Assembly Passes Three-Way Legislation
To Improve State Procurement Practices

Agreement Will Enable Small and Women and Minority
Owned Businesses to Compete for State Contracts

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Governmental Operations Committee Chair RoAnn Destito announced that the Assembly passed legislation last week, as part of an agreement with the Governor and the Senate, to extend the Procurement Stewardship Act for four years and to provide for major improvements and strategic changes to the Act.

The bill (A.11738), sponsored by Destito, will modernize the requirements of the State's Procurement Stewardship Act for the benefit of State agencies, local governments and the business community.

"By reforming the State's procurement law, New York will have a more competitive business environment and small and minority and women-owned businesses (MWBEs) will have a better chance to obtain government contracts," said Silver. "This bill will also make changes necessary to optimize public procurements and facilitate delivery of top-quality commodities, services and technology at reasonable cost - all to meet the evolving needs of State agencies, local governments and the business community."

"Job creation and growing our small business and MWBEs are among the keys to successful economic development in New York State. Our procurement reform package will greatly assist small businesses and MWBEs by enabling them to compete for the State's centralized contract business - a huge market. The creation of regional contracts will quickly benefit small businesses and MWBEs, because they will now be competitive with larger suppliers even when they cannot serve the entire State," said Destito.

This legislative measure will:

• Support more transparent and competitive State procurement practices by requiring agencies to better justify their approach when not using a standard competitive procurement;
• Require the Office of General Services (OGS) to publish information on winning bidders and make public its reasons for selections on centralized contracts;
• Authorize State agencies to use the Internet and other electronic tools to post and accept procurement contacts;
• Require the Department of Economic Development to publish a daily procurement opportunities newsletter and make it available, free of charge, on the Internet; and
• Establish a more open process for debriefing non-winning bidders, and clarify the standard under which State agencies may use their discretionary purchasing authority.