The General Assembly’s crossover deadline has come and gone, so now is a good time to pause and take stock of pending legislation affecting public purchasing and contracting. Bills proposing changes to our state’s public contracting statutes include authorizing design-build and public private partnership construction contracts, authorizing local preferences, and requiring E-Verify by construction contractors. […]
Posts Tagged ‘exceptions to bidding’
2013 Public Purchasing and Contracting Legislative Update – What’s Hot and What’s Not
Thursday, June 6th, 20132011 Purchasing and Contracting Legislative Wrap-Up
Friday, July 1st, 2011The North Carolina General Assembly adjourned on June 18, 2011 and will reconvene next month on July 13th. When it reconvenes in July, the legislature will only consider a narrow list of bills, namely redistricting, election laws, legislative appointments to boards and commissions, bills vetoed by the governor, and bills already in conference (Res. 2011-9). So, unless the […]
Emergency Procurement – When is an emergency really an emergency?
Tuesday, June 7th, 2011A tornado has ripped through Coatesville, damaging its water and sewer system, tearing the roof off of town hall, destroying the police department’s vehicles, and leaving tons of debris in its wake. The town declares a state of emergency and immediately begins mobilizing to recover from the disaster. Citizens are without water and sewer, town […]
Counting the Days
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011Paul Purchaser is putting the final touches on his first Invitation for Bids (IFB) for Carolina City, and he’s trying to figure out when he has to place the advertisement for the IFB in the newspaper. He knows the formal bidding statute says something about 7 days between the advertisement and the bid opening, but […]
All For One and One For All: Competitive Bidding Group Purchasing Programs
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010Have you heard of U.S. Communities? What about National IPA? Or HGAC? WSCA? TCPN? NJPA? This alphabet soup of organizations (and others like them) can provide North Carolina local governments with purchasing flexibility and efficiency through an exception to the bidding statutes for “competitive bidding group purchasing programs.” This exception, found in G.S. 143-129(e)(3), was […]
Buying Without Bidding: Limits on Three Common Exceptions to the Bidding Laws
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009Your county needs to buy 5 new law enforcement vehicles costing $30,000 each, and the sheriff tells you that he prefers a specific make and model with certain options. The sheriff also tells you that he knows that a neighboring county recently bought 10 law enforcement vehicles of the same make and model, with the […]
To Bid or Not to Bid? How to Buy Hardware and Software
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect changes enacted by the General Assembly in 2015. Is your local government still using 10-year-old desktop computers? Do you need to buy new anti-spyware software? Or do you need to update your phone system? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, and you decide […]
Change orders: How much change is too much?
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009As anyone who has been involved in a construction project knows, construction almost always involves unexpected costs. The North Carolina General Statutes give local governments the flexibility to address these costs through change orders. G.S. 143-129(e)(4) says that the bidding laws do not apply to work undertaken “during the progress of” a construction project that […]