The Three Percent Disabled-Veteran Contracting Goal Is a Bill That Died, Not a Law

What this benefit is

Who is entitled to it

• You served.
• You are in this state.

1. 1Do not build a bid strategy on the three percent goal. The sentence people quote — that agencies shall prefer disabled veteran businesses when the quality of performance promised is equal or better and the price quoted is the same or less, with a three percent goal — is Section 1 of a 2010 bill that never became law.
2. 2The bill’s own record is the proof, and it is short: referred to Fees, Salaries and Administration and to Appropriations on 18 January 2010, died in committee on 2 February 2010, disposition "Dead".
3. 3The definitions people cite come from the same dead bill: fifty-one percent ownership by one or more service-disabled veterans, or fifty-one percent of the stock of a publicly owned business, with management and daily business operations controlled by one or more service-disabled veterans.
4. 4Register for federal certification instead if contracting is the plan. Federal service-disabled veteran-owned small business status is real, is verified federally, and is what most prime contractors here will actually ask for.
5. 5Ask the contracting agency directly what preferences it does apply before bidding, and get the answer in writing — resident-contractor preferences exist in state purchasing law and are a different thing from a veteran preference.
6. 6If somebody offers to certify your business as a state-recognised veteran-owned business here for a fee, treat that as a warning sign and check what statute they say they are acting under.

Form

None — there is no state certification or preference to apply for

File with

Department of Finance and Administration, for ordinary state procurement registration

No renewal

Once granted it does not need renewing.