Legislative Priorities

The AGC is the voice of the construction industry on the federal, state and local levels. 

The AGC lobbies against unfair and repressive legislation and regulations of all types – labor, environmental, workers compensation and general business issues.  The AGC works for appropriate and necessary public works construction and is an advocate for business issues of many types.  An aggressive political action committee is involved in both state and federal political campaigns and ballot issues.  More than $30,000 is generally spent in each election cycle on political issues.

The AGC and its members are concerned with many legislative and regulatory issues. Our highest priorities are outlined below. These goals will strengthen the economy and treat all interests fairly.

State Legislative Priorities

AGC Will Work For:

• Ensuring transportation investments, as passed by the 2022 Move Ahead Washington package, are realized.  This includes commitments from the general fund and the Climate Commitment Act.  Work to ensure that long term investments in transportation meet the state’s needs, particularly as gas tax revenues decline due to mandated increased sale of electric vehicles.
• Proposals to increase investments in capital construction, including the State Capital Budget, Public Works Trust Fund, Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA) and efforts to increase school construction funding such as reduction in the 60% threshold to approve school bond measures.
• Programs and opportunities that increase and improve the construction-industry workforce including funding for Core Plus Construction, Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs in middle and high school and enhancements to STEM programs. Also promote apprenticeship programs, inclusive of State and/or Federally approved programs, while bringing awareness to and encouraging people to enroll in the training who are entering the construction industry.
• Proposals that fairly allocate risk in construction contracts. 
• Proposals that support fair and open access to public works construction contracts.
• Achievable efforts to increase the diversity of the construction industry.
• Reasonable and cost-effective measures to improve and/or reduce the embodied carbon of buildings and construction process while not burdening the contracting entity with undue risk
• Workers’ Compensation system improvements.
• Rational and reasonable business regulation reforms.
• Rationale and reasonable permit and growth management act reforms that allow needed expansion of residential and commercial construction.
• Rational and reasonable prevailing wage reforms.
• Rational and reasonable approaches to stabilize the Unemployment Insurance trust fund.

AGC Will Work Against:

• Proposals to establish a margin tax in lieu of state B&O tax.
• Proposals that unreasonably increase taxes, business costs or regulations.
• Proposals that divert funds from dedicated construction programs or other dedicated programs to other unrelated purposes that were not the original intent.
• Unreasonable natural gas restrictions or outright immediate ban, either through legislation or building code requirements.
• Any legislative proposals that seek to divert 18^th amendment-protected revenues to other government programs.
• EV car mandates that reduce gas tax revenues without enactment of a plan to replace those revenues. 
• EV truck and heavy equipment mandates that are overly burdensome and costly to the construction industry.
• Public construction procurement methods that carry undue risk and which are not well vetted or do not have a consensus of support within the affected AGC contractor membership.
• Government mandated, or government negotiated Project Labor Agreements, Community Workforce Agreements and any similar requirements that are government mandated or government negotiated on public projects.
• Environmental proposals that impose unnecessary burdens and undue risk on contractors and are not practical or are not economically and technically feasible.
• Detrimental land use laws which make development efforts unreasonably difficult or costly.

Federal Legislative Priorities

AGC works with the Legislative Action Committee to set the legislative agenda every two years, to coincide with the start of each new congressional session.  Issues are added or removed from the legislative agenda based on three factors: the top issues of importance for a majority of AGC members, the timeliness of each individual issue and the achievability of success.

• Increase Investment in and Incentives for Public & Private Construction to Support Pandemic Recover & Jobs Growth
• Improve the Pipeline for a Safe, Trained and Diverse Construction Workforce
• Preserve the Delicate Balance in Federal Labor Policy that Permits Employees to Freely Choose to Engage in Collective Bargaining and that Allows Employers to Maintain Operations Free of Unwarranted Disruptions
• Ensure that Tax and Fiscal Policies Promote Entrepreneurialism & Long-Term Economic Growth
• Streamline the Federal Procurement Process to Save Money, Increase Competition and Improve Opportunities for Small Business
• Support Regulations, Policies, Guidance, and Executive Orders that are Necessary, Cost-Effective, and Practical