The City That Ran a Perfect Process and Hired the Wrong Firm
Short answer for the city secretary reading this with a council packet due Thursday. HR consulting is almost certainly exempt from competitive bidding under Local Government Code § 252.022(a)(4), and it is not a "professional service" under Government Code § 2254.002, so the mandatory Request for Qualifications process does not apply either. You can usually contract directly. If council has to vote on it, you need Form 1295 regardless of the dollar amount. Check your charter and purchasing policy, which can be stricter than state law. Then spend your energy on the twelve questions below, because the procurement paperwork is not what determines whether this works.
A city I know spent four months selecting an HR consultant.
They ran a Request for Qualifications. They published notice. They built a scoring rubric, seated an evaluation committee, held interviews, ranked three finalists, and brought a recommendation to council with a memo that would have satisfied an auditor from any state in the union. Genuinely conscientious people doing careful work.
Two things were true about that process. The first is that essentially none of it was legally required. The second is that they still hired the wrong firm.
The firm they picked had the best-looking response. Full-color, thirty pages, a national methodology with a trademark symbol after it, and a partner who presented beautifully in the interview. What the city did not ask, and the RFQ did not require them to disclose, was who would actually do the work. The answer turned out to be a two-year analyst working remotely from another state who had never read the Texas Local Government Code and did not know what Chapter 143 was.
I have written before that process is not proof. Municipal procurement is where that idea gets its purest test. You can execute a flawless selection process and buy exactly the wrong thing, because the process was measuring the proposal and the proposal is not the service.
- The competitive bidding threshold rose from $50,000 to $100,000 under S.B. 1173, effective September 1, 2025.
- Section 252.022(a)(4) exempts personal, professional, and planning services from competitive bidding altogether.
- HR consulting is not a professional service under Section 2254.002, so the mandatory qualifications-based RFQ process does not apply.
- Form 1295 is triggered when the governing body must vote on the contract, regardless of the dollar amount.
- Your charter and local purchasing policy can be stricter than state law, and usually are. Read them first.
Step One: Which Path Actually Applies
Cities get this wrong in both directions. Some award a $60,000 engagement with a handshake and a purchase order. Others run a full sealed-proposal process for a $9,000 handbook review. Both create problems, and neither is required.
The bidding threshold changed, and most guidance has not caught up
Local Government Code § 252.021 requires competitive sealed bidding or proposals before a municipality enters a contract requiring an expenditure over a set threshold. That threshold sat at $50,000 from 2007 until last year. S.B. 1173 raised it to $100,000 effective September 1, 2025.
I flag this because a great deal of the municipal procurement guidance available online — including well-regarded practitioner papers written before the change — still states $50,000. If your purchasing policy cross-references the state threshold by amount rather than by citation, it is now out of date.
And HR consulting is probably exempt anyway
Section 252.022(a) lists general exemptions from the competitive bidding requirement, and subsection (a)(4) covers a procurement for personal, professional, or planning services. HR consulting ordinarily lands there.
The RFQ most cities run is not required
This is the point that saves cities the most time, and almost nobody knows it.
Government Code § 2254.004 requires a qualifications-based selection process — publish an RFQ, select the most highly qualified provider, then negotiate a fair and reasonable price — for "professional services." But § 2254.002(2) defines that term as a closed list of licensed practices:
- Accounting
- Architecture
- Landscape architecture
- Land surveying
- Medicine
- Optometry
- Professional engineering
- Real estate appraising
- Registered nursing
- Professional geoscience
HR consulting is not on that list. Neither is management consulting, organizational development, or classification and compensation work. The § 2254.004 process does not apply to them.
Two reasons, one bad and one good. The bad reason is that somebody assumed "professional services" is a plain-English category rather than a defined statutory term. The good reason is political cover: for a visible or contested engagement, a documented competitive process protects the city manager from the councilmember who wanted their friend hired. That is a legitimate choice. Just make it knowingly, as a governance decision, rather than because you believed the statute required it.
