Connecticut Veteran-Owned Micro Business Price Preference

General Statutes section 4a-59 governs award of state contracts and requires award to the lowest responsible qualified bidder, with defined exceptions. One of those exceptions is the purchase of goods or services from a micro business, and within that exception the Commissioner of Administrative Services may give a price preference of up to fifteen per cent in the case of a veteran-owned micro business. Two words in that sentence do the work and are usually dropped in summaries of this program. The preference is discretionary, because the statute says the commissioner may give it. And fifteen per cent is a ceiling, because the statute says up to. A veteran-owned business should not bid on the assumption that a fifteen per cent margin over the low bid will be covered automatically. The definitions are tight. A micro business is a business with gross revenues not exceeding three million dollars in the most recently completed fiscal year. A veteran-owned micro business is a micro business of which at least fifty-one per cent of the ownership is held by one or more veterans. Veteran has the same meaning as in section 27-103, which means the qualifying condition route in this catalog reaches this program too: an owner with an other than honorable discharge based on a qualifying condition is a veteran for this purpose. The revenue ceiling is the limit that catches growing firms. A veteran-owned business that crosses three million dollars in gross revenues in its most recently completed fiscal year stops being a micro business and loses the preference entirely, rather than sliding to a smaller one. Plan for that transition rather than discovering it in a bid. No disability rating appears anywhere in the section, so a rating filter never hides this entry. Connecticut runs its supplier registration and bid notices through the Department of Administrative Services. Register there and confirm the current certification route, because the mechanics of proving the fifty-one per cent ownership and the revenue figure are administered rather than set out in the statute.