Increasingly, consulting firms are being subjected to the rigors of Government Code 1090, since AB 1090 (2013) came into effect and gave the FPPC authority to give their opinion on issues and transactions related to Government Code 1090.  Existing law also makes local government attorneys (in house or outside counsel) liable as “aiders and abettors” in those violations. As a safeguard, local government attorneys are relying heavily on FPPC opinions for Government Code 1090 issues on public works projects.

ACEC California has sponsored legislation this year, AB 626 (Quirk-Silva), to provide Continuity of Services reform to the state’s conflict of interest statute. For those that may not have been affected yet, the code can be interpreted and used to bar firms from participating on later phases of a public agency project simply for having worked on an earlier phase. Put simply, if you perform any planning studies on a specific project, you can be conflicted out of doing design or construction management services, thus depriving the public of the most excellent and safest infrastructure possible, as well as potentially increasing project cost.

We will be educating legislators on this topic when we attend Legislative Visit Day in May. For more information, use this link:  

www.acec-ca.org/general/custom.asp?page=AB626

 Or reach out to Tyler Munzing, ACEC-CA Director of Government Affairs tmunzing@acec-ca.org