Opinion ID: 482000
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: cica's structure and operation

Text: 10 As the federal procurement process is currently structured, Congress appropriates funds for a wide variety of purposes and delegates to executive branch officials the authority to make certain decisions regarding how those funds are to be spent. This discretion is exercised by procurement officers in each federal agency which makes purchases. 11 The discretion thus delegated is not completely unstructured. In two statutes, the Armed Services Procurement Act, See 10 U.S.C. Secs. 2301-2324, and the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act, codified in Title 41 of the United States Code, Congress has established procedures which must be followed by procuring agencies, and standards the agencies must adhere to, when they decide what to purchase and on what terms. These procedures and standards are designed to ensure that the government satisfies its needs at prices as low as possible. See 41 U.S.C. Sec. 401(2) (declaring that [i]t is the policy of the Congress to promote economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the procurement of property and services by the executive branch of the Federal Government by ... (2) establishing policies, procedures, and practices which will provide the government with property and services of the requisite quality, within the time needed, at the lowest reasonable cost); Part III of House Comm. on Government Operations, H.Rep. No. 97-71 Accompanying H.R. 3519 (subsequently passed as the Department of Defense Authorization Act of 1982. P.L. 97-86, 95 Stat. 1099) at 9, reprinted in 1981 United States Code Cong. & Admin.News 1801 at 1806 (procurement process relies on competition as the predominant means of getting the most value from federal expenditures). 12 Among the most important of the policies implemented by these statutes and regulations is the principle that competitive bidding is the favored method of identifying least-cost suppliers. These statutes and regulations permit sole-source contracting (i.e. the letting of a government contract to a supplier picked by the Government without competitive bidding) under some circumstances. See 41 U.S.C. Secs. 5, 253(c)-(f); 10 U.S.C. Sec. 2304(a)-(f). But for most procurements competitive bidding is required. 41 U.S.C. Sec. 253; 10 U.S.C. Sec. 2304(a). 13 Although competitive bidding is supposed to be the way most government purchases are made, Congress has found procuring officials extremely--and increasingly--reluctant to use competitive bidding as the method of choosing sellers. This reluctance to use competitive bidding has been accompanied by rapid growth in the budgets for procuring agencies. In Congressional discussions regarding CICA Representative Brooks, one of CICA's sponsors, observed that 14 [w]hile Federal procurement regulations require agencies to award contracts on a competitive basis, inventive procurement officials within the agencies have found numerous ways to circumvent or get around these requirements altogether.... As a result of not using full and open competition, the Government is spending billions of dollars each year in excessive prices for its goods and services. 15 130 Cong.Rec. H1785 (daily ed. March 20, 1984) (statement of Rep. Brooks). See also House Comm. on Gov't Operations, Report on the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, H.R.Rep. No. 1157, 98 Cong., 2d Sess. 11-17 (1984); 129 Cong.Rec. S16005-9 (daily ed. November 11, 1983) (statements of Senators Cohen, Roth, Percy and Levin); Senate Comm. on Gov't Affairs, Report on the Competition in Contracting Act of 1983, S.Rep. No. 50, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. 3 (1983); Management of the Department of Defense, Part 6, Purchasing of Spare Parts and Support Equipment: Hearings Before the Senate Comm. on Gov't Affairs, 98th Cong., 1st Sess. 1-21 (1983). 16 After considering the issue in a variety of contexts (especially defense), and after three different bills were introduced to remedy this problem, 3 Congress enacted statutes which used several different tools to compel executive obedience to the Congressional will. First, and perhaps most familiarly to administrative lawyers, Congress established tribunals called boards of contract appeals, which are charged with hearing disappointed bidders' complaints that executive branch officials did not comply with the procurement laws. See 41 U.S.C. Secs. 601-613. The decisions issued by the boards are binding on procuring agencies. See 41 U.S.C. Sec. 607(d) (authorizing boards to grant any relief that would be available to a litigant asserting a contract claim in the United States Claims Courts). 17 Congress also sought to compel greater use of competitive bidding by shining the light of publicity on the procurement process, and by creating mechanisms by which Congress can remain informed of the way current procurement legislation is (or is not) operating. These two goals the legislature has pursued by requiring publicity, and creating offices with the incentive to produce it, in a variety of contexts. Written justifications, approvals and public notices are required when non-competitive procurements are believed necessary. 41 U.S.C. Sec. 253(f); 10 U.S.C. Secs. 2304(c)(7)(B), 2310(b). An advocate for competition is established in each agency, responsible for publicizing and challenging barriers to full and open competition. See 41 U.S.C. Sec. 418; 10 U.S.C. Sec. 2318. And annual reports to Congress are required describing plans for increasing competition. 