A Look at the Numbers Clears Up Unusually Public, Political – and Messy – Food Fight

For more than a week now, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS), and two large food banks – Feeding South Florida and Farm Share – have been embroiled in an unusually public and nasty political food fight. The dispute is over the award of a contract for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) in Broward County, set to start in October.

Unlike anything we’ve seen before, local county commissions and even a Congresswoman have weighed in, picking favorites over which non-profit they think should have been awarded the TEFAP contract – even though it’s likely none of them have actually reviewed the bids.

The thumbnail version: Feeding South Florida had the contract. In a new round of contract awards, Farm Share scored higher with FDACS reviewers and was awarded the contract moving forward. The losing bidder went to the Division of Administrative Hearings to protest, and an administrative law judge rejected their appeal. Now the politicians and lawyers have turned to the court of public opinion to sway Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried to undo the work of the professional reviewers.

Earlier this week, GrayRobinson attorney Ty Jackson, representing Feeding South Florida, said that the bidding process wasn’t fair and transparent. But Farm Share hired outside counsel to review the scoring and provide insight. The conclusion of attorney Tom Crapps with the Meenan Law Firm: Even if you concede all of the other sides’ points (which he certainly does not), Farm Share would STILL have won the contract.

Rising above the messy and overcooked rhetoric, most of it seemingly coming from the losing side, this close analysis of the scoring shows that Farm Share was rightfully awarded the contract.

Crapps scrutinized FDACS’ scoring and found two things: 1) Even if one gives Feeding South Florida the points it claims it is owed, they still lose; 2) Differences in evaluator scores is to be expected when you have evaluators working independently. Feeding South Florida fails to show any basis to support its claim that it did not get a fair review.

Without getting too deep into the weeds, here is what Crapps found, as reflected in his review posted on Farm Share’s website for all the world to see.

Feeding South Florida argues that, in a scoring process based on a 10-point scale, one reviewer incorrectly gave it a score of 7 even though it had more “excellent” responses in a category for “Outreach Training and Monitoring.” But even if you give Feeding South Florida those extra 3 points, the result doesn’t change, Crapps determined.

Each bidder’s final score from FDACS was based on independent reviews of the competing proposals by five evaluators, which were then turned into an overall average. For Broward, the final scores were Farm Share 140.2 and Feeding South Florida 138.8.

Even giving Feeding South Florida the extra 3 points it claims it should have gotten, their new average would have been 139.4 – still short of Farm Share’s 140.2.

“The outcome is the same: Feeding South Florida loses,” Crapps concluded.

Crapps also cited legal precedents to support the very commonsense notion that variations are expected when evaluators work independently. He noted a state administrative court’s conclusion in 2017 that it “can be expected ... that some evaluators will generally assign lower scores than other evaluators; some evaluators will tend to assign higher scores.”

While passions run high in this very public, very messy, very emotional dispute, a clear-eyed look at the scoring and evaluation process points to the proper winner: Farm Share.

Both Farm Share and Feeding South Florida are reputable food banks with a common mission of feeding food-insecure people. It’s time to put this dispute behind them so they can focus on what they do best – bringing food to hungry Floridians who need it.