Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law legislation that will exempt in-progress bids for public contracts from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests last week.
The legislation had been introduced by Sen. Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge) in an effort to combat what he said has been abuse of the FOIA system to undercut Michigan businesses.
“Before this change, vendors could unfairly use FOIA to find out how much money the state can spend on a particular project and also look at bids from their competitors before a final decision has been made,” Jones said. “As a result, state taxpayers could have been missing out on savings as companies could prepare their bids based on information gained through FOIA instead of simply offering the lowest possible price.”