Your charter usually wins
Home rule charters and local purchasing policies frequently set lower thresholds, require council approval above a stated amount, or mandate a minimum number of quotes. Those requirements bind you even where state law would not. Read your charter and your purchasing policy before you read anything else, including this article.
| Your situation | Path | What is actually required |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed-fee HR audit, $15,000 | Direct contract | Under threshold and exempt under § 252.022(a)(4). Follow your purchasing policy; get the CIQ. |
| Retainer, $3,500/mo — annual value $42,000 | Direct contract | Same. Watch whether your policy aggregates annual value or looks at monthly. |
| Classification & compensation study, $85,000 | Direct contract, or optional RFP | Under the new $100,000 threshold and exempt regardless. An RFP here is a governance choice, not a mandate. |
| Multi-year engagement over $100,000 total | Check policy; exemption likely still applies | The § 252.022(a)(4) exemption is not dollar-limited — but confirm with your city attorney and follow charter rules. |
| Any contract council must vote on | Add Form 1295 | Required by § 2252.908 when the governing body must act, regardless of amount. |
| Consultant has a relationship with a councilmember | CIQ, immediately | Chapter 176 filing within 7 business days. Class C misdemeanor for failure. |
Source references: Tex. Loc. Gov't Code § 252.022 · Tex. Gov't Code § 2254.002 · Texas Ethics Commission, Form 1295 · Texas Ethics Commission, Form CIQ · TML, Texas Municipal Procurement Laws Made Easy (2025)
The Twelve Points
Now the part that actually determines the outcome. Score each on 0 to 3. Anything under 24 out of 36 and you are buying a proposal rather than a service.
The Municipal HR Consultant Scorecard. Faulkner HR Solutions. Original framework, 2026. Cite as: Faulkner, T.W. (2026). The Municipal HR Consultant Scorecard. Faulkner HR Solutions.
| # | Criterion | What to ask | The answer that should worry you |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Named practitioner | Who personally performs the work, and what is their name? | "Our team." A partner presents; an analyst delivers. |
| 2 | Public-sector depth | Name three Texas cities you have served and what you did. | Private-sector case studies with "the principles transfer." |
| 3 | Statutory fluency | Walk me through how Chapter 143 changes a discipline process. | Any hesitation. This is a five-second recall question. |
| 4 | Verified credentials | SPHR, SHRM-SCP, IPMA-HR? Give me the certification number. | Credentials listed but never verified. Verify them. |
| 5 | Council literacy | What do you do when a councilmember directs you on staff? | Anything other than routing it to the city manager. |
| 6 | PIA readiness | Assume everything you write becomes public. Does that change your report? | "We'd mark it confidential." That is not how the PIA works. |
| 7 | Fixed scope and price | What is the number, and what changes it? | Hourly with no cap, or a range that widens after signing. |
| 8 | Defined deliverable | What physical artifact do we hold at the end? | "Ongoing advisory support." That is a subscription, not a deliverable. |
| 9 | Work-product ownership | Do we own the policies and reports outright? | Licensed templates you lose access to when the contract ends. |
| 10 | Conflict screening | Do you serve our neighboring cities, our vendors, or our associations? | Refusal to disclose. The CIQ is a floor, not a ceiling. |
| 11 | Willingness to decline | Tell me about a time you told a client they did not need you. | No example. Everyone who has done this a while has one. |
| 12 | Exit and transition | How do we terminate, and what do we get on the way out? | Auto-renewal, long notice periods, or data you cannot take. |
Three of those deserve more than a table row
Point 1, the named practitioner, is the one that cost the city in my opening story four months and a wasted contract. Write it into the agreement: name the individual, state the minimum percentage of hours they personally perform, and require written consent before substitution. Large firms will push back. That pushback is information.
Point 6, PIA readiness, separates people who have worked for Texas cities from people who have worked for companies. A consultant writing for a private employer can be candid in a way that a consultant writing for a city cannot, because in a city the report may end up attached to a news story. That does not mean writing dishonestly. It means writing findings that are accurate, defensible, and drafted with the knowledge that a reporter may read them — and knowing which narrow categories of information actually receive protection rather than assuming a "confidential" stamp does anything.
