The Attorney General’s Partnership for Competitive Purchasing is a proactive approach to identifying and preventing anti-competitive activities that hurt local government entities. Because anti-competitive schemes such as bid-rigging and price-fixing are often carefully and cleverly concealed, the program’s staff is specially trained to spot questionable activity that may go unnoticed by even the most astute public purchasing officials. But some of the most important clues about vendor collusion come from the patterns that form when observations are gathered from multiple purchasers all across the state. That is why a partnership between antitrust enforcers and governmental purchasers is the best way to safeguard public funds.
Participation in the Partnership for Competitive Purchasing is voluntary, but all state agencies, public universities, government entities, and political subdivisions are encouraged to participate.
The process is simple. Any public purchaser that encounters an unusual phenomenon during the procurement process – e.g., a sharp, unexplained price spike; a sudden reduction in the number of bidders willing to compete for a job; multiple consecutive procurements where only one vendor bids despite the presence of other eligible vendors in the market; etc. – is encouraged to report that occurrence to the Attorney General’s Antitrust staff by clicking the link below.
Public entities do not have to have conclusive evidence or a strong suspicion of anti-competitive vendor behavior in order for their observations to be valuable to our staff. Events can appear relatively innocuous when viewed in isolation, but when reported by multiple entities, they can be vital clues that something is amiss in the competitive process.
Click the following link to Submit an observation to the Partnership for Competitive Purchasing.