Jamie Walker: New Britain Township ‘responsible contractor ordinance’ puts politics over taxpayers
In 2023, the New Britain Township Board of Supervisors flipped from Republican to Democrat. The new board Chair Cynthia Jones (also known for hitting a mother over the head with a sign at a rally), Vice Chair MaryBeth McCabe (who is up for reelection in November), and their fellow Democrat Bridget Kunakorn supposedly pride themselves on fiscal responsibility, smart government, and community values. So why are they embracing a policy that does the opposite?
Their newly enacted “responsible contractor ordinance” (RCO) is being sold as a commonsense policy to ensure quality work on public projects. But it’s not. It’s just a fancy way to make sure the township picks union companies to do any construction, renovation, or demolition project valued at $500,000 or more. The ordinance does more to serve Democrat-aligned interests than to protect taxpayers.
The RCO is a union-backed policy that contains a requirement that contractors participate in specific apprenticeship programs that are largely run by organized labor. This effectively disqualifies most nonunion contractors, even if they have long histories of delivering safe, on-time, and affordable work. If you run a local company performing construction or related work and don’t affiliate with such a program, don’t even bother bidding on a high-value government job in New Britain Township, because you’re no longer welcome. The party of “inclusivity” has just excluded you!
When you limit who can bid on a public project, you automatically reduce competition and invite higher costs. Jones, McCabe, and Kunakorn are happy to do so if it means their union friends get all the public-sector projects in the township. (The special interests that benefit from RCOs donate heavily to Bucks County Democrats.) The relationship between competition and cost savings is common sense, though it’s too much for the township’s Democratic supervisors to grasp.
Under the ordinance, New Britain Township can expect to pay 10% to 20% more for basic construction. That’s not speculation; it’s what other municipalities across the country have experienced after implementing policies that shut out nonunion bidders. Supervisor Stephanie Shortall (R) warned of such an outcome during the June 16supervisors meeting when she stated the RCO will exclude many local contractors from bidding on township projects, thereby increasing those projects’ costs.
McCabe suggested a reason for passing the ordinance is that it would keep illegal immigrant laborers who lack proper training from working on municipal buildings and infrastructure. This is an obvious category error: State law requires all construction companies to run immigration checks on workers through the federal E-Verify database. Forcing the township to restrict public works contracts to firms participating in a cherry-picked array of apprenticeship programs is not the solution to the problem McCabe raised.
New Britain Township residents can expect to feel the burden of these political games whenever an expensive public construction, demolition, or repair gets underway. Taxpayers will foot a heftier bill not because materials are more expensive, but because of politically motivated restrictions on who can do the job. Moreover, it will be very sad for local, family-run, nonunion contractors who have built a reputation in Bucks County for quality and integrity to be automatically shut out of municipal work. Consequences like these are why the city of Allentown in neighboring Lehigh County rejected a proposed RCO in 2022 and why Lower Makefield Township repealed the apprenticeship program mandate in its own RCO in 2010.
Shouldn’t our supervisors be looking for the best contractors and workers, not just the ones our public officials find politically congenial? A responsible supervisor uses open bidding and clear, performance-based criteria to guarantee proficient execution and cost-efficiency, regardless of union status. Our residents deserve leaders that work for them, not policies that reward politics and narrow interests. The “responsible contractor ordinance” may sound like a good idea, but it helps relatively few while penalizing many.
The new ordinance’s passage should remind us there is an election on November 4 wherein McCabe will be on the ballot. Residents who want to return common sense and fiscal responsibility to New Britain Township must show up to make their voices heard.
Jamie Walker is a former teacher and a Central Bucks School District mom of three.
