"Contracting For Services In State And Local Government Agencies: Best Practices For Public Procurement, Third Edition"

Those rebuilding after wildfires need services, but how to choose providers? Homeowners may hire contractors based on word of mouth, friendship, the first name in a printed phone directory, simple availability, or a bidding process--but a brand new company with a super-low bid may not be the best pick.

The difficulty is compounded if you're a government agency in need of services or equipment and it's taxpayer money that's being spent. Such agencies need to develop a transparent and ethical system of evaluating bids and making fair choices.

Enter William Sims Curry, Principal Consultant of WSC Consulting in Chico, whose award-winning handbooks help agencies avoid acquisition pitfalls. His newest is "Contracting For Services In State And Local Government Agencies: Best Practices For Public Procurement, Third Edition" ($74.95 in hardcover from Routledge; also for Amazon Kindle).

Updated with new terminology and software procurement examples, the book focuses on 48 (18 more than in the previous edition) "best public procurement practices" gleaned from a 2021 survey of agencies and educational institutions around the country and analysis of the forms they require. 

Some practices are simple, like requiring contractors to use four-digit years, and some complex, like monitoring contractor progress. While Federal processes have "centralized codification," "state and local public procurement … has a dearth of national regulation" which has led to the development of "diverse procurement practices that range from enlightened to foolhardy."

Curry is a Certified Professional Contracts Manager and "was on the Board of Directors for the Industry Council for Small Business Development, a not-for-profit corporation established to assist small, small-disadvantaged, and women-owned small businesses." His chapters take the reader through competitive procurement, contract negotiations, "terms and conditions," and final review. Central is Curry's concern for ethical processes.

He offers the account of a novice "public procurement specialist" on his first job where "he was exposed to an outrageous offer from a prospective contractor on his first business trip," little perks that were a "blatant attempt to gain his loyalty." That made a big impact on the author. 

Bottom line: Those who curry favor by favoring Curry had better not.

How to lessen government fraud

Chico-based consultant William Sims Curry specializes in creating clear and equitable processes for government grant acquisition. He’s seen too many cases of a dysfunctional system, where, for example, those in Congress favor certain defense contractors not because those contractors are offering the best deal, but the best deal for them.

The sad story is laid out in “Government Abuse: Fraud, Waste, And Incompetence In Awarding Contracts In The United States” ($54.95 in hardcover from Transaction Publishers; also for Amazon Kindle). In 11 chapters Curry focuses on contracting-gone-bad (think of Hurricane Katrina); one chapter is entitled “Government of the Corporations, by the Unions, and for the Special Interests.”

Yet the book is not to be taken as a breezy denunciation of government corruption; rather, it is a careful, technical analysis of the flaws in the contracting process, especially relating to the Department of Defense (DOD), and, more importantly, how that process could be fixed. In the midst of all the outrageous examples of FIWA (“fraud, incompetence, waste and abuse”) Curry shows it doesn’t have to be this way.

He singles out two contractor selection rules used by DOD and other agencies as problematic. One is the “prohibition against using numerical scoring to rate contractor proposals.” The other “requires government agencies to assign the relative importance of factor and subfactors used in the evaluation of contractor proposals ….”

If two contractors are color-coded “good,” not scored numerically (say, from 70-100), the award may go to the one that makes the most campaign contributions. And if factors such as timeliness and quality of service are merely relative, that leaves it open for the unscrupulous to “adjust” factor weights to favor a certain contractor. If factors are given numerical weights ahead of time, the process is transparent.

Curry singles out the good work of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), that, while not perfect, has sustained numerous protests from losing contractors. Many of these issues could be resolved using a scoring formula yielding a single number.

May this book be widely read in high places.

Chico writer's exposé of the U.S. Forest Service

The mission of the U.S. Forest Service is the management of almost 200 million acres of timberland. According to Christopher Burchfield, who worked for the agency, that mission has been systematically undermined since the late 1970s. "In 1973," he writes, "Gene C. Bernardi, a female U.S. Forest Service research sociologist, filed a class action lawsuit charging the agency with sex discrimination. In 1979 the Forest Service entered into a consent decree with the plaintiff."

Burchfield sifted through thirty-seven boxes of "letters, reports, directives and minutes of meetings" at the Federal Records Storage Center in San Bruno, all relating to the civil suit. The result of his investigations, which include interviews with current and former Forest Service employees affected by the consent decree, is "The Tinder Box: How Politically Correct Ideology Destroyed the U.S. Forest Service" ($27.95 in paperback from Stairway Press, www.stairwaypress.com; also available in Barnes and Noble Nook e-book format).

Burchfield is scheduled to sign copies of his book at Barnes and Noble in Chico this Thursday, October 4, at 6:30 p.m. An interview with the author, conducted by Nancy Wiegman of Nancy's Bookshelf on KCHO (Northstate Public Radio, 91.7 FM) is available at http://goo.gl/uOWm4.

