Opinion ID: 3051091
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The County’s SBE Program

Text: The County adopted its SBE Program to provide assistance and enhanced opportunities to small businesses. Under the County’s SBE Program, the County can certify businesses meeting certain criteria (such as revenue- and geographybased requirements) as “small business enterprises” (“SBEs”). To be certified as an SBE, a business must—among other things—perform a “commercially useful business function” and cannot be a mere “conduit” between the County and a non- 3 Case: 13-13284 Date Filed: 02/07/2014 Page: 4 of 18 SBE. To obtain SBE certification, a business must provide the County with an affidavit attesting to the business’s eligibility for SBE certification. Under the County’s SBE Program, certified SBEs received a 10% preference over non-SBEs when the County evaluated bids for direct supply contracts. That is, if an SBE bid no more than 10% above the amount that the lowest non-SBE bid, the County awarded the contract to the SBE even though the non-SBE was the lower bidder. For construction contracts where no prime contractor was an SBE, the prime contractor with the greatest participation from SBE subcontractors received a 10% preference over other prime contractors.