Justice delayed is justice denied, runs the cliché, but in the case of New York state road builders seeking clarification on how to disburse funds, deploy equipment and assign manpower, the cost of justice delayed could be $100 million and a looming financial disaster of a lost construction season.?On April 30, arguments were heard in the case of the Construction Industry?Council vs. Stanley Gee, who is acting commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, in an attempt by plaintiffs to force the state to declare whether or not contractors working on state highway construction projects should continue to work on roads and bridges. ?If contractors unilaterally pull their equipment and work force from jobs, they risk being declared in breach of contract. But if they continue working when there is no state budget and no financial certainty, they risk losing huge amounts of money paying for projects for which the state might not reimburse them.
Last week, Ross J. Pepe, president of the Construction Industry Council of Westchester & Hudson Valley Inc. in Tarrytown, said a budget extender had provided $15 million to pay contractors for April work. ?According to plaintiffs”™ attorney Robert Hermann of DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr L.L.P. in White Plains, who represented the construction industry in court, the legal action, which asks that contractors either be paid as due or be given stop-work orders by the state.?After arguments heard on April 30, Judge Christopher Cahill promised a prompt decision but that is the last word that anyone has heard on the case. Thus, construction companies are left in limbo, uncertain whether to demobilize their construction sites and lay off workers, or proceed with jobs as scheduled. ?Hermann said that after six weeks of inaction, contractors are frustrated, especially after a federal judge ruled in one day on whether Gov. David Paterson”™s plan to furlough workers was legal or not. ?Repeated calls to Judge Cahill”™s office in the city of Kingston were not returned. ?The cost of doing nothing is extremely high. The budget impasse in Albany has deprived the construction industry of an estimated 3,400 jobs on 13 road and bridge projects for which winning bids have not been awarded in the seven-county region, according to the Construction Industry Council. Since April 1, when the state”™s 2010 fiscal year began, nearly $1 billion in construction contracts statewide have not been awarded on more than 100 projects approved by the state Department of Transportation (DOT), according to the Associated General Contractors of New York State. Those stalled projects, would create an estimated 34,700 jobs, based on Federal Highway Administration projections.?And the costs of doing nothing are growing steeper, said Hermann.
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“What we argued to the court is that construction is a huge industry in the state of New York, and all this delay is increasing the long term costs of rebuilding, because of additional  mobilization costs and the increased costs of building materials,” said Hermann.?Besides the financial effects, he said ,is the cost to workers, contractors, unions and , sub-contractors, “There are all these people who are at risk without being able to make any sensible  decision about what they are supposed to do,” said Hermann.  “So either tell us to stand down or tell us we will get paid.”
