Anoka County Record, LLC, Anoka County Record v. Anoka County Board of Commissioners ( 2015 )

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2014).
STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A15-0219
Anoka County Record, LLC,
Appellant,
Anoka County Record, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
vs.
Anoka County Board of Commissioners, et al.,
Respondents.
Filed August 31, 2015
Affirmed
Willis, Judge
Anoka County District Court
File No. 02-CV-14-3083
Carl A. Blondin, Oakdale, Minnesota (for appellant)
Anthony C. Palumbo, Anoka County Attorney, Andrew T. Jackola, Assistant County
Attorney, Anoka, Minnesota (for respondents)
Considered and decided by Hudson, Presiding Judge; Worke, Judge; and Willis,
Judge.

Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
WILLIS, Judge
Appellant challenges the district court’s grant of summary judgment to
respondents in appellant’s action claiming that respondent county board abused its
discretion in the award of contracts for legal publications. We affirm.
FACTS
In late 2013, respondent Anoka County Board of Commissioners issued a public
request for bids for seven publication contracts. In its instructions to bidders, the county
board “reserve[d] the right to award in whole or in part, by item, group of items, or by
section where such action serves the County’s best interests.” It provided that each
bidder “may submit a bid on one or multiple sections.” The bid request stated that “[t]he
bid award will be made to the lowest responsible, responsive vendor meeting all terms,
conditions and specifications of the bid documents,” including “unit bid price.” For each
publication contract on which a bidder chose to bid, the bidding form required
specification of a unit price.
Appellant Anoka County Record, LLC, submitted a flat-rate $32,500 bid for five
publications. The county board rejected this bid as nonconforming because it did not
specify unit prices. The Record then submitted a second set of bids containing unit prices
for each of five publications. But the bids also directed the county board to “see
Attachment A” after each unit-price bid. Attachment A, in turn, provided that the overall
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bids were submitted for four publications1 “as a package offer” and “will not apply to any
less than an award of these four sections.”
The Record’s bids for three publications were the low bids, but another bidder
submitted the low bid for a fourth publication on which the Record had bid. Because the
Record was not the low bidder on the fourth publication and because the Record had
made its bids an all-or-nothing proposition, the county board awarded the four contracts
to another vendor. At a committee meeting of the county’s board of commissioners, the
county administrator stated that “we have interpreted that [provision] to mean that unless
the Record got all four sections their bids are not valid.” The county administrator agreed
with a commissioner’s statement that this provision “essentially disqualified” the Record.
The Record protested the county board’s contract awards and appealed the county
board’s response. An assistant county attorney denied the appeal in March 2014. The
Record brought an action in district court against respondents the Anoka County Board of
Commissioners and the chair of the county board, requesting a declaratory judgment that
the county board’s contract awards were void and for reimbursement of its bid-
preparation expenses. The district court granted respondents’ motion for summary
judgment.
1
Although the Record submitted bids on five publications, Attachment A provided that
two of the bids were options from which the county board could select one or the other,
but not both. In its bid analysis, the county board noted that such an arrangement was
required by statute. See Minn. Stat. § 375.17, subds. 1, 3 (2014) (requiring publication of
county financial statements in two different newspapers).
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DECISION
The Record challenges the district court’s grant of summary judgment to
respondents. We review de novo a district court’s grant of summary judgment,
determining “whether there is any genuine issue of material fact and whether the district
court erred in its application of the law.” Dahlin v. Kroening, 796 N.W.2d 503, 504
(Minn. 2011).
The Record contends that the district court erred by failing to require the county
board to award contracts to the lowest responsible bidder. Awarding a contract is a
discretionary act by a county’s governing authorities. See Nielsen v. City of Saint Paul,
252 Minn. 12, 18, 88 N.W.2d 853, 858 (1958). Once a county elects to use a competitive
bidding process for a contract, it must “pursue such a method in a manner reasonably
designed to accomplish its normal purpose of giving all contractors an equal opportunity
to bid and of assuring to the taxpayers the best bargain for the least money.” Griswold v.
Ramsey Cnty., 242 Minn. 529, 535, 65 N.W.2d 647, 652 (1954). We review a county
board’s contract awards to “determine whether officials in the exercise of their discretion
have applied the method used in an arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable manner.” Id. at
535, 65 N.W.2d at 651-52.
The Record argues that the county board abused its discretion by strictly applying
a per-publication, lowest-bidder standard instead of analyzing the Record’s package bid
for four publications against the aggregate cost of other bids for those same four
publications. If the county board had employed this alternative analysis, the Record
contends, it would have been the lowest bidder on the work on which it bid. The Record
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does not dispute that the county board required unit-price bids, but it cites Nielsen to
contend that its “package offer” provision was a minor defect that the county board could
ignore. See 252 Minn. at 20-21, 88 N.W.2d at 859 (“Mere irregularity of a bid will not
justify its rejection by a municipal body charged with a duty of awarding a contract to the
lowest bidder.” (quotation omitted)). The Record cites no authority, however, requiring
that a county board that has required unit-price bids for a series of related contracts
analyze them in various combined “packages” to determine which combination would
result in the lowest overall cost. Indeed, such a process would be extremely burdensome,
if not impossible, because of the number of potential combinations of bids.
The Record’s proposed method for analyzing bids also would undermine the
competitive-bidding process. When applying a chosen bid process, a county board has
discretion to waive bid defects “if public rights are not thereby prejudiced.” Tel. Assocs.,
Inc. v. St. Louis Cnty. Bd., 364 N.W.2d 378, 382 (Minn. 1985). But it has “no authority
to waive defects which affect or destroy competitive bidding.” Id. “The test of whether a
variance is substantial is whether it gives a bidder a substantial advantage or benefit not
enjoyed by other bidders.” Id. (quotation omitted). The Record argues that its “package
offer” was a minor defect that gave it no advantage. We disagree. The Record initially
submitted a flat-rate bid, which the county board rejected as nonconforming. By
submitting “package offer” bids, the Record in essence attempted to resubmit its flat-rate
bid in a somewhat different form. No other bidder was allowed to submit a flat-rate bid,
and the county board’s rejection of the Record’s first bid demonstrates that such an
option was not open to bidders.
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We note that flat-rate bidding provides a bidder benefits when competing against
unit-price bidders. The flat-rate bidder has the advantage of using lower bids on some
portions of the work to offset its higher bids on other portions. Indeed, that is precisely
what the Record’s bids did, carrying over the combined benefit of its lower bids on three
publications to offset the effect of its higher bid on the fourth. To allow the Record to
enjoy the benefit of a flat-rate bid while other bidders complied with the county board’s
requirement that bidders submit only unit-price bids on individual contracts would give
the Record a benefit not enjoyed by other bidders. We therefore conclude that the county
board did not abuse its discretion in the method it employed to analyze the bids and that
the district court therefore did not err by granting summary judgment to respondents.
Affirmed.
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