Will Delaware County be introduced to the modern word of public bidding on contracts?

Here is the interview report I received from the New York State Comptroller's Office of Delaware County Supervisor Wayne Marshfield who is also on the board of directors of the county's largest no-bid contractor Delaware Opportunities, Inc., see my blog about other Delaware County Supervisors on that board of directors here.

According to Mr. Marshfield, Delaware County includes no-bid contracts into its annual budgets, thus, in Mr. Marshfield's opinion, eliminating the need to bid out contracts and to separately make decisions on the choice of vendors for services.

And, contracts are not even discussed by the entire legislature of the County, only by "committees", so the County actually never does its job in approving contracts, with or without bidding!

A brilliant scheme, isn't it?

In home economics class, in middle school, they teach to form family budget this way:

(1) ascertain your needs,  
 (2) assess how much (approximately) your needs will cost (from a market survey of several different vendors) and 
(3) ascertain how much money you have, available and coming in in the immediate income or what can be obtained in loans.

Middle schoolers are not taught to first find a vendor you know who will give you the highest price and then build your needs and price your budget in accordance with the prices of that vendor.

You will not do that to your family, because for your family you would want the best service for the lowest available price.

Not so in Delaware County.

In Delaware County, "committees" of local government officials (who also sit on boards of vendors) determine the needs and put them into the budget of the County based on the prices quoted by the no-bid contractors that the County used for allegedly 30 years.

The problem is also that over 30 years, prices for goods and services changed dramatically, information technologies, such as Internet, made information about out-of-state goods and services readily available.

Therefore, the claim that Delaware County is a "large area with small population and few economic resources" which is touted by Delaware County officials as a justification of its 30-year practice of no-bid contracts, is not only a lie, but a stupid lie at that.

The Internet has made the entire world, including vendors from other counties, other states and other countries available for bidding on Delaware County contracts, and the price of submitting Delaware County contracts to bidding is the price of posting the bidding requirements on the existing Delaware County website - which is nothing, since it will have to be done by the already existing salaried employees.

Who knows, maybe it is cheaper to transport goods and services from China or deliver them electronically over the Internet to fit Delaware County needs for services, rather than to use taxpayer money to pay friends and relatives of members of the Delaware County government.

I understand that Delaware County needs to be introduced to the modern world, and it is a matter of time when an out of the area would-be vendor will sue the county for the opportunity to bid for its appropriation contracts. 

After all, New York State Comptroller, as of July of 2014, in his report on public contracts stated the following:

And:

Delaware County should take notice. 

I will continue to FOIL Delaware County as to its contracting practices and report it on this blog.  Stay tuned.