As the effect of the Bernardi consent decree began to radiate outward, Burchfield contends, more and more qualified men were passed over in favor of a misguided egalitarianism, putting women into positions for which they were psychologically and physically unqualified. Merit promotion was undermined and the agency was beset by legal challenges to its policies.

In 1999, after he started working for the Mendocino National Forest, Burchfield concluded "that the U.S. Forest Service's effort to reach gender parity in all professions and grade levels had been an unmitigated disaster." The agency, he says, was "demoralized and utterly without a sense of mission," plagued by laziness, absenteeism, victimhood, and incompetence.

In 1986, Burchfield writes, for a time the "Forests began purchasing lightweight, single-ply fire hoses fifty feet in length with plastic fittings attached" so female firefighters could more easily handle them. But the hoses "had a propensity to kink, popped leaks by the score" and--melted.

"The Tinder Box" aims to explain "why, over the past twenty years, ninety million acres of American's wild lands have gone up in flames.

What's happened to our water?

"Water is a valuable, exhaustible resource," writes Robert Glennon, Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. By "exhaustible" he means the right kind of water (the drinkable kind, for example) is increasingly not in the right place at the right time. If in the recent past water was treated "as valueless and inexhaustible," these days few of us are strangers to the latest Sierra snowpack report or headlines about irrigation allotments.

"Water lubricates the American economy just as oil does," Glennon observes. "It is intimately linked to energy because it takes water to make energy, and it take energy to divert, pump, move, and cleanse water. ... A prosperous future depends on a secure and reliable water supply. And we don't have it. To be sure, water still flows from taps, but we're draining our reserves like gamblers at the craps table."

His engaging survey of water rights (and wrongs) was first published in 2009 but, if anything, is even more relevant today. "Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis And What To Do About It" ($19.95 in paperback from Island Press; also in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook e-book formats) is the 2012-2013 Book in Common at Chico State University and Butte College. Many other community organizations take part in book discussions, and the author is scheduled to speak at the university's Laxson Auditorium on Friday, October 5, at 7:30 p.m. (Visit http://goo.gl/R3RXP for ticket information.)

Divided into three parts ("The Crisis," "Real and Surreal Solutions," and "A New Approach"), Glennon's book looks carefully at some of the contemporary "answers" and finds them wanting. "In the past when we needed more water, we engineered our way out of the problem by diverting rivers, building dams, or drilling wells. Today, with few exceptions, those options are not viable solutions."

Glennon's own proposals are not without controversy. "We must raise the price of water" to provide "incentives to conserve." And he advocates a regulated market solution with "quantified and transferable" water rights. "We should require those proposing new development to purchase and retire existing water rights in order to break the relentless cycle of overuse and move toward sustainable water use."

So, as we think about water policy, is our glass half empty--or half full?

Chico writer on ethical government contracting

The rancorous debate over the Federal debt ceiling reminds us afresh that decisions made in Washington often have profound effects on Main Street. That includes billions of dollars paid to private companies by government entities contracting for needed goods and services. With so much money changing hands, the temptation to "nefarious, amateurish, and criminal behavior" is ever present. William Sims Curry, a Chico-based government contract consultant (www.wsc-consulting.com), addresses the issue head on.

"Government Contracting: Promises and Perils" ($69.95 in hardcover from CRC Press) provides "best practices" for those doing business with the government. Written "primarily from the government perspective," the book "includes recommendations for actions for contractors to avoid government sanctions, corporate fines, seizure of employee assets, and suspension or debarment of contractors." Though careful to praise the vast majority of contractors (and government officials), Curry focuses on negative examples where the process has gone off the rails, including Boeing scandals and the FEMA response to hurricane Katrina.

The book is technical in nature, dealing with contract processes; decisions about "sole source" or competitive bids; social objectives through contracting; proposal solicitation, evaluation, administration and auditing; and contracting during emergencies. A CD is included with the book presenting many of the forms and other document referred to in the text. But the lay reader may find the discussion fascinating, especially in contemplating the "government procurement corruption wall of shame," which includes bribery, abuse of power, contract fraud, ineptitude, partiality, poor planning, larceny, and more.

For Curry, the key to honesty in the contracting process is having a transparent process to begin with. It's not as easy as one might think. For example, if several contractors bid on a project, one company might have better management and past performance, but another might have better technical competence and be cheaper. Unless the criteria can be boiled down into a single number, it's likely losing contractors will file protests.

Curry notes that emergencies often lead to single source contracting, but that's often a mistake. "Obtaining competitive proposals or bids does not necessarily slow the contracting process because a solicitation can be sent concurrently to multiple prospective contractors." Though the company selected may not be the least expensive, competitive pressures may lower overall bids. Something to remember when the envelopes are opened.