Roger Galan shows off over 600 Somerville signatures for the Local Hiring Ordinance. – Photo by Andrew Firestone

Constitutional clash inching forward?

By Andrew Firestone

Debate over Somerville’s proposed Local Hiring Ordinance continued in earnest last week, November 17, at a special session of the legislative matters committee of the Board of Alderman. There, the aldermen listened the competing legal opinions of the City Solicitor, and Sugar Law Center lawyer Mark Stern.

Sponsored by community groups such as the Somerville Community Corporation and Somerville Local First, the lively debate centered on the constitutional viability of introducing an ordinance that requires all developments receiving excess of $50,000 in state or city funds to made a good faith effort to hire 30 percent of their employee hours to local residents.

Mike Buckley, representing the city, reiterated his belief that no ordinance could pass, citing the October 4 legal opinion of Judge Rya Zobel in federal district court, who shot down a mandatory 50 percent quota in Fall River on local hirings and caused the city of Fall River to pay $150,000 in legal fees, an ordinance he called “very similar to many elements,” of the proposed Somerville ordinance.

Buckley said the ordinance would foster protectionist economic policies prohibited in the U.S. constitution under the privileges and immunities clause of the fourteenth amendment.

“Every time this or a similar ordinance or bylaw has come before the Federal Court in Massachusetts, it has been struck down at the lowest level, every time,” said Buckley.

“The very thing you’re trying to accomplish is the very thing the court is ruling to be unconstitutional,” he said.

Stern contested that the ordinance, which as written would not include out-of-state workers in the equation of hires, said that this was not true. He said that the Fall River ordinance has gone too far in barring out-of-state workers, and that the Somerville ordinance was not a mandate, but only a goal.

“The privileges and immunities clause does not protect someone in Arlington from something in Somerville,” said Stern.

“The person who suggests that does not understand the fundamental nature of our constitution which is: states make state law, they can’t contradict federal laws, but within the governing of their states, they are supreme and the federal courts can’t even hear cases about them under the constitution, much less determine them to be unconstitutional acts.”

He accused the City Solicitor of overcomplicating the letter of the law. “Holding up the specter of the city having $150,00 of attorney’s fees is simply, for lack of a better term, a scare tactic,” said Stern. “This law would not subject the city to that kind of risk.”

The aim of the law was to create a city culture where developers advertised to Somerville people first, Stern clarified. It would hold residents on the same level as others and ask a good faith effort from the companies building in Somerville.

“This law is not going to achieve anything else,” he said. “In all likelihood, we’ll never make the 30 percent quota,” which would be within the ordinance.

“I really think the administration’s suggestion that you should have some fear toward [passing the ordinance] is misplaced,” said Stern.

SCC Executive Danny LeBlanc said that since supporting the ordinance he had “felt it was incumbent upon [us] to walk the talk.” Through the first week of November in the second phase of the SCC Polycarp Village development, a large affordable housing complex with 29 units in three buildings, he had gotten his contractors to hire 28 percent of all hours locally, partly through the use of a job fair where 11 percent of all employees for the phase were hired.

“With all this work on the line, it’s easy to just start thinking ‘that the goal is ‘oh let’s bring in that new development, let’s cash in and declare success,’” said SCC VP Ezra Glenn. “I fear that communities like us can be locked into this false belief that we have to give away what we value most to attract the new development.”

“We need to remember some Somerville pride here,” he said. “We’re a gem.”

The committee also heard from Brian McPherson, the Director of Workforce Compliance for Suffolk Construction, which does over $1 billion in business in the Boston area alone. He said that, even though Boston has a 25 percent recommended quota, there was no hard feelings among the massive construction giant.

“We let [subcontractors] know it’s a privilege to do work in the City of Boston, just like it’s going to be a privilege to work in Somerville,” he said.

Of hiring locally and complying with the wishes of the Boston local hiring ordinance, “I put it at the same level as safety. It’s something that needs everyone’s attention and the team needs to work together to see this achieved,” he said.

One resident who was not so keen on the ordinance was Jim Thomas, who spoke of people in other communities like Everett, Chelsea, and displaced Somervilliens who had already left the city due to rising real estate prices.

“Much of the ordinance is focused on construction,” said Thomas. “While Assembly Square is a big project that’s coming, it’s not going to last forever. So, when that well is try, if all the communities around us, like Cambridge, like Boston, anywhere else that there is construction going on, decide to go to this ‘cold war’ option everybody does this, it’s going to make it that much more difficult for Somerville people to get jobs after this project is over,” he said.

Wig Zamore, community activist, said that he saw the ordinance as a perfect ingredient to leverage Somerville’s unique place in the economic cycle. Citing studies by the Metropolitan Planning Organization of regional economic projections, he said, “Somerville is expected to have by far the greatest creation on a percent basis of new jobs of all 101 cities and towns in Eastern Massachusetts in both the next 10 years and the next 25 years, so this is really the time to knuckle down and really make progress on this.”

Joe Grafton, Executive Director of Somerville Local First, said that local jobs foster a quick and permanent development of local economy and local business and anything that could be done to get local people more jobs closer to home was for the best.

“I believe the will is here on this committee, and on the Board of Alderman to get this done,” said Grafton “I believe you have the resources available to do this, and I urge you to act on this, this year and add it to the list of accomplishments for 2011.”