How should you pronounce BOLI, the acronym referring to the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries? We’d always given it the strikes-and-spares pronunciation. But then we saw Willamette Week’s story on the agency’s persecution of a small-business owner named Alan Penson. From now on, our pronunciation will call to mind the playground bully who steals kids’ lunch money.

Penson’s company, which tests and adjusts heating systems, does some work for public agencies, which mandate the payment of artificially inflated wages (“prevailing” wages) for manual labor. But is HVAC balancing manual labor? In 2003, Penson posed this question to BOLI, which sent a letter claiming that the “Testing and balancing of HVAC controls, following the installation of the HVAC system, is not manual or physical in nature.” It is, therefore, exempt from the prevailing wage. Other HVAC-balancing companies said they’d received similar letters until as recently as 2006, according to Willamette Week.

This year, however, two of Penson’s employees filed prevailing-wage complaints with the state. BOLI, the official menace of the prevailing-wage playground, responded by trying to snatch Penson’s lunch money — and a whole lot more. BOLI decided that HVAC balancing was manual labor, after all, and ordered Penson’s company to pay nearly $100,000 in back pay and penalties. Penson says the fine could cripple his business.

BOLI officials claim that Penson mischaracterized the nature of HVAC-balancing work back in 2003. According to Willamette Week, the agency based its original classification of Penson’s HVAC work on his characterization of it. This year’s reclassification was based on its inspectors’ direct observations.

Hmmm. Other HVAC companies have said they received letters similar to the one Penson got in 2003. Did they mischaracterize the nature of their work, too? Or is something else going on? BOLI hasn’t decided whether to wallop them with fines, but several told Willamette Week they’ll start paying the prevailing wage anyway. And that, we suspect, is the point. By making an example of Penson, BOLI is, in essence, threatening all businesses that do public work.

BOLI’s message is that companies should pay the prevailing wage for any task a highly motivated BOLI inspector could conceivably stuff into the manual-labor box — regardless of BOLI’s own labor classifications. This is a horribly abusive way to treat the businesses that employ the very people BOLI supposedly seeks to protect.