Opinion ID: 667573
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Alleged Violation of the PADC's Own Procedures

Text: 34 Saratoga falls back on the claim that the PADC violated its own policies and procedures. According to Saratoga, the PADC was obliged to hold an open period during which the offerors could modify their proposals in response to the PADC's deletion of the financing criterion and its adoption of the affirmative-action resolution. Appellant's Reply Brief at 6 n. 8. 35 Saratoga is referring to the following section of the PADC's procedures: 36 Modifications of or additions to timely submissions will not be permitted except in the case of clerical errors in the original submission, requests by the Corporation for further information, or in cases where the Corporation sets an open period during which all developers are allowed to submit modifications. 37 J.A. 465 (emphasis added). On its face, however, this section simply describes an open period, and does not oblige the PADC to hold one. 38 Even if the PADC would face such an obligation in some circumstances, the PADC here specifically asked each developer--both by letter and in the oral presentation--whether deletion of the financing criterion would have any impact on its proposal. Neither Saratoga nor any other development team identified any such impact. Indeed, at the oral presentation, Saratoga's partner acknowledged the PADC's complete right to delete the financing criterion, and Saratoga never indicated that it would need to modify its proposal if the PADC chose to exercise this right. See J.A. 948. Even now, Saratoga offers only contradictory and ill-supported claims of how it would have changed its application in response to the deletion of the financing criterion. Sometimes, Saratoga asserts (without offering any details) that its financing plan unduly constrained its design and project budget, crimping its ability to compete with the other entrants. See, e.g., Appellant's Opening Brief at 24-25. At other times, however, Saratoga suggests that its financing proposals were so good that they would have given it a clear leg up on the competition. See, e.g., id. at 5-7. Assuming without deciding there might be some judicial review of the PADC's possible abuse of discretion in not holding an open period, this record completely fails to suggest such abuse. 39 The PADC's affirmative-action resolution, for its part, did not alter the selection criteria at all; indeed, it merely directed the winning developer to do something that it had already been free to do on its own. The district court, without finding any special facts to support this inference, concluded that the resolution probably did decrease the weight that the PADC's directors assigned to the affirmative-action criterion. 777 F.Supp. at 38. But the PADC's prospectus never specified any weights for the various criteria; to the contrary, it indicated that the PADC retained sole discretion over the weight of each one. See J.A. 452/1. 6 It is hard to imagine, then, that any entrant would have kicked people off its development team or otherwise altered its approach in response to the resolution. In any event, given the discretionary nature of the PADC's decision whether to hold an open period, we decline to hold that the PADC violated its own procedures.