Waiting for weeks to get paid $69 million they are owed for clearing multiple storms since December, members of the Massachusetts Snow & Ice Contractors Association voted this week to demand that legislators approve their pay as soon as possible.
But they also voted late Thursday night not to sign a new contract with the state to replace a pact that expires in May unless it includes a clause guaranteeing they won't face similar payday delays in future winters, association president Matt Frazier said yesterday.
They won't go on strike, yet.
"As a matter of public safety, we're agreeing to prevent any strike, job action, or sit-out," said Frazier, adding that plowing crews were committed to going out late last night and early today to clean up after the latest snowstorm forecast to hit Eastern Massachusetts.
"But you've got to understand the emotions of contractors that are owed tens of millions of dollars. There will not be a plow or a sander on the road the first time it snows from our membership unless we have a prompt-pay clause and it's backed by special legislation."
One "mom-and-pop" contractor in rural Worcester County is waiting for $110,000, Frazier said, and many members are resorting to home-equity loans and personal loans to stay solvent while they wait to get paid.
Frazier runs a Wellfleet-based paving and landscaping company that plows stretches of Route 6 in Brewster, Eastham, Harwich, and Orleans, and he is also waiting to get paid a substantial amount, but would not say how much.
It's almost a rite of spring or late winter for plow contractors to complain around this time each year that the state is dragging its feet paying them, part of a decades-old cash management practice by state budget makers.
Representative Robert A. DeLeo, Democrat of Winthrop and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, issued a statement yesterday, saying that the supplemental budget containing appropriations for snow and ice removal is under review by his panel and that he expected action soon.
"When our analysis is complete, we will likely report the bill out and recommend its passage," the statement said.
This year the situation is far worse than usual for the drivers, Frazier said, because there have been many more, deeper storms to clear this winter than last, and plowing companies are facing record-high prices for the diesel fuel that most big trucks use.
The latest American Automobile Association/Oil Price Information Service showed that diesel fuel was averaging $3.72 per gallon across Massachusetts, the highest price in the decadelong history of the survey, up from $2.66 this time last year.
Governor Deval Patrick submitted a request to the Legislature Feb. 1 for money to pay the plowing contractors.
It's awaiting action in the House of Representatives.
The Massachusetts Highway Department has run through the $24 million allocated in the current fiscal year's budget for snow and ice removal, but has run up $93 million this winter in costs with private contractors for clearing snow and ice, Frazier said.
Highway Department spokesman Adam Hurtubise said that the agency was grateful to its plowers for their work this winter and that he could not comment on the supplemental spending issue, because that is up to legislators.
For the long term, state Senators Marc R. Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat, and Bruce E. Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, are trying to get legislation passed allowing the Highway Department to pay plowing contractors regardless of whether legislators have appropriated money.
But making that change is complicated because state law forbids agencies from paying money legislators have not approved, even making it a crime for department commissioners to overspend their approved budgets.