41 U.S.C. Sec. 407. Department of Defense advocates for competition must annually inform Congress of their accomplishments during the preceding year. See 10 U.S.C. Sec. 2318(c). 18 Finally, the bid protest resolution process created by CICA is also intended to inform Congress of the operation of existing procurement laws, and to use the pressure of publicity to enforce compliance with those laws. CICA's bid protest procedures enable disappointed bidders to compel the executive to explain some of its procurement decisions to the Comptroller General. Although that official, in turn, is not authorized to alter the executive decisions in any way, he is empowered to recommend action to the procuring agency. If his recommendation is not accepted the Comptroller General must inform Congress about the entire episode in a report describing each instance in which a Federal agency did not fully implement the Comptroller General's recommendations. 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3554(e)(2). 19 To ensure that the force of publicity is brought to bear effectively on challenged procurement decisions, and that if that does not work Congress is fully informed about the incident, CICA contains a variety of provisions regarding the timing of procurements challenged by bid protests. The net effect of these provisions is to suspend the procurement process until the Comptroller General has issued his recommendation. 20 A less formal version of the CICA's bid protest procedure had been followed for many years prior to passage of the Act. See Wheelabrator Corp. v. Chafee, 455 F.2d 1306, 1313-16 (D.C.Cir.1971). Before CICA, however, when the Comptroller General decided what relief a protesting bidder should receive, he also took into account the cost to the procuring agency of providing the recommended relief. The cost of awarding a contract to a protesting bidder is of course much higher once the contract has already been awarded to another supplier, and work begun on it. Because procuring agencies were often reluctant to adopt the Comptroller General's recommendation, they frequently responded to the filing of a bid protest, or other form of Congressional concern over how certain resources were being purchased, by rushing to award a contract and begin its execution. This prevented the Comptroller General from even recommending relief that would undo what the procuring agency had done or wanted to do. 4 This problem is exemplified by the facts in Aero Corp. v. Department of the Navy, 540 F.Supp. 180 (D.D.C.1982). See especially id. at 215. 21 CICA is in part a response to this problem. The House Report on CICA explained that, under existing law, 22 GAO has no power to stop a contract award or contract 23 performance while a protest is pending. As a result, 24 agencies usually proceed with their contracts, knowing that 25 they will preclude any possibility of relief simply by 26 delaying the protest process. 27 Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, H.R.Rep. No. 1157, 98th Cong., 2d Sess. 24 (1984). Congress responded to this practice by providing that, barring exigent circumstances, once a bid protest has been filed, a contract cannot be executed until the protest has been resolved. This rule is implemented by Sec. 3553 subsections (c) and (d), and by Sec. 3554(a), of Title 31, United States Code. These provisions are set out in the margin. 5 Finally, CICA also authorizes the Comptroller General to order the procuring agency to reimburse bid protesters for the costs they incurred in preparing their bids and/or their bid protests. See 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3554(c). 28 These provisions do not compel procuring agencies to obey the recommendation of the Comptroller General. Instead, the effect of these provisions is to compel procurement officials to make purchase decisions in light of what the Comptroller General recommends the government do in that case. The Comptroller General's interpretation of the procurement laws has come to be highly respected. See Sea-Land Service, Inc. v. Brown, 600 F.2d 429, 434 (3d Cir.1979); Wheelabrator Corp. v. Chafee, 455 F.2d at 1313. His recommendations are therefore a persuasive mechanism through which Congress and disappointed bidders can speak to the executive about the way the laws are being executed. The stay provisions at issue in this case compel the executive to listen. 29 The other effect of the stay provisions, when they operate in tandem with CICA's reporting requirements, is to inform Congress, and thereby the public, of the extent to which the procurement laws are being followed. CICA commands the Comptroller General to decide what relief would be necessary given that the challenged procurement has not yet been made; such remedies can be identified only if the procurement is suspended until the Comptroller General's decision has been issued. CICA also commands the Comptroller General to inform Congress of each instance in which a Federal agency did not fully implement the Comptroller General's recommendations. 31 U.S.C. Sec. 3554(e)(2). This reporting function provides Congress with the information it wants, including the measures which would have been necessary to make the challenged procurement conform with applicable laws, only if the recommendations made by the Comptroller General are based on how things stood before the procurement had been executed. Given the apparent willingness of procuring agencies to frustrate Congressional inquiry by rushing to complete challenged procurement projects, CICA reflects Congress's decision that the pre-execution facts can be the basis for the Comptroller General's recommendation only if the procurement process is suspended until his recommendation is issued. 30