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State College Borough Council approved changes Monday to its Responsible Contractor Ordinance that are aimed at increasing contractor participation in bidding for necessary road, sewer and water line projects.
The council voted to amend the Responsible Contractor Ordinance (RCO) that was adopted in 2024 and was similar to an ordinance passed by Centre County the year before. In both the county and the borough, supporters said it would ensure contractors bidding on large projects are properly trained and operate safely, while others voiced concerns that it would shut out local contractors from being able to bid on projects.
The RCO amendment that passed 4 to 2 Monday (council member Gopal Balachandran was not present) exempts most road maintenance and paving projects from the borough’s responsible contractor requirements. Over the past two years, the RCO has made it difficult to complete certain public works projects in road, sewer and water line construction, borough staff said during the meeting. Only one or two bids for these types of projects were submitted and none of them met the ordinance’s requirements.
The ordinance required the borough to evaluate contractors for public projects valued at $250,000 or more based on factors such as experience, technical qualifications and organizational capacity. The ordinance also required that at least 70% of craft labor workers on those projects be journeypersons who completed an apprenticeship program or registered apprentices.
But the borough reported a significant decline in contractor bidding following the implementation of the requirements. After the issue was brought before council in August 2025, members unanimously approved a temporary suspension of the RCO through December 2025 to allow timely bidding for Phase 2 of the Calder Way project and annual street repaving while staff drafted amendments.
Since then, council has had to waive the ordinance for certain projects, reject or re-bid contracts after they had already been advertised, delaying construction and creating what borough manager Tom Fountaine described as an “unfair bid environment.”
“Contractors that are bidding are exposing their bid numbers, and then we’re having to reject the bids because they’re not qualified,” Fountaine said.
While the RCO amendment exempts most road maintenance and paving projects from the ordinance’s responsible contractor requirements, other borough public works projects, including buildings and facilities valued at $500,000 or more - up from the previous $250,000 threshold - must still comply with it.
The changes also allow contractors to be exempted from workforce training requirement if they meet one of the three requirements:
- Have an Experience Modification Rate (EMR) of 1.0 or lower, an industry measure of workplace safety.
- Show that a majority of workers have sufficient training or experience through registered apprenticeships, relevant degrees or certificates, National Center for Construction Education & Research training, or at least 10 years of relevant job experience.
- Demonstrate successful completion of a similar public works project in the borough.
Council President Evan Myers said the RCO was created in response to the 2022 death of a worker on a construction project near the borough building, with the goal of protecting workers from serious injuries and fatal accidents. But he said passing the amendment was important to complete projects.
“We need projects to get done for our community, so to prevent them getting done is a problem. But we also need to protect the folks that do the work,” he said.
Council members Matt Herndon and Kevin Kassab voted against the amendment, with Herndon saying he wanted to see more data on how contractors are responding to the RCO, arguing there was not enough evidence to justify weakening the ordinance.
“I still want extra information about how contractors are interacting with our bidding process,” he said, requesting a quantifiable distinction between contractors that do not qualify RCO standards and those that do but chose not to bid.
Kassab later moved to table the existing RCO and the proposed amending ordinance until staff could gather more information on why contractors were not submitting bids. Council rejected the motion.
“I would like to make a motion to pull both ordinances at this time until more information on verification on why bids are not being submitted,” he said.
Fountaine said that kind of information would be hard to come by.
“We can do our best, but that’s not information that we normally collect. No one’s required to give us that information, and it’s unlikely that we’re going to get them to take the time to tell us why they’re not bidding,” he said, adding how unfair bidding practices could be a leading cause.
During the public comment period, Jim Willshier, a representative from the Associated Builders and Contractors group that represents contractors around Pennsylvania, said that amending the RCO would allow more contractors to bid and create a fairer competitive bidding process.
“The apprenticeship requirement bars many from bidding as well as the vague and confusing language with the prevailing wage aspect, which enforces another layer of prevailing wage, creating a lot of added financial burdens,” he said.
He said the new EMR safety standard would allow contractors to demonstrate their safety record through insurance industry ratings while ensuring they meet the ordinance’s responsibility requirements.
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