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Nonprofit leaders urge passage and funding of nonprofit preservation bill; advocates press OCP on jail food contract and transparency for new facility
Summary
Nonprofit coalition leaders urged the council to mark up and fully fund the Nonprofit Services Preservation Amendment Act to stabilize payments and cover indirect costs. Separately, advocates urged OCP to require enforceable nutritional standards and greater community oversight for upcoming jail procurements.
Nonprofit leaders told the Committee on Public Works and Operations that delayed payments, short-term contract renewals and inconsistent communication from the Office of Contracting and Procurement (OCP) are causing financial instability across service providers and harming residents who rely on nonprofit-delivered services.
Jeremiah Allari, policy director at the Coalition for Nonprofit Equity, and Iris Jacob asked the council to move the Nonprofit Services Preservation Amendment Act (2025) forward. They urged a 15% de minimis indirect-cost rate in district contracts to prevent nonprofits from subsidizing government services, and asked for budgeting and a relief grant program. "A nonprofit should not have to function as a bank for the district government," one witness said.
On corrections procurement, Katie McConville and others urged OCP to require enforceable nutritional standards and performance-based oversight in the next jail food-services solicitation. They cited audit findings that residents reported inadequate portions, poor quality and food-safety issues and warned that past procurement and solicitation outreach lacked transparency. Shelley Broderick of the DC Task Force on Jails and Justice urged public release of RFQ/RFP drafts for the proposed new jail and creation of a community advisory board as a contractual deliverable, saying plans shared so far lack information about outdoor recreation and capacity.
OCP Chief Procurement Officer Nancy Hatemann told the committee that PASS modernization and a new PALT milestone tracker are intended to reduce administrative lead times and improve transparency, and that OCP has engaged hundreds of CBEs in FY25. She said the agency is negotiating with a system implementer and expects to aim for a go-live by the end of FY27, while answering committee questions about cooperative purchasing and emergency-contract use.
