DE General Assembly denies small businesses opportunities to bid publicly

By voting for the mini-bond bill on Thursday, January 26, the Delaware General Assembly denied Delaware businesses the protection of the public bidding process. This protection is in place so that your government cannot discriminate or favor one business over another. It ensures that the government must look subjectively at measures like quality of work, experience, and pricing when it considers public bids.

The 2023 mini-bond bill made union membership a prerequisite for earning a percentage of bids for these several projects and will set a dangerous precedent for labor agreements in the future. This bill also disproportionately disadvantages minority-owned businesses by favoring unions since labor statistics in Delaware show that the vast majority of Latino-owned businesses and Latino workers are not members of union organizations.

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To be clear, I am pro-union and pro-free shop. I want Delawareans to have an opportunity to work with and for any business they choose and our infrastructure is in critical need of repair. What I am against is the government setting up a prerequisite for any membership to receive a public bid. I would be against our government setting up a prerequisite for free shops as well. The public bid process has been set in place to invest taxpayer money in a fair, fiscally responsible way and to avoid any perceived or actual conflicts of interest.

By voting for the mini-bond bill on Thursday, January 26, the Delaware General Assembly denied Delaware businesses the protection of the public bidding process. This protection is in place so that your government cannot discriminate or favor one business over another. It ensures that the government must look subjectively at measures like quality of work, experience, and pricing when it considers public bids.

The 2023 mini-bond bill made union membership a prerequisite for earning a percentage of bids for these several projects and will set a dangerous precedent for labor agreements in the future. This bill also disproportionately disadvantages minority-owned businesses by favoring unions since labor statistics in Delaware show that the vast majority of Latino-owned businesses and Latino workers are not members of union organizations.

To be clear, I am pro-union and pro-free shop. I want Delawareans to have an opportunity to work with and for any business they choose and our infrastructure is in critical need of repair. What I am against is the government setting up a prerequisite for any membership to receive a public bid. I would be against our government setting up a prerequisite for free shops as well. The public bid process has been set in place to invest taxpayer money in a fair, fiscally responsible way and to avoid any perceived or actual conflicts of interest.