Reducing Competition, Costing the Taxpayer
Thursday, May 21st, 2009 By Marc KilmerIt must be nice to have allies in the General Assembly. As the Ohio Contractors Association found out, getting a provision tucked into the budget bill which will reduce comptition for state construction jobs (and, in turn, drive up the cost of those jobs) was pretty easy:
House Democrats slipped a provision into the state budget last month banning some uses of a new style of competitive bidding over the Internet that has netted big savings in Portage County.
Inserted at the request of the Ohio Contractors Association, the provision added during the early hours of April 28 bans Internet reverse auctions for supplies and services related to construction projects.
Vernon Sykes, an Akron Democrat, was behind this language. As Portage County’s experience with these auctions shows, they can produce substantial savings:
Jeff Lonzrick, an engineering manager for Portage County’s water resources department, said the online bidding on the water project was done April 20 by a half-dozen companies prequalified to do the work. It resulted in a low bid of $188,500, while the engineer’s estimated cost had been $253,000, he said. The project was a routine replacement of 1,126 feet of a 16-inch water main in Aurora.
The contractors claim that these auctions don’t produce this kind of savings regularly. Fine. As Portage County Commissioner Chuck Keiper says, then their supporters should have this debate in the full House and not stick the ban in a budget bill.
Making businesses compete for government contracts is good. The more transparent the competition, the better. Trying to reduce this transparency at the behest of a politically-connected interest group is a shameful. Perhaps that’s why Rep. Sykes tried to slip this into the budget bill unnoticed. Kudos to the Plain Dealer’s Aaron Marshall for exposing this anti-taxpayer move on the part of Rep. Skyes and the Ohio Contractors Association.
Tags: budget, Corporate Welfare, General Assembly
