Will county buy the best at the lowest prices? Good luck!

Just when we thought Miami-Dade County’s buying of goods and services couldn’t be any more bureaucratic and wasteful, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has ordered county officials to skew buying further away from value for taxpayers and to focus instead on social engineering.

It’s a page right out of the governor’s playbook.

In an unpublicized mid-July memo to department directors, the mayor cites her “rollout of purpose-driven procurement review process” that makes clear that her idea of procurement is simply a “methodological approach” to change society based on her vision of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The new process, she said, “will focus on engaging businesses and residents in new ways, improving working conditions, prioritizing environmental considerations and ensuring ethical behavior throughout the county’s supply chain.”

She mandates an eight-item checklist of social benefits to consider for every county purchase or contract, then lists 16 “equity, inclusion and worker protection” considerations and 14 resilience considerations for each purchase or contract, and adds six more social engineering questions for good measure.

Nowhere in her long order detailing the new way of buying county goods and hiring services is a single mention of the cost of what’s being obtained, or its quality, or whether there is even a need to spend tax money on it in the first place.

Imagine going into a grocery store and checking off 36 separate questions in making each selection, none of which relates to how much the item costs or what its quality is – or even whether you need it. That’s the world of the mayor’s brave new purchasing mandate.

County commissioners have no say in this order to county staff. Staff works for the mayor, and this is what she’s telling them to do.

It’s a shame, because county procurement of goods and services needed real reforms – but in the opposite direction.

Every county purchase already battles through layer upon layer of rules irrelevant to the best deal for the taxpayer.

Those rules already tilt the playing field for those who want to deal with the county to favor chosen groups – local, minority and small business owners; companies owned by the handicapped, military veterans, and women; companies with union contracts, firms that meet county environmental goals, and more.

Bear in mind that every time you tilt purchasing to meet goals other than best value and price fewer and fewer vendors get involved so prices rise. Now the mayor has added 36 hoops to jump through with no concern at all for price or quality.

The fewer of these barriers to competition the better. Procurement in the county is already far too slow and costly. It’s rife with no-bid contracts and what some commissioners label bid-rigging.

What was needed in buying was simplification for both vendors and the county. What the mayor has provided instead is more red tape with barriers to vendors that have nothing to do with the purchase itself and everything to do with political aims.

The parallel at the other end of the political spectrum is in Tallahassee, where Gov. Ron DeSantis in his own Mickey Mouse way declares some companies unfit to deal with the state because their social policies do not match his own. Pray, what is the difference?

It’s not that Mayor Levine Cava’s social concerns are necessarily wrong.

Who, for example, can be against small businesses growing? But why is that part of a county buying requirement? Why mandate local hiring? Or good environmental practices unrelated to the purchase? Or benefitting communities “above and beyond the project requirements,” which is another consideration in every purchase. Or reducing use of gasoline? Those are all among the 36 purchasing yardsticks.

None of these are laws. There was no commission vote to weigh each of these in purchases. It’s the mayor’s decision, just like the governor has decided the state won’t work with any company with whose social views he disagrees.

County government purchasing teams for years have been professional in buying the best products and services at the best prices. Now they are to become professional at making sure that vendors follow the mayor’s social engineering edicts.

Again, the mayor’s order does not mention price or quality as a criterion – if we get the best product at the best price, it will be by luck, not intent.

How much more screwed up can buying get?