Local builders in Washington

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Representatives from the Empire State chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors Inc. (ABC) last month attended the group’s annual legislative conference in Washington, D.C., pushing for the repeal of an industry withholding tax and other legislation.
President Rebecca Meinking said the meeting took up several issues to which New York builders are paying extra attention.
One of the first agenda topics was the effort to repeal a 3 percent withholding tax. A law will go into effect Jan. 1, 2009, requiring any federal, state or local agency to hold a 3 percent retainer for any goods or services procured as a means of offsetting any taxes providers of goods and services may skip over the course of a couple of years, Meinking said.
“There is a bill to repeal that 3 percent withholding provision, and in all of our visits with our legislators, we were encouraging them to support the repeal bill,” she said.
Meinking said the 3 percent figure could be the profit margin on projects in many states.
“Profit margins are sometimes less than 3 percent so, quite frankly, contractors or providers of the goods and services will simply write that 3 percent in their bids, so the taxpayers are going to end up paying that 3 percent,” Meinking said. “Our fear is that it’s just going to drive up the cost of goods and services to the taxpayers.”
Another important issue is a piece of legislation passed late in 2007 that focused on green building and green energy.
“Imbedded deep in the bill was some language that basically said only union green building training programs would be eligible to receive grant funding from the federal government,” Meinking said. “We have a concern with that, and very much support the concept of green building, but we believe the grant funds should be available to any training programs that meet certain criteria.”
Meinking said a new piece of legislation has been introduced to change the language so the money will be available to all training programs, a move ABC is encouraging.
David Resetarits, an ABC Western NY chapter member who also attended the conference, said green building is changing the face of construction.
“I think we all need to respect the condition of our environment and do all we can to educate ourselves, our developers and building owners,” Resetarits said. “We all need to work together to make our builders smarter and run more efficiently and anything we can add to these conferences or provide to our members is critical, but it shouldn’t be limited to unions only, we all need to work together.”
He said that getting out and speaking to legislators as he did last month reminds him why he is committed to involvement in his profession.
“Every year when I’m ready to leave for the conference, I think about how much work I have here with my business and the time I’ll be spending away from my family. After I attend a session and I’m able to meet with my elected officials and really hear what’s going on around the rest of the country, I always come away very happy that I decided to invest the time and money to go and represent our organization and New York State,” he said.