If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

This is a space where we sometimes look at the unintended consequences of grand innovations, landmark legislation and other progress.

One such great idea that recently created problems for an area municipality is competitive bidding.

According to an annotation that accompanied the enabling legislation, way back when, bidding requirements “are for the purpose of inviting competition, to guard against favoritism, improvidence, extravagance, fraud and corruption in the awarding of municipal contracts, and to secure the best work or supplies at the lowest price practicable, and are enacted for the benefit of property holders and taxpayers, and not for the benefit or enrichment of bidders, and should be so construed and administered as to accomplish such purpose fairly and reasonably with sole reference to the public interest.”

Who wouldn’t agree with those principles? Who doesn’t want to get the best offers, the lowest prices? Think of all the crookedness that might prevail without some safeguards. The rules were instituted initially for state level government and agencies like the Turnpike Commission, and for big cities and their public works contracts, and for populous counties and first class townships and big school systems. But they were extended to apply to second class townships, boroughs, and rural school systems.

Initially the threshold for requiring bidding was $10,000.

Goods and services costing less than $4,000 could be purchased from any reliable provider. Between $4,000 and $10,000 it was necessary to get at least three quotations, by phone or in writing. The municipality was required to keep records of those proposals or quotations. Allowance was made for situations where three providers couldn’t be found.

The threshold numbers were adjusted by amendments, as years passed and inflation and price changes were recognized. Now the bid threshold is $18,500.

As ins other low population, rural townships, Liberty Township’s major area of responsibility to its residents, and the one that costs the most money, is highways.

Roads. Country roads. Paved roads, dirt roads, bridges, sluices, ditches. Roads that need snow removal and traction treatment in the winter, and repairs in the spring, summer and fall.

Road care requires equipment, and lots of liquid fuel to power the equipment. The sensible thing to do is buy it in bulk, and have fuel tanks at the township’s public works depot where the equipment can be fueled with diesel or gasoline as needed.

Until recently it worked to go the RFQ route—call around and request proposals, or prices on fuel. But once the total purchase climbed above $18,500 in a given 12-month period, bidding would be required.

With gas and diesel prices being what they are, these days, supplies for a year total more than $18,500. Count on it. So Liberty Township advertised for bids for its diesel. Only one supplier bid, and the price wasn’t so great, supervisors found. Curious, supervisor Gary Turner called around and asked a few other suppliers for a quotation, and sure enough, those quotes were lower. But Turner was powerless to accept any of those, because only a response to a bid would be a proper basis of a contract with a contract sum greater than $18,500.

Other vendors would charge less for the fuel, but they had not chosen to bid. They would be willing to sell on the same basis as before, but they did not want to be locked in to a price that could not be altered for the period covered by the bid.

So what could the supervisors do? They chose not to act on the bid but to wait until their next meeting, about two weeks away. Meanwhile they would seek some solution to their quandary. Surely the solons in Harrisburg had not intended for competitive bidding to make a municipality (and its taxpayers) pay more for something!

Apparently the competitive bidding measure has not kept pace with price changes such as those we have seen in liquid fuel prices in recent years.

But that’s why measures get amended, isn’t it! The prevailing wage requirement is another that has added beaucoup bucks to many a bid on a construction project, a new school building or a renovation, and other public works where labor will be a component of the cost.

State Senator Joe Scarnati and Representative Marty Causer might be hearing from municipalities on such topics. Come to think of it, Causer is hosting a senior expo this coming Friday, in Roulette.

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I don’t remember ever seeing as many requests for campaign donations as I have seen for the past several months. Emails bring poll results and reports of each infusion of funds by the Kochs (hiss!) or Rove (boo!) to the coffers of the other side. Give right now and some mysterious fat cat on our side will match or triple the donation. One day I kept a running tally of the minimum suggested amount of my donation, in all the candidates’ teams’ emails that day requesting my financial support. The total was more than I make in a month.

A favorite technique used in these solicitations is to ask for a signature on a petition calling on someone in the other camp to stop filibustering, or back off some odious proposed legislation, or generally straighten up and fly right. Well, why not endorse this example of right thinking? Soon as you do, you get another request, to send the petition to friends via Facebook, Twitter, etc. And then comes the request for a contribution.

Also, this is the season when we see numerous appeals. Our United Fund campaign kicked off over a month ago. Now come the library dinner auction and ELF and Salvation Army and many other solicitations, and a new one this year (probably a one-time effort) to cover the cost of a nativity display on the Square.

Originally the Community Chest and then the United Fund appeals were to eliminate a lot of individual fundraising efforts and “put all our begs in one ask-it.” Now we still have “united” giving and many separate appeals, and there seem to be a lot bunched together at toward years’s end. Oh well, at least some are deductible.

Peace.