Dive Brief:

• The Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted in favor of an ordinance on Tuesday requiring city contractors to disclose any ties they have to President Trump's U.S.-Mexico border wall, according to the Los Angeles Times.
• The ordinance requires any company doing business with the city of Los Angeles to reveal if it has been party to bids, contracts or proposals for goods or services benefiting a U.S.-funded wall or any other barrier between the two countries. The new regulation applies only to companies that submitted a bid or entered into a contract for work related to the border wall on or after March 17, 2017. The ordinance says such a project would cause harm to both immigrant and nonimmigrant residents of the city and has "the potential to divide our nation and the city of Los Angeles along racial, religious and immigration status."
• If businesses do not disclose a qualifying relationship, the city can terminate their existing contracts or refuse to award them a contract. While the ordinance does not prohibit border wall contractors from working with the city, at least one city council member said he would vote against giving contracts to those associated with the project.   

Dive Insight:

The Los Angeles City Council is the latest public entity to push back against construction of a border wall by penalizing contractors or other businesses who bid or work on it, and certainly some construction companies will choose not to be involved with such a controversial project if it means, for some, that their bread and butter work with local governments is in jeopardy.

The Austin (Texas) City Council took action against border wall contractors one step further in February when it barred them from doing business with the city at all, although it will not apply to businesses that work on the portions of border wall that were in place prior to Trump launching the expansion. Like Los Angeles City Council members, Austin officials said Trump's border wall does not match up with the culture of its residents.

Industry groups like the Associated General Contractors of America have spoken out against this kind of blackballing but have not gained enough traction yet to successfully counter these local actions. In November, the AGC asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to take legal action against those local public entities that try to penalize contractors that work or bid on the border wall and asked the federal government to compensate wall contractors for the extra costs of security and potential vandalism.