Kansas Disabled Veteran Business Contract Preference

Section 73-230 requires the secretary of administration, in awarding any contract for the performance of a job or service funded by appropriated money, to give a preference to disabled veteran businesses doing business as Kansas firms, corporations or individuals, or maintaining Kansas offices or places of business. The statute sets a goal of awarding at least 3 percent of all such contracts to them. Two definitions do the work. A disabled veteran here is someone who served in the active military, naval, air or space service including the groups and individuals listed under 38 C.F.R. 3.7, was discharged or released under an honorable discharge or a general discharge under honorable conditions, received a disability incurred or aggravated in the line of duty, and has a service-connected evaluation of 30 percent or more. Thirty is the lowest disability threshold Kansas uses for anything in this catalog apart from the recreation licence. A disabled veteran business is one at least 51 percent owned by one or more disabled veterans, or in the case of a publicly owned business one where at least 51 percent of the stock is so owned, and where the management and daily business operations are controlled by one or more disabled veterans. Both halves of that second definition have to hold. Fifty-one percent ownership on paper with someone else running the business does not qualify, which is the provision that keeps the programme from being used as a front. Understand what the 3 percent is. It is a goal the secretary shall have, not a set-aside and not a quota, and the statute attaches no consequence to missing it. The preference itself is a real instruction in the award decision; the percentage is a target the section directs the secretary to aim at and to report on. Certification is not automatic. A business applies to Kansas Procurement and Contracts to be recognised as a disabled veteran business, and until it is on the list the preference has nothing to attach to. This is a state-level provision. It binds the secretary of administration and contracts funded by appropriated money, and does not by its terms reach county or city procurement, which is a narrower reach than the employment preference in 73-201.