By JAMIE BUSEN

Herald-Whig Staff Writer

Citing "no factual or reasonable basis for the prevailing wage rates and worker wage" for Adams County, the Quincy School District has followed through with plans to file an objection with the Illinois Department of Labor on how the wages are set.

Legal Counsel Dennis Gorman said the district filed the objection Tuesday. The Quincy School Board on June 18 voted unanimously to challenge the Labor Department's rate after it formally adopted the prevailing wage.

Board members Jeff Mays and Glenn Bemis spent a year studying the prevailing wage, which taxing bodies are required to adopt each June. The study showed boards could set their own rate, but Quincy chose not to enter "uncharted waters" last month.

Bemis and Mays suggested a rate similar to wages shown in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' median wage survey, about 22 percent lower than the Department of Labor's prevailing wage.

"The question becomes, 'What is the prevailing wage? How do you determine that?' " Gorman said. "We've never filed an objection before. The board felt very strongly about this."

Mays said they were on "uncharted ground" and he isn't sure what will come of the objection or how the Department of Labor will respond.

"At least we'll know exactly how the process for wage determination differs from ours so that we can then, with confidence, ascertain the wage next year," Mays said.

"It's our wages, it's our projects. I'm not comfortable turning this process over to the Department of Labor. We are much more invested in things than they are."

The School Board spent about an hour at its last monthly meeting discussion the study and the ramifications of the proposed wage scale. The district has let bids on about $7 million in work to be done this summer. Had it been bid under the wage scale proposed by the Mays and Bemis study, it would have saved taxpayers about $500,000, or 7.5 percent.

-- jbusen@whig.com/221-3385