For those that have not been paying attention we in Massachusetts are expecting State Senator Scott Brown to win the Republican Primary. He has a good shot of winning a low turnout special election. He won his State Senate seat in a special election in 2002 on the day of the Presidential Primary, John Kerry’s Presidential Primary against a very well known Democratic operative.

If you would like to see more of our coverage at RedMassGroup.com of Scott Brown you can follow the tag Here.

If I could post the cover-it-live here I would but I can’t use iframe as a non administrator.

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-California), with information supplied by Red Mass Group, recently asked Governor Deval Patrick why Massachusetts is wasting $174M in stimulus money. To recap, due to the difference in Federal Prevailing Wage and Massachusetts Prevailing Wage, 17.7% of every construction dollar in Massachusetts is wasted on inflated wages.

We at Red Mass Group originally talked about the waste of stimulus money through our own prevailing wage here, and followed up here. We then followed up by interviewing David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Institute. Dr. Tuerck confirmed that our calculation of $174 Million in wasted money was accurate based on the Beacon Hill Institutes calculations. The House Republican leadership tried to force a vote, to exempt stimulus money from the Massachusetts Prevailing wage law on June 11, 2009 and was unsuccessful.

Below you will see the exchange between Congressman Issa and Governor Patrick. After that exchange, Governor Patrick needed to be excused to check the facts. We sent these facts to Congressman Issa the previous evening through the Whistleblower submit form on his committee’s minority page. While Governor Patrick was excused, Congressman Issa then asked both Governor Rendell (D-PA) and Governor O’Malley (D-MD) if they use the Federal or their own state’s prevailing wage on stimulus projects. Both said they use the Federal prevailing wage.

Governor Patrick and the Democratic Party owe the people both of Massachusetts and the Nation an answer as to why they are continuing to pay inflated wages to their union allies. Other states are paying the Davis-Bacon wages on stimulus projects. We are wasting $177 of every $1000 we spend on these projects. Why?

Finally, someone in the Governor’s office needs to be checking the @massgovernor twitter feed more regularly. I warned the Governor twice that I was going to get the information into Congressman Issa’s hands, here and here.

@johnboehner the @massgovernor is testifyng b4 house 2morrow re:stimulus. MA is wasting $174M of stim$ http://tinyurl.com/kpcc8d #tcot5:24 PM Jul 7th from web

@toddeherman the @massgovernor is testifyng b4 house 2morrow re:stimulus. MA is wasting $174M of stim$ http://tinyurl.com/kpcc8d tel housGOP

Maybe next time he’ll listen….

Earlier this week on RedMassGroup.com  I shared how the Massachusetts Democratic Party wasted close to $33 million dollars of stimulus money. They literally flushed it down the drain by overpaying for labor costs on water treatment projects.  I thought the readers of RedState would be interested in how much money my Democratic SuperMajority government is wasting.

To recap the waste comes from the difference in the prevailing wage from the Federal Prevailing wage as outlined in the Davis-Bacon act and the Massachusetts prevailing wage.  According to the Beacon Hill institute this difference accounts for $17.7 of every $100 dollars spent on public works projects going directly to inflated labor costs, lining the pockets of the Unions.

How much does this cozy arrangement cost? At the Beacon Hill Institute, we computed the three prevailing wages for a group of nine construction trades in the Boston area. For the nine trades, the average wage for all workers is $27.09 per hour. The federal prevailing wage is $37.45, and the state prevailing wage $58.84. Thus union workers on Massachusetts public-works projects make more than double what construction workers in the state make on average.How much would state construction costs fall if we repealed the state prevailing wage? The Beacon Hill Institute estimates that the cost savings would have been $177 million in fiscal 2008 – during which the state spent about $1 billion on public works projects.

Earlier this month the Massachusetts Republican House Leadership submitted an amendment to suspend the Massachusetts prevailing wage on all Stimulus funded projects.  The Republican leadership was unable to force a vote when they fell one member short of the 15 needed to do so. Not one Democrat stood up for the tax payers to force a vote on the issue.

This week the Boston Globe reported that the total money earmarked for transportation projects coming to Massachusetts from the “Stimulus Package” is $800 million.  Using the Beacon Hill Instutes estimates that means that $141 million dollars in Federal Stimulus money is being wasted by the Massachusetts Democratic Party’s inaction on the Republican Amendment.

Couple this $141 million with the $33 million outlined earlier this week and you get a total of $174,000,000 Federal dollars wasted by the Massachusetts Democratic Party.