Editorial: Open the bidding

Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006 | 7:06 a.m.

For certain "professional" services, such as hiring doctors or architects, state law allows government agencies to award contracts without putting them out for a competitive bid. Ostensibly, the idea behind this practice is that the lowest bid for such services doesn't necessarily make the best bid.

As County Manager Virginia Valentine said in a Las Vegas Sun story Saturday by reporter Tony Cook, "I don't necessarily want the cheapest heart surgeon I can find."

The county's aviation chief, Randy Walker, oversees plenty of no-bid contracts at McCarran International Airport for design and architecture work, and says the "flexibility to pick the right tool for the right circumstances is always a good thing."

Those may sound like reasonable arguments, but they don't fully address the problem with no-bid contracts.

The fact is both expertise and flexibility can be achieved with excellent results under a competitive bidding process. When decisions on how to spend taxpayer dollars are made out of the public view, giving short shrift to accountability, people rightfully become skeptical because they have no idea if the decisions being made are the best.

Walker recently accepted a job with an architectural firm that has been awarded $12.6 million in contracts since 2000. County and airport officials say nothing improper occurred, but the situation has raised eyebrows.

It is essential for government officials to at least ask for proposals for professional work and then go through a public process to evaluate those proposals. Government should explore all of its options and see all the different services available, enabling competition to bring out the best deal.

Competitive bidding also builds the public's trust by giving people a way to evaluate the contract selection. The lowest-priced bid may not be the best bid, and if not, government officials should be able to clearly articulate why not.

Otherwise the public is in the dark and those in the system can succumb to the temptation of cronyism and corruption.