Also known as: requests for proposals · request for proposal · requests for proposal · RFP · RFPs
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A formal solicitation issued by a government agency or other entity inviting interested parties to submit proposals for goods, services, or development projects under stated requirements and evaluation criteria.
Alec learns that a city arts commissioner will appoint a panel to award counsel for a fraud investigation through an RFP process. He immediately organizes a donation drive among clients and patrons, hosts events, and links support for the commissioner to stronger art oversight while his firm submits a proposal. The bar investigates whether the contributions were made to secure consideration for the engagement.
After a municipality rezones a site to R-T, it issues an RFP requiring bids of at least thirty million dollars. A nonprofit developer analyzes the new zoning restrictions and concludes that affordable housing cannot be built profitably at any price meeting the RFP minimum. The developer therefore submits no proposal and later challenges the rezoning as exclusionary.
In 2002 Nassau County faced a budget crisis and decided to sell excess property, including the approximately 25-acre Social Services Site located within the Village of Garden City and zoned P (Public). The County asked Garden City to rezone the site so it could be sold to a private developer for at least $30 million. Garden City formed a P-Zone Committee, retained the planning firm BFJ, and after more than a year of study and public forums proposed R-M zoning that would have permitted up to 311 multi-family apartment units or 75 single-family homes. Public hearings held in January and February 2004 drew strong resident opposition focused on traffic, schools, and the possibility that R-M zoning would allow affordable housing and change the character of the overwhelmingly white village, whose minority population was only 4.1 percent. In response, BFJ and the Board of Trustees abruptly abandoned R-M zoning in May 2004 and adopted R-T zoning that restricted multi-family housing to less than 15 percent of the site and only by special permit. The Board enacted Local Law No. 2-2004 on June 3, 2004. Nassau County then issued an RFP under the new R-T zoning requiring a minimum $30 million bid. MHANY (then NYAHC) determined it could not feasibly build affordable housing under R-T restrictions and submitted a non-conforming protest proposal. The County awarded the site to Fairhaven Properties for $56.5 million to build 87 single-family homes. Plaintiffs later prepared pro formas showing they could have bid competitively under the rejected R-M zoning and that the resulting tenant pool would have been 18 to 32 percent minority. On May 12, 2005, ACORN, NYAHC, and individual plaintiffs sued Garden City and Nassau County alleging violations of the Fair Housing Act, Sections 1981 and 1983, and Title VI. ACORN disbanded in 2010; MHANY continued the suit and NYCC intervened. The district court granted summary judgment to Nassau County in February 2012, conducted an eleven-day bench trial against Garden City in 2013, and on April 22, 2014 entered judgment finding Garden City liable and ordering injunctive relief. Both sides appealed.
View caseNo. An RFP functions as an invitation to submit offers rather than an offer itself. Courts treat a broad public posting or solicitation as a request for proposals that invites vendors to make offers, so mutual assent must still occur through later direct communications that refer to each other.
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A lawyer violates the rule by making or soliciting contributions for the purpose of obtaining or being considered for a government legal engagement awarded through an RFP. Purpose is assessed by examining timing, donor messaging, and whether the contributions would have occurred but for the desire to secure the engagement.
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Yes. The rule contains an exception for engagements awarded on the basis of experience, expertise, professional qualifications, and cost following an RFP or other process free from political contribution influence. A formal multi-official committee applying objective merit criteria satisfies this exception.
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