Melwood Protest Stops Army’s Fort Meade Support Procurement

Melwood Horticultural Training Center Inc. showed that a procurement to provide the Army with base operations support services at Fort Meade, Md., must be permanently stopped because it unlawfully requires price competition among nonprofit agency bidders, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims said.

Melwood, an AbilityOne nonprofit agency that employs blind and severely disabled individuals, was performing the services at Fort Meade, as it is now, when it learned AbilityOne wanted to procure them under a Defense Department pilot program with the goal of increasing government savings, the court said.

The Javits-Wagner-O’Day Act requires federal agencies to purchase suitable commodities ...