In its March 2015 decision in Matter of Blueline Commuter Inc. v. Montgomery County, the New York Supreme Court – Appellate Division upheld the safety standards established in a school bus services RFB process. A bus contractor challenged the safety requirements, which exceeded statutory minimum standards by requiring that contractors have a fleet-wide out of service rate of less than 15 percent. The court rejected the contractor’s challenge after finding that the RFB specifications were not anti-competitive since they did not create a situation where only one contractor could meet the required standard or result in unfair dealing or statutory violations:
Municipalities are permitted to include bid specifications that may be more favorable to some bidders over others, as long as the public interest is served and the specifications are not intended to ensure that one particular bidder be awarded the contract…
[I]ncluding specifications in a request for bids often has the effect of disqualifying some potential bidders who cannot meet those specifications, but this reality does not invalidate those specifications. If a challenged specification is not facially anticompetitive, courts apply “ordinary rational basis review” in assessing its validity… [A] petitioner bears the burden of demonstrating that the inclusion of the challenged specifications, and the ultimate award of the contract, was the product of actual impropriety, unfair dealing or statutory violation…Rather than being unlawful, the court found that the County’s safety standard was validly rooted in the public interest:
The County’s bid specification requiring an out of service rate of less than 15% is not facially anticompetitive, as that standard does not, in and of itself, guarantee the award of the contract to a particular bidder…[T]he bid specification here, requiring a safety rating higher than the minimum allowed by DOT for a motor carrier to continue operating within the state, does have some rational basis rooted in the public interest, namely, attempting to assure the safety of children being transported under the County’s care.
The court therefore dismissed the challenge, finding that the complainant had failed to establish that the requirements were improper, created an unfair process or contravened applicable statutory provisions. As this case illustrates, while government bodies remain subject to legal challenge when establishing bid evaluation and contract performance standards, they retain the right to set such requirements as long as they do not run contrary to applicable legal standards.
