The Overburdened Board: 1960-1983 115

the contract was presented to and approved by the board on 3 August 1977.⁵³ The
board expressed great satisfaction with its achievement; Parsons got the contract; and,
running as an anticorruption candidate, Harry Hughes was elected governor of Mary-
land in November 1978. In a nice and fitting postscript to this unfortunate episode,
it is worth noting that Governor Hughes now sits amicably and congenially on the
board with Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein and Treasurer William S. James, his erst-
while adversaries in the Parsons matter.

The brouhaha over the Parsons contract involved only one aspect of the procure-
ment function—the acquisition of professional services. Other controversies were
brewing at the same time that also created some temporary problems, most of them
coming under the general heading of "affirmative action."

Although until 1977 there was no general statutory requirement that procurement
contracts subject to board approval be let through competitive bidding to the lowest
bidder,⁵⁴ that was the process generally used by the board, at least with respect to
construction and supply contracts. Such a process served three important goals: (1)
fiscal economy—paying the lowest price; (2) avoiding the appearance of favoritism in
the handing out of state contracts; and (3) ease of administration (so long as everyone
was bidding on the same plans and specifications).

Paradoxically, it was in part the very benefit of that process that created a de-
ficiency in it. Competitive bidding rewarded the firms that were most efficient, which
in modern times came to mean large established firms—those that could borrow money
more cheaply, get bonds more easily, were familiar with state bidding and monitoring
procedures, and could benefit from other economies of scale. That, for all practical
purposes, tended to freeze out minority contractors and other new, small entrants.
They simply could not compete based on price alone, and thus they received little or
none of the lucrative state business. Correction of this deficiency involved tampering
to some degree with pure competitive bidding, and that brought a number of new
problems to the board, at least for a time.

The first attempt to equalize opportunity in terms of public contracting came in
1961. In that year the legislature decreed that all state construction contracts had to
contain certain antidiscrimination clauses—that no such contract could be awarded
to any contractor unless he agreed not to discriminate in employment by reason of
race, creed, color, or national origin. The same obligation had to be made part of all
subcontracts. Enforcement was vested in the Board of Public Works. Upon complaint
by any person, the board was obliged to "cause an immediate investigation of the
charges," and if it found a violation the state could, in effect, void the contract and
pay only for the reasonable value of the services performed under it.⁵⁵

The nondiscrimination clauses required under the act were routinely inserted into
all construction contracts, and to that extent at least the law was enforced. How ef-
fective the provision was in achieving the law's purpose is far less clear. It does not
appear that the board undertook very many, if any, investigations or actually annulled
any contracts by reason of employment discrimination, although neither does it appear
that the board was asked to do so. For the most part, especially after 1965, the state's
Human Relations Commission assumed the role of monitoring unlawful employment
discrimination.