{"id":9209,"date":"2012-08-27T11:18:38","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=9209"},"modified":"2012-08-27T11:18:38","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:18:38","slug":"oklahoma-trade-association-out-of-state-contractors-favored-at-fort-sill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/08\/27\/oklahoma-trade-association-out-of-state-contractors-favored-at-fort-sill\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma Trade Association: Out-of-State Contractors Favored at Fort Sill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Children of the Concrete \/ Flickr<\/p>\n

A soldier explains Army equipment to a child at an event at Fort Sill in Lawton.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Out-of-state contractors are receiving favorable treatment on construction projects at Fort Sill, the American Subcontractors Association of Oklahoma alleges.<\/p>

The group’s executive director, Mark C. Nestlen, wrote a letter to Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, and Rep. Tom Cole, R-More, outlining the complaints, reports<\/a> The Oklahoman<\/em>‘s Phillip O’Connor.<\/p>

The out-of-state contractors, the letter alleges, ” … use substandard materials and fail to have their work federally inspected. Many also fail to pay federal-scale wages or state taxes, the association said.”<\/p>

The Oklahoman<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Those advantages, in many cases, make it impossible for Oklahoma subcontractors to compete for projects on the Army post about 85 miles south-southwest of Oklahoma City. The result is hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business and tax revenue for the state.<\/p><\/blockquote>

<\/p>

Federal procurement regulations require contractors to use bid specifications on projects, but the association says the rules aren’t uniformly enforced, to the detriment of Oklahoma companies, The Oklahoman<\/em> reports.<\/p>\n

On one project, a subcontractor installed cheaper electrical conduit than called for in the bid requirements in several Fort Sill buildings, including a National Guard armory, a basic training barracks and a dining hall.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Officials with the U.S Army Corps of Engineers \u2014 which oversees construction at the Lawton base \u2014 said Oklahoma contractors “could have made similar alterations,” the association told The Oklahoman<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But in Nestlen’s letter to Inhofe and Cole, he told of an Oklahoma subcontractor who asked an inspector if he could bid for a second phase of the same Fort Sill project using the cheaper conduit and was told no.<\/p><\/blockquote>

There are questions about inspections, too. The association says Oklahoma companies face more inspections than their out-of-state counterparts, a claim the Corps denies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Out-of-state contractors are receiving favorable treatment on construction projects at Fort Sill, the American Subcontractors Association of Oklahoma alleges.The group’s executive director, Mark C. Nestlen, wrote a letter to Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, and Rep. Tom Cole, R-More, outlining the complaints, reports The Oklahoman‘s Phillip O’Connor.The out-of-state contractors, the letter alleges, ” … use substandard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":9212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[301],"tags":[430,193],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9215,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209\/revisions\/9215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}