In January, members of the Virginia House of Delegates and the Senate of Virginia introduced legislation to reinstate and expand cooperative procurement for construction in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The bills were titled House Bill (HB 467) and Senate Bill (SB 418), the Virginia Public Procurement Act.
These bills were counter to efforts a decade ago when the Virginia General Assembly, in a bipartisan manner, fully debated cooperative procurement for construction and then took legislative action. First the practice was restricted to small projects, and then ultimately abolished after finding continued abuses and faults with the practice.
A group of construction industry organizations opposed and defeated these two new bills. IIBEC wants to thank IIBEC members Scott Shufflebarger, president of Virginia-based Hertless Brothers Roofing; April McKelvey, president of Virginia-based Monarch Consulting and vice president of the Virginia Chapter of IIBEC; and Derek Cundiff, principal of Cornett & Cundiff, Inc. and president of the Virginia Chapter; as well as Paul Davis, Jr., vice president of Virginia Association of Roofing Professionals (VARP); Heather Greenwell, executive director of VARP; Gordon Dixon, executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Virginia (AGC-VA); Matt Benka, lobbyist for the Virginia Contractors Procurement Alliance (VCPA); and Philip Abraham, with the Old Dominion Highway Contractors Association.
On January 14, IIBEC and its allied groups, led by Shufflebarger and McKelvey, prevailed in a committee hearing, and the Senate bill was decisively and indefinitely set aside. On February 4, the House bill was also set aside in committee.
The successful effort to oppose these two bills to revive and expand cooperative procurement of publicly funded construction in the Commonwealth of Virginia is a win for taxpayers and open and fair procurement.
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