For the president of the central labor council of New York City, AFL-CIO, Brian McLaughlin, we have had a soft spot – ever since he fetched up on our page one back on March 10, 2003, when Mayor Bloomberg and his Democratic allies on the City Council were raising taxes, to tell our Benjamin Smith that he was “interested in protecting the interests of the outer boroughs,” particularly “a middle-income wage earner, people who earn too much to be eligible for any subsidy. They got a property tax increase.” Our admiration deepened when, in November of 2005, Mr. McLaughlin appeared with the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel to address a rally across the street from the Iranian mission to the United Nations, where he denounced the Iranian president’s call to “wipe Israel off the map.”

So it was with more than a little dismay that we heard the news that the FBI had raided Mr. McLaughlin’s offices at the Central Labor Council and also the office in which he serves as a state assemblyman. He hasn’t been charged with any crime, and he deserves the presumption of innocence. But what caused us to cackle was the news that the investigation centered on alleged bid-rigging by electricians seeking contracts to maintain the city’s street lights and traffic signals. What made us laugh is that the bids are already rigged by state “prevailing wage” laws mandating that all electricians doing public work in New York City be paid a prevailing union wage.

One can download these rules from the State Department of Labor. They indicate, for example, that an electrician in New York City is paid $43 an hour, which escalates to time-and-a-half after seven hours on the job, or on a Saturday or Sunday or holiday, which includes Election Day and Columbus Day. Whether the company doing the work is union or non-union, those are the rules in the State of New York. When the Bush administration, hoping to speed rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, briefly suspended these laws – known at the federal level as Davis-Bacon laws and initiated originally by white contractors aiming to keep minorities from undercutting their prices – Democratic politicians went into conniptions. So if the FBI is looking into price-fixing, the blame may extend way beyond just one elected official. And, sadly, much of it may be legal.