Court Opinion

ID: 9772518
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:20:37.944492+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:45.219119
License: Public Domain

WELLIVER, Judge,
concurring.
I concur.
While I have no doubt that the principal opinion correctly applies the standard of review to the record before us which is mandated by our statutes and enunciated by our cases, nevertheless it is with reluctance that I concur. It would seem that the Prevailing Wage Act, §§ 290.210-290.340, RSMo 1978, as it has been administered by the Industrial Commission, has in effect, made the highest wage in the state the prevailing wage for virtually every county in the state.
Though sympathetic with the position in which the City of Kennett now finds itself, I am not unaware of how that City and other local governments got into this situation. So long as the so-called “free federal *629dollar” flowed in the form of grants, subsidies, matching dollars and revenue sharing, resistance to legislative acts such as this by local governments and their associations only could be described as feeble or token. Nor have the taxpayers who must pay the bottom line been free from fault. In the expanding and gently inflating economy of the late fifties, sixties and seventies, even taxpayer resistance to acts such as this was noticed mostly by its absence.
Current inflation rates and the resulting economic crisis for local governments now appear to be forcing appellant and other local governments to take a new look at such things as the “prevailing wage” and the public’s demand that they get “more for the tax dollar”. In this background, I feel obligated to point out that until substantially stronger and more favorable factual records can be presented to the courts, judicial relief seems unlikely, and then only on a case by case basis.