The Baltimore Board of Estimates approved a labor deal Wednesday that Mayor Brandon Scott said will prioritize local hiring and expand apprenticeship opportunities for construction employees, but not before some in the contracting world said the deal was illegal and could actually hurt workers.

The agreement between the city and the Baltimore-D.C. Metro Building Trades Council was Baltimore’s first-ever Project Labor Agreement (PLA), which is a type of collective bargaining agreement that governs employment terms between building trade unions and contractors. It will cover the rehabilitation of three Baltimore City Department of Public Works pumping stations — Dundalk (at a cost of $31.66 million), Ashburton ($60 million to $70 million) and Quad Avenue ($6 million to $8 million) — as well as the agency’s Sparrows Point Alternative Outfall project for an additional $31 million, bringing the total estimated price tag to between $128.66 million and $140.66 million.

Scott first announced the deal on Dec. 22, 2025, and repeated his support for it during a news conference Wednesday. He said economic development would make the potentially higher upfront costs of hiring locally worth it.

“If a company has a 1.5 million-dollar bid on a project, and they’re from Pennsylvania and all their employees live in Pennsylvania, versus a city-based business who’s at a 2 million-dollar [bid] and all their employees live here, I know the residents of Baltimore will say that that extra $500,000 is worth it because we’re investing in our community, we’re growing and training our own people and workforce,” the mayor said.

While PLAs are designed in theory to eliminate costly delays resulting from labor conflicts or worker shortages, two attorneys spoke at Wednesday’s meeting about the challenges that contractors face when operating under such a deal. They urged the board to scrap or delay the PLA, but to no avail.

Speaking on behalf of the Baltimore Coalition for Fair and Open Competition, attorney Robert Fulton Dashiell of Harris Jones & Malone LLC said the deal was illegal because it requires contractors to hire union workers and comply with union rules by signing a letter of assent before receiving bids.

“If you are a union shop contractor you can bid, or if you’re a contractor who’s willing to become a union shop for this project, you can bid,” Dashiell said. “But if you choose neither, you can’t… So why would you spend the time and money bidding [for] a contract if you’re either not already a union shop or you’re not willing to become a party to the PLA?”

Dashiell added that the PLA “provides unlawful financial assistance to unions by requiring the payment of [benefits] contributions, which the unions will not use to benefit all employees because as non-members, open shop employees are not eligible for union benefit.”

On behalf of the Maryland Minority Contracts Association, attorney Sean Malone, also from Harris Jones & Malone, took issue with the fact that the PLA cannot be terminated or amended “by mutual consent” between the city and the Building Trades Council — a departure from most city contracts that can be terminated unilaterally.

“A simple addition to this contract that allows you to terminate for cost of convenience is standard with procurement procedures in the city, and I don’t think anyone can deny that,” Malone said. “…I hope our brothers and sisters in labor can produce what they said, and that’ll be great. But if they can’t, you protect the taxpayer.”

Malone continued by using a Baltimore Ravens analogy to describe the PLA’s stated preference for seniority when hiring union workers. Because any contractor bringing outside workers would have to freshly unionize them, collaboration and morale issues could develop on the job sites and hurt overall team performance.

“Mayor, we at least know that the team that walked on that field [Sunday] was the team that Baltimore had,” Malone told Scott. “We hired them, we trained them, we practiced, and we sent them on the field… What you’re asking our contractors to do is to walk onto a job, bonded, and guarantee performance with workers they don’t know.”

While he did not speak at the meeting, Mike Henderson, president and CEO of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Greater Baltimore, told The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday that he opposed the deal because rules established by PLA can freeze out contractors who do not rely exclusively on unionized labor. Many contractors choose not to sign letters of assent because it can be too costly or disruptive to comply, he said.

“There’s been a reason we haven’t done them, at the city or the state [level],” Henderson said. “To pay a premium for construction is mind-numbing enough as it is, but to create artificial barriers for local companies and local workers, it might be good politics but it’s horrible public policy.”

Henderson contends that Maryland overall has a “horrible track record” with PLAs and pointed to two recent projects in Prince George’s County that were governed by such agreements, the Laurel Library and Brandywine Fire Station. The lowest bid for the fire station came in 41% over its expected construction cost, and construction on the library began a year late after the PLA was scrapped, according to the Maryland Coalition for Fairness and Open Competition.

The board’s vote on the contract was unanimous — with Scott, City Council President Zeke Cohen, City Comptroller Bill Henry, City Solicitor Ebony Thompson and DPW Director Matt Garbark voting in favor.