Illinois State Senator Chapin Rose says procurement rules put in place to address corruption during the Blagojevich era are too top-heavy and bureaucratic.
So, the Mahomet Republican will file legislation next week to scale back the rules the state uses when purchasing goods and service -- at least for state universities. Rose says the rules add tens of millions of dollars to higher education expenses, because many otherwise qualified low bidders don't make it through. He says they're either rejected because of technicalities with paperwork -- or never apply in the first place, because they've decided the process is too much trouble to bother with: "What I'm going to propose as a starting point for discussion, is that we no longer have the state procurement officers involved on the front end. But, the universities would manage their own procurements in-house. So they'd manage their own timelines, no more lost bids to people in Springfield not returning phone calls or not getting their work done on time."
Rose says his proposal may be revised more than once in the legislation process. But if passed, he thinks it could save state universities some 100 million dollars a year. And Rose says the procurement changes could then be applied to other parts of state government.
