Editorial by Kim McDarison

One size fits all is often considered an unappealing option. As consumers of goods and services, we each seek out our individualized preferences. Governance, and serving as an elected official, is about representing the many. A one-size-fits-all approach to the application of public policy is, arguably, often the best policy. In an imperfect world, it offers an opportunity to accommodate with fairness the largest majority. It offers an equitable attempt at uniformity. 

This is a tale of two request for proposals, known in the vernacular as an RFP.

The idea is that cities, and indeed their taxpayers, fare best when service requirements are put down on paper, and then out to bid. In this way, many compete as providers of a singular service, the parameters of which are spelled out in the RFP. The process remains open, and publicly advanced for a set amount of time, and then official decision-makers, in their role as representatives of their constituents, look at all the bids, each offering proposals to achieve the same outcome, and choose a vendor. Often, as a matter of policy, assuming, thanks to the RFP, that all services are equal, cities opt to award their job to the lowest bidder. In this way, they keep costs to taxpayers at a minimum.

From this reporter’s perspective, that seems to be the benchmark when municipalities seek out services.

In Whitewater, some of the city’s common council members recently advanced the idea that the body needed an attorney to represent it in “discipline and personnel matters.” They later called on the full council to approve allowing them to seek out the services of such an attorney without the advantage of an RFP. Rather, they advanced the idea that the council would be better served if the council president was independently charged with soliciting three bids from area attorneys of his choosing and returning them to the council by its next meeting.

Four members of the seven-member council, by virtue of their vote, found the RFP process unnecessary.

During the same meeting, a member of the city’s Community Development Authority (CDA) argued vehemently, in person and on paper, that the city’s manager, John Weidl, had failed to honor an existing RFP when, the member alleged, he spoke with a commercial real estate broker, alerting the service provider of the existence of the RFP. The CDA member argued that the conversation with Weidl gave the broker with whom he spoke an unfair advantage over other brokers who might be interested in the work, including a broker with whom the city has a previous relationship.

The objection made by the CDA member was that the board and, indeed, the community were not treated fairly because other potential service providers were not given fair and equal consideration to compete for possible work.

In the first scenario, regarding the decision made by the city council, the reason for the sought-after attorney was to advise the body legally on matters involving an employee whom the council oversees. The only employee who falls within that description is the city manager.

While the council president has noted that the attorney is required for “personnel matters,” which, he said, necessitates board discretion, the details of a specific case would not be part of a standard RFP. The overall scope of the work would.

To date, no reason has been given by the four council members who did not support an RFP process as to why taxpayers should not enjoy that process and its associated transparency.

Instead, they voted to allow the council president to go out on his own and identify at least three candidates who might like to supply the legal work. For taxpayers, without an RFP, the scope of that work remains a mystery. For possible vendors who might supply the work, the existence of the work remains a mystery. Also among mysteries remains the competitive cost. The council has set a ceiling of $10,000.

For the council members who voted against the use of an RFP, sending the council president out on his own to solicit the work was a desirable outcome.

In the second scenario, the CDA member alleged that the city manager had gone out on his own, inviting brokers with whom he was familiar to participate in an RFP process, without offering the same consideration to other brokers with whom the CDA had already been working.

While the CDA member acknowledged an RFP for the work had been publicly advanced, he argued that the city manager’s involvement had produced an unfair advantage for some bidders over others.

For the CDA member who advanced his concerns, allowing the city manager to represent the nature of the work on his own was an undesirable outcome.

The conundrum puts taxpayers in the unenviable position of watching two city boards, each assembled to serve them as their representatives, arguing from opposite ends of the RFP, and by extension, transparency spectrum.

To an everyday person, looking to make sense of these opposing views, it appears as if the RFP process, and transparency along with it, has become a cloak of customizable sizes, with each board arguing for use or disuse of an RFP as it fits with its particular goals.

When transparency becomes a custom-made garment, only a small group remains served.

Left in the cold are the constituents, the taxpayers, who struggle to understand the public discussion, policies, innuendos, and discord.

Without the aid of consistent policy use, and public application through the use of an RFP, constituents will not be offered an understanding of the nature of the services that are being sought in their name, or evidence that those services and decisions are in keeping with what they might like from their elected and appointed represenatatives. Nor will they know how much for said services they should competitively expect to pay.

A lack of transparency breeds secrecy. Transparency as a customizable commodity breeds distrust.

Neither is of value to a community’s constituents.

When it comes to a decision about when to use an RFP, and adhering to a city’s policy, one size fits all. One policy, one set of criteria, publicly advanced in the name of transparency, is a desirable achievement, so all can follow a most basic discussion: who is doing what for whom, at what cost, and why.