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Jefferson County unveils overhaul of purchasing policy to align systems, cap change orders and clarify ethics
Summary
County procurement leaders proposed a rewritten purchasing policy to align approval thresholds with Workday, cap change orders at 10% of original contract value, designate a single protests recipient and strengthen conflict‑of‑interest rules.
Mary O’Neil, director of grants and procurement, and Vera Brakeman, purchasing operations manager, briefed the Board of County Commissioners on a multi-year rewrite of the county’s purchasing policy. The policy — last updated in 2019 — was revised after cross‑departmental stakeholder work over roughly two years.
O’Neil described the primary goals as alignment, efficiency and clarification. Among the specific changes are updated delegations so the purchasing operations manager may sign purchase order change orders and contract terminations, approval-threshold alignment between policy and the county’s Workday ERP, the addition of Appendix C with implementation scenarios, and a 10% cap on change orders relative to the original contract value. O’Neil said the previous policy referenced an older ERP (DataEdwards) and caused confusion that the update seeks to remove.
The update also moves P‑card administration to the finance team, clarifies how to handle conflicts of interest on review panels and strengthens the county’s code of ethics. O’Neil said the procurement roundtable and multiple county departments engaged on the rewrite, and that staff estimate efficiency gains (and staff-time savings) that they intend to quantify and present for the board in early 2026.
Commissioners thanked procurement staff for the multi-year review and directed staff to proceed to a public hearing for formal consideration. The board will be asked at a future meeting to adopt the revised purchasing policy and related amendments to contracting delegation authority; implementation steps were discussed but not yet executed.
