Liquor Board Adopts Open Bidding Ida-Tran Makes Lowest Bid, Retains Contract For Delivery

For the first time since Prohibition ended in 1933, the state Liquor Dispensary is complying with Idaho’s open-bidding laws. It figures to save taxpayer money in the process.

State officials discussed making the change for more than a year and a half and now are close to sealing a contract with a company that has bid to deliver liquor across the state.

The Meridian-based company, Ida-Tran Freight Systems, already handles most of the business along with four smaller players. But IdaTran and other carriers for years have been hired without competitive bidding, a violation of state law.

Open bidding is designed to ensure that agencies get the best price and do not offer sweetheart deals to friends or relatives.

Dyke Nally, Liquor Dispensary superintendent, had promised the bidding procedure would be in place by January 1996. But a state legislative audit last October found the agency had not followed through.

This time it has, state officials said Monday.

Bids went out in March and state purchasing officials recently deemed Ida-Tran’s offer the best deal. The company is expected to sign a contract soon, said Gerry Silvester, a senior purchasing officer.

The $500,000-plus contract should save the state money, Nally said. It calls for an average delivery price of $1.07 for a case of liquor, slightly less than what the state now pays.

The contract also is expected to result in more timely delivery, and it will allow the state to save on paperwork by dealing with only one company statewide, Nally said.

Ida-Tran will deliver about 500,000 cases of liquor a year from the state’s Boise warehouse to 147 state-operated stores from Sandpoint to Pocatello.

Nally said staff changes are to blame for the year-and-a-half delay in putting the contract to bid. One employee left with his work unfinished.

“I’m not happy about the amount of time it took, but we’ve been very thorough and have a good contract in place,” he said.

State Sen. Hal Bunderson, a Meridian Republican who led a legislative task force that investigated the agency on other issues in 1994, said the dispensary should have acted sooner. But he said he can see why it did not.

Bunderson said Nally, when he took over in June 1995, first had to solve management problems.