Court Opinion

ID: 9676387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:23:24.098939+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:48.270381
License: Public Domain

CRIPPEN, Judge,
dissenting.
Unquestionably, the minority hiring standards of the City of Minneapolis are laudatory, and the courts must guarantee that they are not circumvented by improper bidding practices. In this case, however, appellant is asking us to interject a bidding standard more strict than permitted by reason or precedent.
1.
Contents of a bid declared nonresponsive by the bid proposal require rejection of the bid, whether or not the bid is otherwise in substantial compliance with contract specifications. Rossetti Contracting Company, Inc. v. Brennan, 508 F.2d 1039, 1044-45 (7th Cir.1975) (where responsiveness expressly conditioned upon statement of minority participation for each trade to be employed, bid flawed by statement of participation goals below stated standards for several trades, including at least one trade to be utilized in performing the contract); Northeast Construction Co. v. Romney, 485 F.2d 752, 759 (D.C.Cir.1973) (where responsiveness conditioned upon statement of specific minority participation goals for trades to be used in performing the contract, bid flawed by stating only a general commitment to government’s minority participation standards).
The pertinent bid proposal for the City of Minneapolis requires completion and submission of “Attachment C” as a condition of responsiveness. Attachment C calls for listing the “women/minority businesses” the contractor will attempt to use for subcontract work.
Minority participation standards of the City of Minneapolis are simple and absolute —no matter which trades are employed in subcontracting, 10 percent of the contract work is to be done' by minority businesses and five percent by women business enterprises. There is no need or demand by the City, as in Rossetti and Romney, for declaring the trades which will be called upon to perform the contract and the special minority participation requirement for trades to be employed. In Attachment C, respondent clearly and unequivocally commits itself to the applicable city requirement for minority participation in subcontracting; respondent stated in the document that the dollar amount of its minority subcontracts would total no less than $321,243.42, exactly 15 percent of its total bid.
The city’s bid proposal goes a step beyond those reviewed by the federal courts in Rossetti and Romney. The city asks for disclosure of the businesses the bidder will attempt to hire by subcontracts. Respondent did not ignore that requirement. Instead, respondent committed itself to arrange for subcontracting of 15 percent of the job through MBE, Inc., a minority business. Although MBE, Inc. is not a women’s business, it is the evident implication of the bid that respondent expected further subcontracting through MBE, Inc. to achieve the commitment for five percent subcontracting to women business enterprises. There is no evidence suggesting respondent could not meet its commitment through MBE, Inc. As the trial court found, respondent is “bound by its bid” to contract with MBE, Inc. such as to guarantee that five percent of subcontracting will be to women business enterprises.
In my opinion, respondent adequately “completed” Attachment C. Neither the language in the attachment nor other language in the bid proposal makes it clear that responsiveness depends upon precise identification of every business that may be employed to meet minority participation standards. In fact, the disclosure is at best a nonbinding suggestion of prospective subcontractors. Moreover, unlike the circumstances in Rossetti and Romney, there is no evidence in the case that further disclosure would be of any significance in serving the purposes of the city to encourage minority participation.
*7402.
Independent of bid proposal language on responsiveness, there is little or no question here that respondent has submitted a lawful bid. To perform its contract, respondent must utilize qualified women/minority business enterprises. There is no evidence that specific designation of these businesses has any significance in terms of the price the city must pay, the quality or quantity of work to be done under the contract, the manner of performance, or any other factor that goes into determination of the amount of the bid. Additional disclosures on the identification of subcontractors is immaterial to the requirement of fair bidding. Consistently, the trial court observed that it “fail[ed] to see how any other bidder was. or could have been prejudiced by McCrossan’s bid statement as submitted to the City.”
Appellant emphasizes an observation in Romney, quoted in Rossetti, to the effect that a bidder must not be permitted the advantage of backing away from its commitment, or the opportunity to further negotiate its commitment. Romney, 485 F.2d at 756-57; Rossetti, 508 F.2d at 1045. Thus, as these federal courts indicate, the commitments of the bidder must be found in the bids, not in subsequent statements. Those observations of law govern bids which are limited or unclear, but they do not determine the present litigation. There is simply no evidence here that respondent can renounce or renegotiate its unequivocal commitment to meet the city standard on participation of women business enterprises.
The trial court’s decision should be affirmed, and I respectfully dissent.