Marion County officials learned more this week about new laws for taking bids, including an online bidding process and reverse auctions.
Materials and supplies more than $50,000 as of Jan. 1 will require a reverse auction, where online bidders bid down against each other. Proponents of the new law have said it results in lower costs for taxpayers when government agencies are making purchases.
Certain items are exempt from the reverse auction process, including design and construction of roads, bridges and buildings, according to Ted Fleming, chief operating officer of Central Bidding, a firm that specializes in the process.
“Materials and supplies is what have the reverse auction requirement,” he said. “Public works are exempted. Nothing less than $50,000 is required for either of these, only the purchases above $50,000.”
The new rules, passed by Mississippi legislators earlier this year, take effect on Jan. 1, 2018. Fleming explained the effect of House Bills 1106 and 1109 to the Marion County Board of Supervisors earlier this week during meetings at the Board offices on Courthouse Square.
Fleming and Finley Ward, the Mississippi representative for the Baton Rouge-based company that said it works with 340 public agencies, explained the state’s new rules to Board members, who have been concerned about implementing the process.
Fleming explained that companies like his assist government entities with the process by providing a website for companies to view and bid. The system comes at no expense to the governmental entities.
“For example, we create your web page within our website,” he said. “We come in and train your personnel. How we charge the vendors is this: they register on the website for free, they navigate to your page and view it for free. The only time the vendor is charged is when they decide to download the documents from the website. They have options to get those documents. They can get them from the architect/engineer; they can get them from you. How we charge vendors is for the documents. It’s not an issue because you are allowed to charge to recoup costs for documents. They’re not required to get the documents from us.”
Board President Calvin Newsom asked more about details the process and Fleming continued.
“You have to make the provisions necessary for vendors to be able to submit their bids electronically,” he said. “It is up to that vendor to decide if they want to submit the bid electronically or through the paper process. They have the option. The documents for both processes must be the same, because if they’re different, and one (bid) is not compliant, they’re going to try to get it thrown out because the other vendor didn’t have the same requirements to begin with.”
District 2 Supervisor Terry Broome then asked about the requirements.
“So all of the materials and supplies will have to go through the reverse auction process? he asked. “All of this came down from the Legislature?”
“They did give you an option,” Fleming said. “You could write to the Public Procurement Review Board for a waiver to not do a reverse auction. Quite frankly, there are some things that you don’t want to do a reverse auction for. You’ll want to write to them and say that you want to go out on a sealed bid process.”
Newsom said that Fleming was the first person to “even give us any enlightenment as to what we are facing.”
County Comptroller Susie Bridges asked if the county needed to provide additional equipment or needed new equipment to participate in the process.
“There is no hardware or software for you,” Fleming said. “It is all cloud-based, so you just need to be able to log on to the internet and enter a user name and password. You just need internet connectivity; it could be a phone, a tablet, a laptop or anything. You just need a computer.”
The Board continued discussions about the process for nearly 30 minutes before deciding to follow up with Fleming and discuss implementation of the electronic bidding and reverse auction process.
The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Marion County Board of Supervisors next meet in regular session on Oct. 16.
