State and Local Government Procurement

The magnitude of state and local government procurement is staggering, with annual spending by state and local government projected at nearly US$2 Trillion Dollars. Equally astounding is the degree to which state and local government procurement has become complex, dynamic, and constantly the focus of efforts at reform and transformation. Although facing a dynamic and changing landscape, the common mandate for government procurement is to timely meet user minimum needs with the delivery of best value products or services, while ensuring the highest standards of integrity in order to maintain the public’s trust and fulfilling state and local government public policy objectives. Thus, state and local government procurement professionals are faced with massive responsibilities to assist their departments and agencies in accomplishing their missions while simultaneously guarding expenditures of taxpayer dollars. The increased responsibilities shouldered by state and local government procurement professionals are, among other things, attributable to: the massive spending power controlled by state and local governments; the strategic uses of procurement to accomplish public policy goals and objectives; the federal government’s policy of passing more responsibilities to the States by imposing unfunded mandates; and the ever-present requirement to ensure their citizens have access to necessary and essential government services. This book is not the first to discuss state and local government procurement. Certain books focus on best practices to be followed by procurement professionals while others provide general outlines of state procurement codes and rules. Each of these books has a purpose and fills a definite need in the procurement community. This book, however, is the first to address comprehensively state and local government procurement law, policy, and best practices to provide the reader authoritative guidance in the identification and analysis of legal and policy standards for procurement actions in the context within which they arise. This book seeks to expand on both the 2000 Model Procurement Code and the 2007 Model Code for Public Infrastructure Procurement by presenting explanations of provisions in action as illustrated in court decisions and opinions, attorney general opinions, agency policy statements, and private organization commentary. This book is the first to provide detailed treatment of the theory, analysis, and best practice of state and local government procurement law and processes. This book strives to be comprehensive by discussing procurement topics from A-Z. For example, this book covers state and local fiscal issues in conjunction with procurement issues. In addition, it covers public private partnerships, acquisition planning, alternative dispute resolution, labor standards, and procurement of intellectual property, to name a few, which are routinely excluded from other manuscripts covering state and local procurement. This book is formatted to receive annual updates that will add to the already comprehensive treatment of the subject matter. This book offers more than mere citations to state codes and cases; rather, this book guides readers through the analysis and reasoning of specific topics and presents a firm analytic foundation for those who will need to perform more in depth research on any of the given procurement topics for their specific jurisdiction. This book will be useful to those who consider themselves procurement professionals and will be an indispensable resource as the work continues to be supplemented to address the evolution of the field of state and local government procurement.