News & Updates

TO: Our Certified Small and DVBE Business Partners
FROM: The Coalition of Small and Disabled Veteran Businesses (CSDVB)
DATE: August 29, 2026
RE: Updates for All AND Our Call to Action to Join CSDVB as an Associate Member!

Dear Supporter of Certified Small and Disabled Veteran Businesses:

Thank You for the great response that we received from our last Call to Action Newsletter and Welcome to the new Members who joined the CSDVB!

For those of you who haven’t joined Coalition of Small and Disabled Veteran Businesses yet, we urge you to do so soon as future Newsletters will be sent to dues-paying members only! Don’t Miss Out on learning about legislation and regulations that could affect your ability to contract with the State of California, in addition to gaining access to contracting opportunities for your business!

More great updates to report!

Coming Soon!

CSDVB in entering into the final process of developing its user-friendly database for the exclusive use of CSDVB Members that would enable you to extract the pertinent information from CalEprocure and export it into an easily searchable website that gives a daily output of NEW State bids. CalEprocure lists new bidding opportunities daily, but unless you are an expert at navigating through the links and downloads, searching through pages and pages of bid opportunities and searching through the links can take hours.

Specifically, we are developing a discussion thread that will give you access to the available bidding opportunities, including the bids of interest to you. CSDVB Members will be able to communicate about the bids of interest, gain real-time access to the current bids, and network with small, micro, and DVBE businesses.

CSDVB’s goal is to provide its members with access to the more than 21,000 Certified Small and Disabled Veteran Business Enterprises (SB/DVBE) in our state, including Micro, Women-Owned and Minority Disadvantaged businesses who contract with our state’s agencies to provide goods, services and IT contract information and access to all of the SB/DVBEs. Our IT experts are developing the link for the exclusive use of our membership. Like our user-friendly database to access the current state, the link to the full list of Certified Small and Disabled Veteran Businesses will be ready to go live next month!

Legislative Front

August 13th was one of the most tense and pivotal days in our state’s Legislature this year. Last Thursday marked the day known "Suspense Day" when the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees met to determine the fate of 850 fiscal bills (561 in the Senate and 293 in the Assembly) in deciding which bills would be held in their Committees, and which bills would advance to the Floor to be voted on or before the Legislature adjourns its biennial session on August 31st.

Over 600 bills received a “Do Pass or “Do Pass as Amended” vote and were passed to their respective Floors while the Committees held roughly a quarter (90 in the Senate and 169 in the Assembly). The joint hearings by the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees resulted in a rapid-fire vote-only call out of the costly legislative proposals. Bills held are dead for the year.

The Governor will have until September 30th to take action on the bills landing on his desk.

The key upcoming dates and deadlines include:

August 3: Legislature reconvened from summer recess.
August 14: Last day for fiscal committees to meet and report bills to the floor.
August 31: Last day for bills to be passed and the Legislature will adjourn concluding the 2nd year of its biennial session. (The Legislature will convene on January 6, 2027 to begin the 1st year of its two-year session.)
September 30: Last day for the Governor to sign or veto bills.

Major Win for CSDVB Members as the Coalition Successfully Stalls SB 1044 (Reyes) from moving forward!

Senate Bill 1044 (Reyes) would have increased the maximum contract value from 250k to $350k for SB/DVBEs in the service and IT industries and authorize the DGS Director to increase the maximum any time there is a change to the Consumer Price Index was held in the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee and is dead for the year.

CSDVB was successful in securing amendments that would exempt SB/DVBEs who contract in the goods and supplies industries and keep the maximum at $250k. However, we pushed for additional amendments that would reduce the maximum for goods and supplies from the current $250k back down to the 2009 level of $100k maximum.

Following the increase to the $250k level, contracting opportunities for these two industries who contract for food and office/paper supplies, were significantly reduced along with their ability to compete with the larger businesses. The loss of these contracts have been permanent since the max. was raised to $250k.

CSDVB provided amendments that would have removed our opposition and put this bill into a shape that would work for all Certified Small and Disabled Veteran Businesses and their employees. The proposed amendments would have made the contract max. $100k for goods, including supplies since their contracts are nearly always in the $60-70k range.

As reported last month, the $350k contract max. will work for some SB/DVBEs and Microbusinesses (MB) but will have terrible consequences for the those who contract with the state for goods and supplies (food, paper products, office supplies, computers, plumbing, electrical supplies, etc.). The bill, as amended in the Assembly EDGHI Committee would keep the existing $250k contract maximum for goods and have $350k as the contract max. for Services and IT.

According to Cal eProcure’s website, there are 20,471 CSDVBs and 18,279 MBs with approximately 90% of these small businesses being Microbusinesses who do $1m or less in contracts.

Increasing the contract max. works for SB/DVBEs who bid on services, IT and Construction projects that typically exceed $1m. SB/DVBEs in the goods and supplies sectors bid on contracts that are in the $60-$70k range well below the $250k max. When the max. was raised from $100 to $250k in 2009, those in the goods industry lost contracts to the larger out-of-state businesses such as U.S. Foods and Office Depot in addition to either shutting down or laying off employees.

Hundreds of SB/DVBEs lost business when the contract max. went from $100k to $250k. Many of these SB/DVBEs are women-owned and microbusiness employers who were forced to lay off their employees based on lost bidding opportunities and contracts that they have had with the state for many years, including food staples such as bread, eggs, table sauces, pickles, flavorings, syrup, jelly, cornstarch, dried mixes, and tea, and goods such as office supplies, paper, pens, and computers. As noted above, these contracts are now awarded to the larger businesses.

