The Procurement-Open Government Subcommittee advanced two bills on recorded votes — passing HB61 (SWaM Business Procurement Enhancement Program) 6-3 amid debate over a 42% contracting threshold and an outdated small business definition, and unanimously reporting HB1086 (farm-to-school procurement) 8-0 and HB777 (Merchant Marine Act compliance) 9-0 — while carrying over HB869 and HB143 to 2027 for work group review.
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Chris Stone (Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce) argued that codifying the 42% target is premature because the disparity study ordered by the body last year has not been completed and the 42% target across all business types may not be feasible, and that HB61 is identical to last year's HB1404 with none of the four public procurement work group recommendations reflected in it. Delegate Ward countered that a lot of the goals are aspirational and that the program has been studied for over 22 years and is proven to be successful.
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“An executive order is only as good as the governor who's there when that governor leaves and decides not to do it. Whatever all our work that we have done for some 20, 22 years goes out the window.”
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Sign in to subscribeThe meeting of the subcommittee on procurement and open government of the House general laws Committee will now come to order. Members will indicate their presence by crest in green on the electronic voting system. All right, thank you, members. A quorum is present. We have a brief docket to cover today as we have five bills left in this subcommittee. This will be the last procurement open government subcommittee meeting before crossover and after each patron has presented their bill. I'll take questions and comments from the subcommittee, then open it up for public testimony. But we before taking it back to the subcommittee. But first, we have an administrative action as requested by the patron. We have HB869 by delegate cousins. And so you know, with this bill, we're gonna need to carry it over to 2027 with a letter to the annual public body procurement work group to review the provisions of the bill and recommend changes to the procurement code to address the issues raised in this bill. So do I hear a motion? All right. All those in favor? Aye. All right. That bill is recommended to be carried over to 2027 with a letter…
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