The city of Jacksonville uses a competitive bidding process to award contracts on a wide array of products and services, from construction work for multimillion-dollar street projects to relatively low-cost items like bicycle racks.
Contracts with nonprofits are subject to a requirement to be competitively bid, but the city allows waivers under certain circumstances to provide for what are known as direct or single-source contracts with those organizations.
For those contracts, Mayor Donna Deegan says her newly proposed Fairness in Nonprofit Contracting Act would improve transparency of city spending and raise the bar on approvals by requiring more disclosure and making waivers subject to a two-thirds Council vote.
During a March 25 media conference at City Hall, Deegan said Council has waived the bidding process 64 times on more than $80 million in contracts with nonprofits since 2022.
“Doing so eliminates the checks and balances that come with the bidding process and disclosures, even for great causes that provide important services for our community,” she said.
“It would be better for everyone if we let more sunshine into this process.”
Deegan’s proposal would still allow waivers but would require an explanation of the necessity of a direct contract and an affidavit disclosing any personal, family and business connections among elected officials to a nonprofit receiving funding.
If connections are listed, the city would post them for at least two weeks on its website with a notice inviting other proposals for the same project or service. Any proposals received would then be reviewed by Council.
“It offers the opportunity for other nonprofits that provide the same service, if there is a relationship, to come in and say, ‘You know what, we want to also get on that process,’” Deegan said.
The legislation also includes the requirement for a two-thirds Council majority vote to waive the bidding requirement, up from a simple majority.
Deegan said that in addition to making city operations more easily visible to taxpayers and opening a door for other nonprofits to bid for city grants, the legislation would benefit both elected leaders and nonprofits by addressing perceptions of conflicts of interest in contracting.
The disclosure requirement would apply to the mayor, Council members, their spouses and children. Any who work for an organization or sit on its board would have to be included on the affidavit, and failure to list them would make a nonprofit subject to its funding being rescinded.
“I think it takes the pressure off,” Deegan said.
“I think it removes any sort of cloud that might hang over things. These are good organizations doing good work, so we want to make sure that they don’t have the appearance that something might be going on.”
Deegan said the proposal had drawn bipartisan support among Council members, and she was optimistic it would be approved. On March 24, the Mayor’s Budget Review Committee unanimously approved it for introduction to Council.
Deegan said the legislation was not a response to any specific contract or situation, adding that it would still allow for direct contracts.
“There may be times when the city needs to move fast, or where there’s a unique organization that can deliver a service,” she said. “The new bill does not prevent that from happening.”