I mentioned the passage of HB 2763 in my 2009 Oregon Legislative Session wrap-up a few weeks back, and now that it's all signed by Governor Kulongoski and tucked away, The Portland Tribune has a piece up today on what this bill means and how it will work -
Last year, [Multnomah County Sustainability Manager Kat] West discovered that public agencies in Oregon had not made a great effort to buy local goods, primarily because they were not supposed to. What they were supposed to do was find and accept the lowest responsive bid. If the prison system can get apples cheaper from New Zealand than from Hood River, those were the apples prison purchasing staff were supposed to buy.
[...]
So, working with the Portland / Multnomah Food Policy Council, a citizens advisory panel, West last year decided to take on the state purchasing code. The result was House Bill 2763, which takes effect in January.
The law allows public purchasing agencies to give preference to local food products if the price difference is as much as 10%, or in some cases slightly more, over the lowest bidder from outside of Oregon. The bill, however, does not actually require agencies to do so... and the article goes on to mention that since no extra state funds will be allocated (for now) towards these purchases, we still have a ways to go on this issue. Hopefully we can touch it up a bit, right along with again fighting for Oregon Farm-to-School (which unfortunately failed to pass again this year) in the next legislative session.
We've got friends in Salem, and we're close. Rep. Brian Clem (D-Salem), who introduced HB 2800, the Oregon Farm-to-School bill, also tried earlier this year to introduce a companion bill to require local purchasing, but his attempts there met resistance from the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.
The Oregon Legislature will meet for a short session early in 2010, and one thing Salem Democrats will be pushing for is a move to annual sessions, as opposed to the current every other year (odd-numbered years) legislative sessions. Oregon is currently one of only six states whose legislatures do not meet annually. Here's to hoping they succeed there, for many reasons... |
