Inexcusable absence

Tuesday, July 1, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

Twelve workers have been killed in local construction accidents over not quite 19 months, a tragic fact that has intensified public expectations of the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

At a time when this agency should be newly energetic in its leadership, it has instead been unacceptably passive even as the workers’ deaths surfaced in testimony before Congress.

A case in point was Saturday’s public round table on worker safety held at the Clark County Government Center. Its origin dated to early May, when Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani and Las Vegas Councilman Steve Ross, who also heads the local building trades council, called for developers, building contractors, workers and state and local public officials to get together. They were to prepare suggestions on how to improve public regulations and private policies on construction safety and share them at a public meeting.

Inexcusably., when that meeting got under way Saturday, no one from Nevada OSHA showed up.

It is all the more inexcusable given what an ongoing Las Vegas Sun series has so far uncovered — that Nevada OSHA followed federal safety regulators a few years ago in relaxing a safety provision for ironworkers. In the glare of publicity over that decision generated by Sun reporter Alexandra Berzon, Nevada OSHA has since said it will reinstate the provision, which calls for flooring or netting beneath the workers even if they are wearing harnesses.

Additionally, Nevada OSHA had routinely relaxed or forgiven fines initially imposed on contractors following accidents that had claimed workers’ lives.

Also highly disappointing Saturday was that no suggestions were put forth at the meeting by MGM Mirage or Perini Building Co. officials. MGM Mirage and Perini are building CityCenter on the Strip, where ironworker Harold Billingsley was killed in October. The tragedy of his death was related last week before a House committee.

If issues surrounding construction safety in Nevada are ever to be resolved, Nevada OSHA and the state’s major contractors and builders must become much more engaged.