City OKs Software Contract to Monitor Prevailing Wage

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio –The city Board of Control this morning approved a one-year contract for $14,350 with LCPtracker, Orange, Calif., to use its software to monitor the prevailing wage reports that general and subcontractors submit to Youngstown.

The president of the Western Reserve Building and Construction Trades Council, Don Crane, hailed the action. “I think it’s great,” Crane said. “It’s a positive direction in record-keeping and I hope the follow-through is there.”

Mark D’Apolito, the attorney who coordinates monitor assistance in the Youngstown Law Department, has been working with LCPtracker to install the software in City Hall. D’Apolito has been using the Web-based training LCPtracker offers and is working with Cuyahoga County to learn how that government uses the software, he said.

Cuyahoga County is the nearest entity that has contracted with LCPtracker. “It takes a decent amount of time to roll this out,” D’Apolito said, but he expects to see the software installed and in use by the end of summer.

The Board of Control agenda states the LCP prevailing wage monitoring system “will ensure proper records retention and compliance checks.”

On the public works projects covered by prevailing wage laws, general contractors submit their payroll records to the entity that awarded the bid. The employees the contractor and subcontractor hire to perform the work, regardless of whether they belong to a union, must be paid prevailing wage as determined by the federal or state law and a premium for any overtime worked.

The LCPtracker website says the company was formed in 1992 as FM International but changed its name in 2003 after determining it would develop “Web-based software [that governments] use to collect, verify and monitor prevailing wage certified payrolls.”

It claims to be “emerging as the leading software for the labor compliance industry.”

LCP has contracts with local governments in 38 states, according to its website.

A major benefit of its software, LCP says, “is reducing man-hours needed by cities” spend collecting and verifying records.

The Business Journal reported last February that the Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull County engineers’ offices, as well as the public works departments of Youngstown and Warren, keep paper records of the reports their contractors submit even when the contractors submit prevailing wage data electronically.

Their practice is to print out the contractors’ reports and keep paper files.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.