Senator Marcia Karrow says that New Jersey vendors deserved the right to bid on a contract to supply office supplies to state government. No local vendors were told about bidding on the multi-million dollar contract, which was awarded to Massachusetts-based Staples Advantage.

“All these local companies want is a chance to compete for the state’s business,” Senator Karrow said. “These companies pay taxes and create jobs in New Jersey. They deserve the right to try to win the state’s business.”

 Karrow said she was disturbed by reports that local vendors learned through a posting on a state Treasury Department Web site that Staples had won the contract through the National Joint Powers Alliance, a cooperative of state and local governments based in Minnesota. The local companies had been providing the office supplies and said that they had almost no notice that they would be losing the business. The companies will now have to dispose of large inventories.

“If this contract had to be re-bid in this fashion, the least the state could have done was build in more time for local, tax-paying companies to prepare for the huge financial shock,” Karrow said. “This is not the time for radical moves that cause sudden, private-sector job losses.”

The contract with Staples is effective Sept. 1. Under state law, contracts can be awarded through cooperatives. But the contract must be the most cost effective. Karrow said it remains to be proven whether this new contract is the most cost effective because New Jersey businesses were not given a chance to bid.