California won't have a particularly large number of measures on its November ballot but they promise to be divisive and expensive political battles Proposition 38, which deals with school vouchers, will hold the spotlight as the most culturally important of the eight measures. But another, Proposition 35, looms as a particularly difficult decision for voters because it deals with an issue of arcane complexity: whether public works engineering and design work should be reserved for civil service workers or awarded to private companies.

The ballot battle will cap a decade of political and legal squabbling between the union that represents state transportation engineers, Professional Engineers in California Government (PECG), and the trade association of private engineers, Consulting Engineers and Land Surveyors of California (CELSOC).

Two Republican governors made "contracting out," as it's called, a high priority, but PECG rebelled and won a series of judicial decisions saying that civil service engineers have first call on design work. CELSOC and its allies then launched the initiative drive that became Proposition 35, which would authorize state and local governments to use private engineering firms for their projects.

As it happens, the long battle between the two interest groups is coming to a head just as California is poised to increase public works spending, especially for transportation, by many billions of dollars. A rising level of public angst over traffic congestion, plus the availability of billions of dollars in surplus tax funds, propelled Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature to boost transportation spending sharply. So the stakes in the Proposition 35 battle have also escalated.

The Legislature's budget analyst and other authorities, noting that the Department of Transportation already has thousands of engineering vacancies that it cannot fill in a tight labor market, have suggested that if engineering work is left to Caltrans, rather than contracted out, there could be substantial delays in delivering the highway and mass transit projects that the politicians are promising to relieve congestion.

Another complicating factor is a division within the labor movement. While PECG and other public employee unions vow to defeat Proposition 35 as an incursion on their turf, unions representing construction workers -- most notably a big Operating Engineers local in San Francisco -- have joined the pro-Proposition 35 coalition.

The union split puts Democratic politicians on the spot, not wanting to choose one side or the other and fearing that the forthcoming battle will siphon off millions of dollars in union political funds that might otherwise go to Democratic campaigns. That's why Democratic legislative leaders attempted in the final hours before the Legislature's summer recess to negotiate a compromise, centering on some level of protection for existing civil service jobs, plus a formula of contracting out work. But the two sides never came close to agreeing on the exact numbers.

The intensity of the fight is illustrated by the recruitment of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association as an element of the anti-Proposition 35 coalition, even though it has been a long-standing proponent of private contracting for public works. The unions opposing Proposition 35 apparently provided the Jarvis group with a hefty fee for inclusion in its slate mailer, much as the California Teachers Association will likely give the Jarvis organization $2 million and obtained its opposition to the school voucher measure.

Voters may be bewildered by the forthcoming blizzard of claims and counterclaims over Proposition 35, but to the interests involved, it's a game with multimillion-dollar stakes.


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