The Washington State Capitol.
Low bidders no longer have automatic first dibs on city public works projects.
The Legislature this week passed Longview Democrat Sen. Dean Takko's bill on local governance that includes a provision allowing cities with at least 1,500 people to accept contract bids that come within 5 percent of the lowest bidder.
Senate Bill 5418 passed out of the House on Tuesday — the night before the last day to pass bills from the opposite house.
The legislation originated with a request from the City of Kelso after a contractor took much longer than expected last summer to repair South Pacific Avenue through the city's downtown. City officials asked local legislators to change the law so they could take past experiences into account before awarding a contract instead of being legally obligated to accept the lowest bid.
However, Kelso City Manager Steve Taylor on Friday said a last minute amendment to the bill changed the low bidder provision to only address part of the problem.
The new provision requires cities to document the poor experience they had with a contractor, and also demonstrate that the contractor never remedied the deficiencies, Taylor said. While the first part is "reasonable," he said, the city and the contractor may have different interpretations of whether they fixed the problems, which could open up the city to legal challenges.
"This is what we wanted to avoid," Taylor said.
Taylor said the city is still pleased that the "concept" got as far as it did, and said the rest of the bill is good legislation.
For example, the bill will expand bidding opportunities for small contractors, requires bidders to file protests within two business days and requires municipalities to disclose all public works contract bids when requested.
"We are going to continue working with the legislation in the next session," Taylor said. "Even though we didn't get the language we really wanted, there's a lot of other good stuff in the bill."
The bill passed the Senate 45 to 3 on March 8 and passed the House 76 to 22 on Tuesday.
Kelso and other cities in Cowlitz County had less success with their attempts to redistribute tourism tax dollars to the cities instead of the county.
The city's lobbyist, Josh Weiss with Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs, told the Kelso City Council on Tuesday that the tourism dollars bill was on "life support" after the House killed a bunch of Senate bills in the Finance and Appropriation committees.
The measure may be a casualty of the state budget dispute between the House and Senate, even though the bill would have enough votes to pass, Weiss said.
Taylor said they are still working on reviving the bill, even though the last day of the session is a week away. (The session is scheduled to end next Sunday, but Weiss said there are some rumors that it may go long yet again this year due to the budget dispute.)
If the tourism dollar bill cannot be revived, Taylor said Kelso will bring back the same legislation next year.
Cowlitz County commissioners have opposed the legislation, saying it would undermine the regional approach to tourism, but Taylor said the city will continue to work the county to promote tourism efforts that benefit the larger area. About $329,000 in revenue is at stake in Cowlitz County.
"We want to make sure we have a strong partnership with whatever entity is promoting tourism because it helps all of us," he said.
