Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's administration reached a deal yesterday with labor unions that should help smooth the way for Verizon FiOS TV in the city -- and may also help with tax collection and immigration enforcement.

The Laborers District Council of Western Pennsylvania will drop its insistence that Verizon work closely with the Foundation for Fair Contracting, to monitor subcontractors' hiring. The administration will in turn write a resolution, to be submitted to City Council next week, that would have the FFC help the city Finance Department ferret out tax cheats and illegal workers.

Mr. Ravenstahl said the city has tax investigators, but sometimes things "fall through the cracks."

"FFC will give us that ability and kind of be our eyes and ears on the street" on unpaid taxes and undocumented workers.

"They will bring to the attention of the administration any suspicions of immigration violations or failure to pay taxes," said city Information Systems Director Howard Stern. "There's no fee whatsoever to the city."

The Laborers had wanted the city to insist that Verizon turn over lists of all contractors on the FiOS installation to the FFC, citing several cases in which contractors had used undocumented workers. Verizon said the charges were years old and argued that it had an auditing system in place to ensure its contractors were using legal labor.

That changed yesterday.

"We support the Verizon project going through," said a spokesman for the Laborers, who asked not to be named.

While the administration said that federal cable law did not allow it to insist that Verizon work with the FFC, the nonprofit foundation will have a designated contact within the city Finance Department to whom it can report tax or labor law violations by any contractor on publicly or privately funded construction sites.

The FFC is "not being deputized," said Mr. Stern, nor will it be given information that's not already public record. "We're not doing anything different than we would do with any private individual or organization" that wanted to report violations.

Nonetheless, council approval will be sought. Council on Wednesday gave tentative approval to an agreement to bring FiOS TV in to compete with Comcast, but by a 3-0 vote with six abstentions. A final vote could come on Tuesday -- the same day the FFC resolution may be introduced -- and would require five ayes.

Created in 1992, the FFC is funded by unions and contractors to "make sure that contractors are following applicable federal and state laws," said Chris Petrone, its administrator, who supervises seven field investigators. "We send our field agents out to the job sites. They'll pull certified payrolls, go through certified payrolls to make sure that there aren't any mistakes there."

They sometimes interview the workers. They take any violations to the appropriate authorities, usually the state Department of Labor and Industry.