Authors: Stephen A. Hamill (Academy Fellow), Jack Pellegrino, Sean Behan, and Gerald Plummer

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic represented the single most difficult period in modern Public Procurement history. Still, it ultimately led to the development of a regional joint local agency purchasing effort between San Diego County (COSD) and Los Angeles County (LACo). This collaboration represents a paradigm shift – a regional local agency intergovernmental initiative to establish a new and transformative cooperative purchasing model.

In this paper, Hamill, Pellegrino, Behan, and Plummer establish that the current state and structure of the historic National Cooperative Purchasing Model (NCPM), which serves some 90,000 state and local government agencies, is a complex, time-consuming, and confusing, and undermines public agency confidence in achieving the best public pricing value through a cooperative.

However, the COVID-19 Pandemic sets the foundation for the Local Agency Contract Exchange (LACE), in this case, the cooperation between COSD and LACo. The success of that regional partnership suggested its continuation beyond the pandemic, with COSD and LACo agreeing to take a leadership role in testing the viability of the LACE vision and establishing a proof of concept.

To learn more about this piece or contact the authors, please access the paper here, visit the Academy’s Intergovernmental Systems Standing Panel Resources, or contact the Center’s Miles Murphy.