Many of the SB/DVBEs and MBs are located in the rural and underserved areas of our state and are eligible for the TACPA preference (Target Area Contract Preference Act). These SB/DVBEs and MBs were awarded food contracts at the $60-$70k level and supplied food and goods to our 31 state prisons feeding over 90,000 inmates. These contracts were broken up into smaller bids at the $100k level. After the max. was increased to $250k, all of these contracts were awarded to the larger out of state businesses.

It is important to know that under existing law, Govt. Code § 14838.5 establishes a means by which any state agency can award a state agency can award a non-competitive, no-bid contract for goods, services, or IT to a “small business” up to an estimated value of $250,000, as long as the state agency gets “price quotes” from 2 or more small businesses. Companies that are truly small or microbusinesses are usually unable to meet the requirements needed to maintain an inventory of $250,000, so they are excluded from participating in this no-bid, non-competitive process altogether.

The larger businesses get all the requests for price quotes, and the truly small or microbusiness get squeezed out, both in this no-bid process for “small” businesses, and also lose the opportunity to utilize the bid preferences in existing law for CSBs and MBs because of the relative lack of competitive bidding that occurs as a result of the non-competitive bid process in Govt. Code § 14838.5.

Section 14838.5 was originally enacted for the purpose of authorizing state agencies to obtain products and services on an emergency basis. Over time, as the upper limit has been increased, it has become the preferred method of contracting by many agencies because there is no RFP, no competitive bidding, and no paperwork to do. If we continue at the $250k max. level for goods, we will lose our small and microbusinesses whose contracting opportunities are at the $60-70k level. The services, IT and Construction contracts are fine at the $350k because their contracts are typically well over $1 million.

Regulatory Front – DGS and CSDVB Activity Report

As reported last month, CSDVB has served since 2009 as a lead member of DGS’ Small Business Advisory Council (SBAC) on behalf of all of the Certified Small and Disabled Veteran Businesses to make sure your concerns are heard and acted upon by DGS’ Director. This includes strengthening the enforcement of rules and regulations to ensure more contracting opportunities go to the Certified Small Businesses. The CSDVB and DGS are working on the projects important to all SB/DVBEs included below.

We work closely with DGS to correct inconsistent contracting practices that result in the loss of contracting opportunities for small businesses throughout our state, including our rural and underserved communities. We continue to work with DGS in advocating for the unbundling of contracts so that more small businesses can participate in the solicitation process thereby creating more jobs.

Our goal is to continue working with DGS and to serve on committees that will consolidate the delegated purchasing authority tiers from four to three tiers, and every department in the first tier receive an increase in their delegated purchasing authority. Purchasing tiers are published on the DGS website. Vendors can check departmental authority for direct procurement. We believe that this will increase competitive procurement opportunities for SB/DVBEs.

We succeeded in increasing the Fair and Reasonable threshold, increasing it from $10,000 to $20,000, to allow state departments to procure without full competition under $20K. This will create more opportunities for SB/DVBE who want to contract with the state.

We continue to support improvements to the E-Marketplace online punch-out catalog for state contracts. Phase one was launched in mid-November with enhanced search functionality. This will enable state departments to search by item code that is in a contract by vendor, location, and to access attachments related to those contracts more efficiently.

Cal eProcure remains active and is working on efficiency Improvements in Bid Documentation. This will likely require policy changes and potential legislative changes. DGS is working on reducing redundant documents in bids with the goal to consolidate or embed required documents into state standard terms and conditions, thereby reducing paperwork during the bid process. The objective is to prevent bid rejections due to missing legally required forms. These changes are part of a broader push for efficiency and simplification, with more updates expected in late 2026.

Finally, it is important to note that the end-of-fiscal-year buying cycle is expected to begin around February–March 2026. Departments will be reviewing budgets closely due to fiscal constraints, focusing on essential purchases. The new purchasing authority tiers and SB/DVBE options will be more actively used during this time.

If you haven’t done so already, please join CSDVB! We can only achieve success in our advocacy efforts in the Legislature and through our partnership with DGS with your help! For $100 per year as an Associate Member, you will receive the CSDVB’s monthly to-the-point briefing and update to keep you informed on key legislation, regulations, and DGS’ activities that will affect your ability to grow and thrive.

Formed in 2009 by a small group of small, microbusinesses and disabled veteran business enterprises, the CSDVB is mission-driven to improve state contracting opportunities for small businesses through our highly effective education and advocacy efforts in working with the state legislature, regulators, agencies, boards and commissions on your behalf. The CSDVB has been responsible for securing over $1 billion dollars of contracts with the state.

Our mission is to ensure that ALL contracts are fairly and equitably awarded to Certified Small Businesses, especially when bidding against the large prime vendors, many of whom are located outside of the state.

Most importantly, as a Member you will have exclusive access to the 21,612 Certified Small and Disabled Veteran Businesses, along with connecting you to programs that our business association partners hold each month.

Also, your membership will provide you with the state-of-the-art link to statewide contracts that DGS sends out daily so you will have quick and easy access without having to navigate through DGS’ CalEprocurment system that can take hours to sort and download.

Please join our broad-based Coalition of Certified Small Businesses, Disabled Veteran Businesses, Women-Owned Businesses, and Micro-Businesses today so we can continue our efforts to increase your contracting opportunities with the state while working to make the procurement process more fair, efficient and equitable!

Contact

Coalition of Small &
Disabled Veteran Businesses
P.O. Box 2576
Fresno CA 93745

Email

Phone

info@csdvb.online

(279) 284-4170

© 2026. All rights reserved.