Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority: contracting.

Existing law creates the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA) , with various powers and duties with respect to transportation planning, programming, construction, and operations. Existing law authorizes LACMTA to provide for a small business preference of 5% of the lowest responsible bidder meeting specifications, with respect to contracts in construction, the construction component of a design-build team, the procurement of goods, or the delivery of services. Existing law also authorizes LACMTA to establish a subcontracting participation goal for small businesses on contracts financed with nonfederal funds and to grant a preference of 5% to the lowest responsible bidders that meet that goal. These small business contract preference provisions do not apply to contracts for professional services involving private architectural, landscape architectural, engineering, land surveying, or construction management. This bill would delete the restrictions, thereby authorizing LACMTA to expand small business contract preference provisions to these professional services contracts. The bill would provide similar preferences with respect to disabled veteran business enterprises, as defined. The bill would allow the preferences to be in an amount of up to 10% of the lowest responsible bidder. The bill would authorize LACMTA to establish a mandatory subcontracting participation goal for small business or disabled veteran business enterprises on contracts financed with nonfederal funds and to set additional guidelines for local preference purposes. The bill would authorize LACMTA to award certain contracts of specified values to small business or disabled veteran business enterprises if LACMTA obtains price quotations from 2 or more of those business, or to small businesses or disabled veteran business enterprises that are the lowest responsible bidder or best value proposer among those businesses, as specified. The bill would also authorize LACMTA, in general, to award annual contracts that do not exceed $3,000,000 for repair or repetitive work to be done according to unit prices.