The state of Mississippi contracts billions of dollars to private companies for goods and services. Over the last two decades, bidding practices have continued to loosen to the detriment of taxpayers. Sealed bids have been replaced by “Requests for Proposals” (RFPs), which give too much discretion to government officials. Every year, special interest groups weaken our state’s bidding laws, allowing special deals and favoritism.
In recent years, led by state Sen. John Polk and Rep. Jerry Turner, some progress has been made. Now we have some centralization of regulation with the Procurement Review Board (PRB). Unfortunately, one of the most popular meetings in the state is the PRB’s monthly meetings, where businesses and governmental agencies line up for exemptions from our procurement laws. The Northside Sun published a recent article by Steve Wilson detailing more than 209 exemptions worth $156 million over the last two years. Rankin County alone requested 15 exemptions worth $25.4 million. Computer company Apple was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the exemptions with $42.5 million in estimated value.
It’s bad enough that our state’s procurement laws have as many holes in them as good Swiss cheese. Adding millions of exemptions on top of that creates huge inefficiencies that lower our standard of living. Taxpayers should demand better.
The granddaddy of all our weak procurement laws still remains our “lowest and best” standard. The “best” part makes our bidding statutes weak, vague and subjective. Progressive states have long since replaced that language with “lowest responsive bidder.” With these standards, governmental entities are required to clearly specify what they want and then go with the lowest bidder that meets those specifications. That’s the standard our state needs to adopt.
In addition, our bidding laws lack a basic statement that all governmental entities are required as fiduciaries to ensure that taxpayers get the best quality at the lowest price. Even a general statement such as this would put a legal dampener on many of the bidding shenanigans running rampant at all levels of government.
