Competition Matters

Occasionally, you may encounter terms or concepts unique to antitrust issues, competition, and schemes to exploit purchasers. In this installment of The Informed Purchaser, let’s talk about incumbency. 

One of the best ways to detect and deter future bid-rigging is to learn from past schemes that have been uncovered and halted. Competition Matters will periodically feature case studies from some of the Ohio Attorney General’s prior antitrust enforcement efforts regarding public contracts. In this edition, we highlight Ohio’s school milk antitrust litigation.

From time to time, you may encounter terms or concepts unique to antitrust issues, competition, and schemes to exploit purchasers.  Here are a few relevant terms and definitions:

The Ohio Attorney General’s Self-Disclosure Policy encourages vendors and others to self-report anti-competitive activities and offers lenient treatment to businesses that come forward to report wrongdoing that may violate antitrust laws

Detecting bid-rigging schemes is no easy feat. It becomes a little bit easier, however, if you know which purchases are the most likely to be the subject of anti-competitive schemes by vendors. Three factors make a product or service especially vulnerable to bid-rigging:

Public entities routinely ask bidders to identify their subcontractors. Bidders usually comply. But what is the reason for the requirement? Is the question merely boilerplate or something more? While the identification of subcontractors may serve a variety of purposes, one of the most important relates to the detection of bid-rigging.

A brutal winter like the one that has gripped Ohio and much of the nation this year makes cities, counties, townships, and other governmental entities rely even more heavily than usual on their purchases of one particular product: rock salt. Because rock salt is widely accepted as the most cost-effective means of treating icy roads, public purchasers have very little choice when the price goes up but to take money from other parts of their budgets for salt purchases.

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Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s Partnership for Competitive Purchasing takes a proactive approach to bid-rigging detection.

Many of the steps that public purchasers can take to deter vendor collusion, such as making sure bidders submit all required documentation with their bids, can also increase their chances of recovering compensation if bidder collusion does occur and a lawsuit results.

Did you know that two websites compile and publish public notices about competitive bidding opportunities and other proceedings in Ohio?