council last month also contains measures to ensure that the contracts themselves clearly lay out the scope of work, the budget and the timetable, she said.

One contractor association leader said contractors support attempts to standardize contracts and ensure that everyone is being judged by the same standards.

“We want a level playing field,” said Shane Hoggard, executive director of Associated Builders and Contractors, which represents general building and construction contractors. “As long as it’s done in such a way that ensures everyone complies with safety and performance laws, that’s fine.”

But, Hoggard said, the key issues center on what agency will administer the program, and what information will be entered into the database.

“Who will be checking into the people who are watching over this?” Hoggard asked. “That’s what we want to know. This has the potential to really spin out of control and veer into union politics.”

In response to these concerns, Chick said the council ordinance contains a provision allowing contractors to evaluate how the contracts are written and how city officials administer them.