Speaker Menin on non-competitive contract spending discrepancy

The council analysis of fiscal 2025 DOE contract spending from checkbook suggests that at least 40% of contract spending was through non-competitively bid contracts.

So we know that checkbook is not a one-to-one comparison, of course, with DOE's contract budget, but this analysis was limited to contract.

spending for which a procurement method was available.

The Council's estimate of 40% differs significantly from DOE's report to the Council late last week,

which indicated only 10% of contract spending is through contracts that are not competitively bid, and only 12% of contracts are not competitively bid.

So how do you explain this large discrepancy?

So I'll address, and I believe it was 12% that we had reported, and I'll address that.

When I had reported that at the last hearing, I was only referencing that it was 12% of the total contracts, and I wasn't necessarily addressing contract spend.

So without seeing the data that was pulled from checkbook, I'm unable to really assess whether or not that 40% is correct.

I'm sorry, I'm not understanding the distinction between the 40% that the council's finding from checkbook versus the 12% that you're...

Is it 40% of spend or 40% of the contracts?

So the...

Contract spending so you're saying your 12% figure it was related to the actual contracts number of contracts got it Okay, could we get them the contract spend number because that is that we have an apples-to-apples comparison Yeah, okay, and could we

please get that by you know in the next couple days?

We'd like to see it.

We don't want to we want to get that information expeditiously yes

Okay.

So the fundamental question is why is some contract spending that is clearly not competitively bid not included in the DOE's accounting?

So the $13 billion that you quoted, it does include, as you stated, due process cases in charter schools.

But in both of those areas, they don't actually go through our procurement process.

And so what we tend to do is just parse it out because those are state and federal mandates that we have to meet.

Okay, the Council's analysis of checkbook data found that in fiscal 2025, another 21% of contract spending came from contracts that were renewed, again, considering only contracts for which there was data on the procurement method.

Does DUE track the portion of renewal contract spending that is competitively bid?

Sorry, can you repeat that question?

Does DOE track the portion of renewal contract spending that is competitively bid?

I don't necessarily know that I report out on it, but we do keep track of it, yes.

Okay.

Can you also then provide to the committee this data?

So you want spend on contract renewals?

Yes, exactly.

Okay.

Exactly.