That the legislative branch chooses contractors is "abnormal" on its face, BGR says, and the council's "nearly unfettered discretion" to disregard the committee recommendations creates "a fundamental conflict of interest."
A new procurement reform that the Jefferson Parish Council has adopted restores price as a factor in awarding some service contracts. As such, it reflects a sliver of common ground that the council shares with Parish President John Young, but it doesn't address the more fundamental concerns of the non-profit Bureau of Governmental Research about service contracts.
The council had removed price from the scoring in 2011. BGR criticized that move as a precursor to favoritism in a damning report last year on Jefferson Parish contracting practices. The ordinance says the price proposed by vendors will count for 20 percent of their overall grade by technical committees that score proposals. The law applies to non-professional services, such as landfill operation and catering, for which the government is not required to accept the cheapest proposal.
Young said the new ordinance is a good start, although he advocates setting a baseline weight for price of 25 percent, per federal standards. BGR CEO Janet Howard said in a July 23 letter to council members that restoring price to the evaluations would encourage competing contractors to "offer their most competitive prices up front."
But the price issue was a secondary concern in the BGR report last year. Most concerning to the organization was the council's broad authority to pick most types of service contractors, essentially relegating the evaluation committees to toothless advisory bodies.
That the legislative branch in chooses contractors is "abnormal" on its face, the report stated, and the council's "nearly unfettered discretion" to disregard the committee recommendations creates "a fundamental conflict of interest." A better method, BGR said, is to uphold the evaluation committee recommendations, or at least to choose from one of the committee's top-ranking firms.
As it now stands, the only consideration that the council must give to the committees is to eliminate firms the committees deem unqualified. "It's kind of a sham process," said Michael Purdy, a consultant and procurement specialist who spoke at a November BGR forum on Jefferson Parish contracting.
The council has resisted Young's push for more executive control in choosing contractors, and Councilman-at-Large Elton Lagasse has been particularly vocal in his opposition to changing the current system. Lagasse said in an interview the council typically chooses the top-rated candidate in any case, but he reiterated his refusal to budge. Asked if any proposal to share contracting control with the executive branch is dead, Lagasse replied, "As far as I'm concerned, it is."
Young, using the BGR report as ammunition, is as steadfastly in favor of strict reliance on evaluation committees as Lagasse is in holding on to councilauthority.
"If you look at most jurisdictions the size of Jefferson Parish, that authority is vested in the executive branch," Young said.
Councilwoman Cynthia Lee-Sheng said a certain degree of council discretion is necessary. Evaluation committees might not know of vendor problems that rigid scoring criteria do not factor, such as recent mistakes with continuing projects.
"Sometimes the technical evaluation committee might not have the newer information I might have," Lee-Sheng said. "I'm not going to blindly select the top ranked firm."
Still, Lee-Sheng said an ideal system would split authority between the council and administration She noted that solicitations and change orders originate with the administration.
The new ordinance fixes price as a 20 percent weight, a measure that Purdy and BGR greeted with head scratching. In a letter to council members last week, BGR CEO Janet Howard stated that a chief procurement officer should determine the importance of price in any given procurement.
"If you are a hiring a consultant where you are really hiring their judgment and expertise, price would generally be a much lower factor, versus something that maybe is more of a service provider in which case the scope of work is well defined or routine," Purdy said.
Lee-Sheng agreed, stating that price should be a stronger consideration in grass cutting, for example, because the end result isn't likely to vary much. She said a common misconception is that the council disregarded price altogether in requests for proposals over the past two years. Non-professional service providers were still required to submit prices separately from the proposals that evaluation committees consider, and council members were free to treat the price information as they saw fit. Whatever its shortcomings, this system resulted in healthy competition among top-scoring firms, Lee-Sheng said.
On the other hand, she said, attaching a consistent weight to pricing ought to encourage firms to submit their best price upfront and alleviate concerns about favoritism, even if the council retains the authority to disregard committees' scores.
"I don't think it's ever really a great system," Lee-Sheng said. "At least if you set it at the beginning, no one can accuse anyone of messing with the formula."