Ventura County Green Procurement Policy

The Grand Jury found that the Policy as written is unclear and in general has not been enforced. The Policy did not clearly identify whether the allowable 10% price preference was an absolute limit, aimed at containing 4 Ventura County Green Procurement Policy the cost of recycled paper or whether it could be ignored if operational budgets were not exceeded. (FA-01, FA-02, FA-03, FA-04, FA-05)

The Grand Jury found that the costs of implementing the Policy, i.e., any additional costs for using recycled paper, were not known by all departments. It was not clear that recycled paper goods were revenue neutral or within the Policy’s defined 10% price preference. Hence, monies spent beyond the 10% price preference placed the priority on achieving the goal of the Policy at the expense of operational funds that could have been used for other purposes. (FA-05)

The Grand Jury found that the GSA websites for Bid Listings and Bid Histories are not consistently updated with current and complete procurement data. Thus they do not provide a reliable source of procurement information in support of public transparency. (FA-08, FA-09, FA-10)

The Grand Jury found that limiting items to a targeted subset of choices available for purchase from County suppliers was an effective way to control costs. (FA-07) Recommendations

No statistics or reports were uncovered that would show County agencies and departments continually monitored the cost of virgin paper versus the cost of any available alternative recycled paper to verify expenditures were revenue neutral or within the 10% price preference established by the Policy.

GSA’s Business Support group, which performs document publishing for the County, uses recycled paper as the default printing option. It selected this default option after the quality of recycled paper improved enough for reliable use in County equipment.

The Ventura County Medical Center experimented with limiting purchases from the County’s office supplier to a restricted list of items. This initiative saved approximately $20,000 in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013.

Procurement within GSA hosts two websites to provide the public with information on its procurement activities. One site is labeled Bid Listing and the other Bid Histories. [Ref-02, Ref-03] The Bid Listing site lists goods and services intended to be procured by the County using documents identified as RFPs and Bids. A sample page is shown in Attachment 2. (Att-02) The Bid Histories site lists the results of the awards made for RFPs and Bids. Documents titled “Recap” or “Abstract” provide the data used to make the award for Bids. A document titled “Intent to Award” identifies the supplier awarded the contract defined by an RFP. When an RFP or Bid is cancelled, the word “Cancelled” is noted in the “Awarded To” column on the Bid Histories page. A sample page is shown in Attachment 3. (Att-03)

The Bid Histories site is incomplete. It fails to consistently provide status on Bids listed, e.g., many Bids have no Recap or Abstract or Cancelled content. In general, no feedback on the status of RFPs is shown, e.g., the only RFPs with “Intent to Award” content are RFPs 5416 and 5389 in year 2007. For RFP 5389, the “Intent to Award” link to the actual award letter is not active. For year 2010, there is no history information for RFPs and Bids.

The GSA has no policy in place on whether RFP “Intent to Award” information should be provided to the public on its website. Currently, this information is provided only to suppliers who submit responses to RFPs. Findings