New GSA Contract Recovery Purchasing Allowances for State and Local Government

Until recently, the use of General Services Administration (GSA) schedule contracts by property and local government was limited to Schedule 70, Information Technology. Recently, under congressional authority, GSA amended its regulations to allow state and local governments to use GSA schedules to facilitate recovery due to a major disaster, terrorism or nuclear, biological, chemical, or radiological attack.
Existing GSA schedule contracts are now in the procedure of being modified to reflect this new recovery purchasing authority. The amending is voluntary, signifying that GSA Schedule contractors have the option of continuing with business as is, or determining whether they will accept orders under Section 833 (Recovery Purchasing), placed by state and local government buyers.
Unlike the existing cooperative purchasing authority on the IT Schedule, this authority is actually limited. It can only be used by state and local governments to aide in recovery efforts caused by a major disaster as mentioned by Section 833. This recovery effort does include preemptive purchasing and pre-positioning in preparation for an oncoming or predicted disaster.
State and local federal entities are established as the individual states of the United States, counties, municipalities, cities, towns, townships, tribal governments, public authorities (including public or Indian housing agencies beneath the United States Housing Act of 1937), school districts, colleges and other institutions of higher education, council of governments (Incorporated or not), regional or interstate dominion entities, or any other agency or instrumentality of the preceding entities (including any local educational agency or institution of higher education), and including legislative and judicial departments.
You may be asking, what, exactly, is recovery purchasing as defined in the Section 833 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. It authorizes the Administrator of the General Services Administration to provide for the use by state or local governments of Federal Supply Schedules for goods or services that are to be implemented to facilitate recovery from a major disaster declared by the President beneath the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, or to facilitate recovery from terrorism or nuclear, biological, chemical, or radiological attack. But what is considered a "major disaster"? A "major disaster" is defined as a natural catastrophe in any part of the United States, including its territories, which in the determination of the President causes sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance to supplement the efforts and available resources of state and local governments. For more facts on the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, go to www.fema.gov/about/stafact.shtm .
This is a major step for the GSA program. The new authority might result is considerable income for GSA schedule contractors in natural disaster situations like Hurricane Katrina. And the permission may be a precursor to the opening up of all schedules for state and local agencies. Conversely, state and local use of all schedules may take lengthy periods of time for acceptance because of the requisite for congressional legislation.

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