The ruling is seen as significant because about $810 million in similar tax-exempt revenue bonds have been issued by the state for other private projects, including the Las Vegas monorail, whose construction workers were also not paid “prevailing wages” -- though they were of course paid perfectly legal wages which they eagerly lined up to receive.

“Prevailing wage” is a term of art for wages considerably higher than those that would prevail in a non-coerced free market. In a system based on the federal Davis-Bacon Act -- ginned up by a racist Long Island congressman in the 1920s to prevent black workmen from landing federal hospital construction jobs -- Nevada’s state labor commissioner accepts input from local construction unions and others, and then issues annual edicts as to how much various “job specialties” must be paid on government construction sites.

A Year 2000 database analysis by the Las Vegas Review-Journal found the “prevailing wage” law cost taxpayers an extra $2.3 million extra on every new public high school built in Clark County -- a 41 percent markup over what construction would cost at market labor rates.

Not at minimum wage, mind you. Just at the same wages that builders have to pay to attract enough construction specialists to build a building “up to code” on any non-government project in Las Vegas.

These mandated “prevailing wages” are often higher than any actually paid the year before. For instance, although the overwhelming majority of hours reported for elevator constructors in Clark County, Nevada in 1998 were paid at $38 per hour -- and the highest wage reported was $45.46 -- the state’s labor commissioner reviewed “wage reports” from labor unions and a limited number of contractors, consulted his Ouija board, and in 1999 ordered contractors to pay a “prevailing wage” for that specialty of $51.17.

The wage surveys include wages paid on government jobs covered by the prevailing wage law, explained Jolindo Tiberti, president of the Tiberti Fence Co. in Las Vegas. But “That wage was not freely paid; it was mandated by law. So how can it be part of a random sample to find out what is commonly paid in our industry?”

Just wait, though: Union flacks will doubtless characterize this column as a heartless plea to prevent construction workers from being paid a “decent, living wage.”

Fortunately, since no state money is directly involved, state law does not require these higher “prevailing wages” to be paid on jobs like the new Carson-Tahoe Hospital, Justice Ron Parraguirre wrote for the six-member majority. If the Legislature had intended “prevailing wage” to apply to such private projects, the law could easily have been written that way, he pointed out.

“The omission by the Legislature as to requiring the prevailing wage hopefully was an oversight,” replied Justice Michael Douglas, who (along with Justice Nancy Becker) nonetheless concurred in the ruling. Thursday’s result fails to follow “stated legislative intent,” the pair lamented. “I hope this oversight gets corrected,” Justice Douglas said.

While justices Douglas and Becker are to be congratulated for enforcing the law as written, rather than as they wish it had been written, their advice to the Legislature is nonetheless precisely wrong.

Why would they wish to see non-profits looted unnecessarily -- or taxpayers either? If such projects costs more than necessary, less money remains for other needful things.

“Prevailing wage” laws, born in an attempt to shut out minority workers, still make it harder for younger workers (who are disproportionately non-white) to get the on-the-job training they need to advance in the construction trades.

The correct solution to this quandary is to repeal the prevailing wage law entirely, creating more jobs by leaving wage negotiations to that free market which made us great and prosperous and free.