Secret bids could be opened up

A state board agreed Thursday to continue looking at making changes to a long-standing practice of keeping the losing bids for some government contracts secret.

After hearing testimony from both supporters and opponents of making the information public, the state Procurement Policy Board decided to meet again Nov. 17 to discuss what could be released.

At issue are so-called requests for proposals, rather than traditional bids that are typically opened in public and awarded based solely on price. Request for proposals are usually sought for more complex government projects, such as state tourism promotion.

As a result, the proposals submitted can contain information that companies want to protect, such as management strategies, employee resumes, financial statements and especially their approaches to the project.

Some information included in a submission is proprietary, said Dan Pratt, a vice president of Hughes General Contractors who was representing the Association of General Contractors.

He described competing for a contract once using a model valued at $10,000.

The industry, Pratt said, is "tremendously concerned about what information is released."

But Dan Harrie, an editor with the Salt Lake Tribune, said more important than whether companies are unhappy with information being released is the public's level of confidence in the procurement process.

"If the public doesn't feel it can trust the integrity of the process, you have a real problem," Harrie said.

The board, which includes purchasing officials from both state and local government agencies, also heard the results of two new surveys about the effect of making unsuccessful proposals public.

A survey of suppliers found 57 percent supported the change and nearly two-thirds said it wouldn't make them less willing to submit proposals — if trade secrets, proprietary information, design and intellectual property were removed before becoming public.

A survey of state and local government officials, however, found that 60 percent did not support changing the state procurement code to allow unsuccessful proposals to be made public once the contract was awarded.

Nearly 53 percent of those officials said they believed the change would impair the procurement process and give an unfair advantage to companies that competed unsuccessfully for a contract.

Board members agreed to consider language that would at least make public the rankings of the submissions received in response to a request for proposal. They also asked for more information about how to determine what information should not be released.

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