May June 2018

2 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 41, No. 3 From the Editor Greg Crites, PLS Editor MESSAGE EDITOR FROM THE I felt it was important to weigh in on some of the dynamics of how an ill-conceived bill can get before the Oregon legislature and passed into law, even after the “vetting” process has run its course. F ollowing up on the theme of my editorial in the last issue of this magazine, I felt it was important to weigh in on some of the dynamics of how an ill-conceived bill can get before the Oregon legislature and passed into law, even after the “vetting” process has run its course. Make no mistake, I’m still writing about the attempt by this past abbreviated legislative session to gut that portion of ORS (specifically amending ORS 279A.157 and 279C.110) that relates to “consultant selection processes for a public contract for cer- tain services,” commonly referred to as “qualifications-based selection (QBS).” From a historical point of view, QBS was developed through a collaborative process among multiple players in the engineer- ing/consulting community to bring about an equitablemeans of awarding contracts for architectural, engineering, photogram- metric mapping, transportation planning and land surveying services. This was to be based primarily on qualifications, us- ing price only as a secondary means of evaluation. For any of you that remem- ber the debacle committed by the U.S. Forest Service (there may have been others) in the late 60’s and early 70’s re- garding the award of cadastral surveying contracts based solely on competitive bidding, you can understand where the concept of QBS originated. Make no mis- take however, even in that climate there were contracts and contractors operat- ing during that era who did exemplary work and returned quality results (even though they may have been losing their shirts), which of course is where all ca- dastral surveying contracts should end. QBS was in no way intended to eliminate the importance of thorough contract ad- ministration and execution, but what it was meant to do was give the agency contracting officer assurances that the contract award went to themost qualified consultant and that he/she could be confident in the work products of the contractor when measuring/quantifying their performance within the standard guidelines of contract evaluation. Now let me speak to why I consider this past effort to amend the QBS language in such a way as to return to a price- driven contract evaluation (via House Bill 4127) as ill-conceived! First, the abbrevi- ated legislative session was intended to take care of “housekeeping” issues and NOT to be an effort to pass significant legislation (I consider rendering QBS use- less as a significant legislative revision). I believe the sponsors of this bill tried to tiptoe quietly in the background and slip this “mickey” into the statutory cocktail. They were almost successful! However, thanks to the diligence of Darrel Fuller (our lobbyist) and others, the red flag was waved and our troops were rallied, though only just in time! The sponsors of HB 4127 primarily repre- sented voices from the outlying or rural communities within this state. Summing up the total number of registered voters (regardless of party affiliation) represented by the bill’s sponsors (based upon num- bers of registered voters by representative district published by the Elections Divi- sion of the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office in March 2016), they represent- ed a clear minority of the voting public (only 31%). Somehow however, that bill nearly made it to the house floor for con- sideration! For comparison, the five most populous counties in Oregon all lie with- in or around the Willamette Valley. Few, if any of them sponsored HB 4127 which is consistent with where the concept of QBS arose. Those five counties repre- sented 61% of all registered voters in this state based upon those same Elections Division numbers in 2016. Small outlying counties complain on a fairly regular ba- sis about the disproportionate share of