A work group studying aspects of Virginia’s Public Procurement Act is recommending that legislators implement a two-year transition before ending the requirement to publish requests for proposals in newspapers.
The July 23 compromise came after a nearly 70-minute discussion of an initial draft that called for the newspaper requirement to go away beginning July 1, 2018 and calling for public bodies conducting the procurement to report each year (from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2018) where businesses submitting proposals learned of the opportunity. Under the revised agreement, entities would be required to report data for just one year.
Though there was a consensus within the work group of procurement professionals, not everyone on the panel was sold on the proposed language, which does not provide a uniform location for all RFPs to be published.
“I haven’t heard enough to convince me we’re addressing the consistency issue,” said Chester Brazzell, who was representing Transformation Consulting LLC on the panel.
A Special Joint General Laws Subcommittee is in the second year of a two-year study of Virginia’s Public Procurement Act. The full subcommittee, which will recommend changes in the law to the General Assembly, still needs to reach an agreement on the proposed language; its next meeting has not been announced.
The Virginia Press Association, which opposes the language regarding RFP notification, will continue to fight the proposed changes and would like the membership to voice its concerns at the next meeting.
One member of the work group suggested during the meeting that in three-to-four years, printed newspapers would no longer be around, an idea rebuffed during testimony by Matt Paxton, publisher and owner of The News-Gazette in Lexington.
“I can assure you, in four years we’ll still be publishing our paper because our readers demand it,” Paxton told the group in defense of keeping RFPs in newspapers. “Just as you outsource many, many things in government, you’re outsourcing this little-bitty thing and it’s a very miniscule portion of all your budgets. I think you’re looking for a solution that doesn’t need one.”
Just as businesses rely on seeing notices in newspapers, so too, does a locality’s residents, Virginia Press Association Executive Director Ginger Stanley told the panel.
“We talk so much here about the … folks who would be looking for requests for proposal, I think it’s so important that citizens know how government is spending their dollars,” she said. “Requests for proposals are one way they can always see that there is something in the works.”
Joe Damico, deputy director of the Department of General Services, said changes to the law are not about withholding information from the public.
“Actually, I think we’re being more proactive than we ever have by pushing this information out to newspapers and any media in what we propose in this legislation,” he said, noting a requirement in the proposed legislation that an electronic data file of the agency’s business opportunities be sent at no charge to any requesting newspaper or other print publication with circulation in Virginia.
