St. Louis County to require training, hiring goals for all major contractors

A pair of holiday-themed props were not enough to stop the passage of a bill on Tuesday beefing up requirements for apprenticeship programs and diversity goals for contractors getting St. Louis County government work. 

Bill 182 passed the County Council by the narrowest of margins, 4–3. 

The bill requires that contractors awarded county government contracts for projects over $75,000 provide apprenticeship training. It also establishes goals related to minority, women, and county residents being utilized for the projects. Some provisions in the bill, including the apprenticeship training requirement, apply to projects receiving county tax incentives, too. 

Councilman Mark Harder (R–7th District) predicted the bill would add costs to the county doing business. “Some say this will create jobs, but if you can’t create a profitable public project, you can’t take a paycheck home,” he said. He added, “If this bill passes this council, this will be a huge Christmas present to the economic development professionals in neighboring St. Charles and Jefferson counties.” Harder, who wore a festive red vest and red tie, then presented a pair of gift-wrapped presents to illustrate his point. 

The bill’s sponsor Shalonda Webb (D–4th District) also referred to it as a gift. “I’m looking forward to receiving that gift, Councilman Harder,” she said. “This is a gift that I gave to St. Louis County for over 19 weeks.” That timeline referenced the fact that the bill underwent significant changes over the course of three committee-of-the-whole meetings, of which, she said, Harder only attended one. “I wish the Councilman Harder would have showed up,” she said. 

The bill ultimately passed along a party-line vote, with all four Democrats siding together to edge out the three Republicans—a somewhat unusual occurrence at the Council, which is often divided not by party but by whether or not they are allies of County Executive Sam Page. Councilman Dennis Hancock (R–3rd District), also a no vote, said that his objection was that he’d just gotten the final text of the bill that morning, and he wasn’t going to vote yes on something he hadn’t read. (Though, he would soon thereafter vote yes on the county’s 2026 budget, the details of which had been made available to the full council that morning.)

Tuesday’s meeting brought out a number of heavy-hitter lobbyists both for and against the bill. Dave Sweeney, representing the Associated General Contractors of Missouri, spoke against it. He said that the increased oversight would lead to increased overhead. “This expansion does not come without cost. Those costs will ultimately be borne by the St. Louis County taxpayers,” he said. The Missouri Growth Association, a trade association of developer and commercial property owners and managers, was against the measure as well.

Speaking in favor of the bill was Clint McBride, government affairs director for Laborers Local 110, who disputed the notion that the bill would raise the cost of doing business in St. Louis County, as the county already has a prevailing wage requirement. He said the bill would instead bolster workforce development. 

McBride, in his remarks, referenced an incident from a few years ago in which two men were working three stories up on a hotel project. They didn’t properly harness themselves to the building and ultimately fell to their deaths when the rig they were on dropped out from below them. He said that that sort of safety training is exactly what is learned as part of an apprenticeship program.

The bill includes a requirement for for 20 percent of hours worked on a project to be completed by someone enrolled in an apprenticeship program registered with the Department of Labor. The goals set for minority, women and St. Louis County boots on the ground will be set on a project by project basis based by the county, which is thought to make the program less susceptible to the saber-rattling coming from the U.S. Department of Justice concerning DEI programs. 

Now that it has passed the council, the bill’s provisions take effect March 2. The City of St. Louis passed a similar bill this past spring, a fact that Harder noted to its demerit: “Since when did the city become a model for the county?”