County Council approves worker status system

Nate Hulings

of the Gateway

Determining the legal working status of Pierce County employees and its contractors soon will become quicker and easier.

The Pierce County Council last week unanimously approved the use of E-Verify, an online database that can instantaneously establish a worker’s legal eligibility.

Businesses seeking county public works contracts more than $100,000 would have to be enrolled with E-Verify. Other projects not public works-related that exceed $25,000 would be required to use the system.

It was the second go-round for the legislation, which originally passed in August but was vetoed by County Executive Pat McCarthy.

County Council member Terry Lee, R-Gig Harbor, called the legislation a compromise between the County Council’s vision of the system and those of McCarthy.

“My feeling, if you are going to be employed by Pierce County, you should be a documented citizen regardless of the contracting amount,” Lee said.

The original language said every contractor would be required to check worker status through E-Verify. That number climbed to $10,000 projects and then — “very reluctantly,” Lee said — to the final $25,000 figure.

The $100,000 benchmark for public works contracts falls in line with federal standards, Lee added.

Despite his reluctance on the final numbers, Lee said the system will help protect taxpayer dollars.

“It will be an effective program; we’re generally OK with where we are at right now,” Lee said. “We’re not just rolling it out to fix it later.”

The legislation will go into effect 10 days after McCarthy signs it into law. The law will not be retroactive; it will only affect new contracts.

E-Verify takes information from federal employment forms and compares them with nearly 450 million records in the Social Security Administration database. It also checks 80 million records in the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration database.

Of new hires screened through E-Verify, nearly 3 percent are found to have unverifiable documents, the county said.

E-Verify is not a foreign practice in the United States or for local jurisdictions. The system already is in place in 11 states for state and local contracts.

The City of Lakewood uses the system, as does the federal government, for status on new hires. They require contractors to do the same.

Reach Reporter Nate Hulings at 253-853-9243 or by e-mail at nate.hulings@gateline.com.