HARROP

“When you are talking about a $100 million contract and people are used to getting those contracts one

simple procurement way and they have built relationships, when you start messing with those contracts and moving their cheese, they don't like it.”

“If you look at all the exemptions

we had to put in the new law, you can see that it is a politically hard job to get anything passed. We were lucky to get what we got through the Legislature right now. You would

not have believed the calls I got from professions, associations, from contractors, from DOT, from ITS. I didn't want to exempt anyone but the fact is if you don't exempt certain groups,

it's not gonna pass through the Legislature.”

All you have to do is look at some countries in Africa to see the huge negative effect of government corruption on prosperity. If Mississippi

wants to get off the bottom, we can start with clean government and that means procurement reform. Thank goodness we have some good folks leading the charge.