The problem fundamentally *is* political as long as public money is used. It is *very political* if federal money is used. The monopoly contractors (has anybody other than Tutor-Perini won a major transit project construction contract in the last 20 years in California; has anybody other than PB or its successors won a contract for design/management of a major non highway public transportation project in the last 20 years?) understand this perfectly, and are very very good at manipulating the system. It's all legal, as Uber would say, because there's no law against it, they're ignoring the law and are too big to stop, or the current laws actually support it (and who lobbied for those laws in the first place, or at least for not changing things that are to the contractors' advantage?). Even agencies that want to do things right (there must be a few) and get a good project built are often forced into the hands of the creeps because the creeps know how to do that.

If there were a legal way to ban certain contractors from working for a California state or local agency, perhaps on any contract that's not fixed-price (design-build, with no change orders) or less than some trivial amount, I'd say great! Let's Do It! So far, though the contractors seem to be in charge.