Tuesday, April 9, 2013

City of Tacoma Approves (some) Local Purchasing

A couple of weeks ago the Chamber gladly supported the City of Tacoma's Ordinance No. 28140, "to ensure, in appropriate situations, the inclusion of and consideration of locality and sustainability factors in the evaluation and award of City contracts."

The key words for the Chamber were "consideration of locality."  This means that in (some) contracts the City will be able to give some nominal preference to local vendors.  The Chamber has been supportive of this issue for some time, including the last time it came to a Council Committee about a year ago.

The intervening time has been used by attorneys to rework the language and approach to make it consistent with state law.  The result of the legal work has been a policy that still allows for local consideration, but with plenty of caveats.  With so many qualifers, it's clear that the City may not be using the local preference option much - but getting it in the municipal code is a start.

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