Wyatt’s World

Mississippi has made a step in the right direction. Gov. Phil Bryant has signed into law significant reform of our bidding and procurement laws.

State Rep. Jerry Turner, chairman of the House committee on Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency, rated the new laws a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10.”

This is no small potatoes. Including special purpose funds and federal grants, the total state budget of Mississippi is $20 billion. Much of this money is allocated through the bidding and procurement process.

Over the years, I have watched in dismay as crony contracts have wasted billions in state tax dollars. Mississippi bidding and procurement laws have been some of the worst in the nation. Graft has run rampant.

Good government is huge. Corruption is enormously expensive, robbing people of a high standard of living and discouraging entrepreneurs. Nobody wants to play when the game is rigged. Progress in Mississippi is dependent on reform.

Now we see progress. We have campaign finance reform. We have bidding and procurement reform. We are moving forward.

We are now going to have an independent Public Procurement Review Board. In the past, this board was run by the very agency heads it was supposed to oversee. This new consolidated, independent board will have enhanced power to adopt regulations to ensure competitive bidding throughout the state.

Here are some other positives:

• New broad language stating that online bidding “reverse auction” procedures are to be the standard way of procuring public contracts and construction in Mississippi. In a reverse auction, the buyers (the government in this case) allow sellers (contractors) to bid on the lowest price until a specific time period.

• Power for the new Public Procurement Review Board to oversee state agencies, counties, cities and other governing authorities when they bid out commodities, construction and certain major contracts.

• Any governmental authority, including cities and counties, deviating from reverse auction bidding procedures must get approval from the new state public procurement board for an alternative procedure.

• Extensive regulations on the Request for Proposal (RFP) procedures by state agencies to ensure transparency and competition for all goods and services.

• Requiring reverse auctions to be done online and transparently.

There are things left undone: The new RFP regulations only apply to state agencies and not to cities and counties. Hopefully, as the new procurement board gets its feet on the ground, its oversight can be expanded.

A lot of old statute verbiage is still left in the code, including the arbitrary “lowest and best” standard. The better standard is “lowest responsive bidder” which more progessive states employ,

There are still too many exceptions and loopholes buried in the code. These loopholes need to be closed and all contracting laws need to be in one section of the state code.

You can view HB 1109 online at the state Legislature’s website.

Mississippi newspapers have reported innumerable bidding scandals and corrupt contracts. It occurs throughout the state at every level of government. It has been depressing to watch, highlighted by the Chris Epps bribery scandal at the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Here’s an example: Over the last few decades competitive sealed bidding has given way to “Requests for Proposals.” Unfortunately, there are no regulations on the procedures involved with RFPs.

Here in Jackson, for instance, the city could issue an RFP and then negotiate with only one party, excluding the rest. The RFP process had become the antithesis of competitive bidding.

House Bill 1109 ends the party for state agencies, setting up strict procedures for the RFP process with full oversight by an independent, central state procurement review board.

Presumably, once we have a truly independent centralized procurement review board up and running, it can serve as an agent for further improvement to our laws.

Jerry Turner is the real hero here. This man almost single-handedly made this happen. It was a two-decade struggle. I recall years when he was discouraged. When I talked to him this week, he was a happy camper.

“I’m very pleased with the legislation we passed this year. I feel like it’s almost comprehensive.”

“You know it started back in 2005 when I was looking at the agricultural land lease program at Parchman and it went on into the commissary contracts with the MDOC. It’s just been a never-ending deal.”

Turner gave a lot of credit to state Sen. John Polk, chairman of the Senate Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee. “He brought a wealth of help to this program.”

Also credit goes to the governor’s task force on procurement reform: co-chairman Andy Taggart and Robert Gibbs, along with Bill Crawford, Mike Moore and Constance Slaughter-Harvey.

James Barber, head of PEER, and Laura Jackson, head of the governor’s Department of Finance and Administration, both played important roles, as did Erin King, counsel for the House Accountability Committee. There were many more who made this happen.

Turner said, “We went to NASPO (the National Association of State Procurement Officials) and we picked the best practices that were in the United States of America. We took the best from different states and compiled this into some policy for the state of Mississippi.”

I hesitate to include one comment from Turner because it seems like self-promotion. But in this age of fake news, Facebook and struggling newspapers, people need to realize the contribution of professional journalists at traditional newspapers. The money saved by improved bidding laws in Mississippi will be greater than the cost of all the newspaper subscriptions in this state in perpetuity.

Here’s the first thing Turner said to me and I quote:

“I’ve got to give you credit in this because without your investigative reporting some of this would have never come to light and we would never have gotten this passed.

“Your reporting really made a difference and got the attention of the governor and some other people who might not have been as enthused about this as I have been since 2012.

“Once they were made aware by good reporting of the existence of what was going on out there, I got a lot of support from it and I want to thank you for it. Thank you.”