Point 11, willingness to decline, is the single best predictor in the list. A consultant who cannot name a time they told someone not to hire them is either very new or is optimizing for something other than your outcome. I would weight this one double.
Sample Contract Language
Four clauses that close the gaps points 1, 8, 9, and 12 identify. Give these to your city attorney as a starting point rather than treating them as finished drafting — your attorney owns the document.
- Key personnel. "Consultant designates [name, credentials] as the sole individual responsible for performance of the Services. Not less than [80]% of engagement hours shall be performed personally by the designated individual. Substitution requires prior written consent of the City Manager, which the City may withhold in its sole discretion."
- Deliverable and acceptance. "Consultant shall deliver [named artifact] not later than [date]. The City shall have [15] business days to review and to request correction of deficiencies. Final payment is conditioned on the City's written acceptance."
- Work product and records. "All deliverables, including policies, templates, analyses, and reports, are works made for hire and become the sole property of the City upon creation. Consultant acknowledges that records created or received in performance of this Agreement may be subject to the Texas Public Information Act and agrees to preserve and deliver such records on request."
- Termination for convenience. "The City may terminate this Agreement, in whole or in part, upon [30] days' written notice without cause. Upon termination, Consultant shall deliver all work product in progress and all City data in a usable, non-proprietary format within [10] business days. This Agreement does not automatically renew."
The auto-renewal point matters more than it looks. A retainer that renews silently every year is a retainer nobody re-evaluates, and an engagement nobody re-evaluates stops being a decision and becomes a line item.
Where I Sit in This
I am one of the firms a Texas city might evaluate using this framework, so read it with that in mind and check the arithmetic yourself.
I wrote it this way on purpose. Points 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 11 are criteria I am confident we meet — a named practitioner, verifiable credentials, published fees, defined deliverables, city-owned work product, and a documented habit of telling people they do not need us. Point 2 is a criterion where a larger firm with a bigger municipal roster may beat us, and point 10 is one where a city should press me specifically, because a consultant who works across a region will eventually have adjacent relationships and you deserve to know what they are before you sign.
A rubric that only its author can pass is marketing. This one is not that, and if a competing firm scores higher on your version of it, that is the framework working correctly.
One more thing, and it is the same advice I gave in the piece on what TML and the Risk Pool already cover: before you procure anything, spend a week using what you already fund. The TML legal line, the Risk Pool's pre-termination consultation, and TMHRA's peer network are free to eligible members and are underused by an embarrassing margin. If those close your gap, you just saved a procurement cycle.
Frequently Asked Questions
Generally no. Section 252.022(a)(4) of the Local Government Code exempts a procurement for personal, professional, or planning services from competitive bidding, and HR consulting normally falls within that exemption. Separately, S.B. 1173 raised the competitive bidding threshold in Section 252.021 from $50,000 to $100,000 effective September 1, 2025. Your charter or local purchasing policy may still be stricter than state law, so check both.
No. Section 2254.002(2) defines professional services as a closed list of licensed practices: accounting, architecture, landscape architecture, land surveying, medicine, optometry, professional engineering, real estate appraising, registered nursing, and professional geoscience. HR consulting is not on that list, which means the qualifications-based RFQ process required by Section 2254.004 does not apply. Cities routinely run an RFQ they were never required to run.
Often yes, and the dollar amount is not the trigger most people think it is. Under Government Code Section 2252.908, the certificate of interested parties is required for a contract that requires an action or vote by the governing body before it may be signed, or that has a value of at least $1 million, or that is for lobbying services. If your council must approve the contract, Form 1295 is required regardless of how small it is. Individuals and publicly traded companies are exempt from filing.
A Conflict of Interest Questionnaire under Chapter 176 of the Local Government Code. A vendor entering or seeking a contract with a local governmental entity must file one if the vendor has a family, employment, or other business relationship with a local government officer, or has given an officer or their family member gifts totaling more than $100 in the prior twelve months. It is filed with the records administrator no later than the seventh business day after the vendor becomes aware of the triggering facts. Violations are a Class C misdemeanor.
Sometimes, through interlocal cooperative purchasing arrangements authorized under Local Government Code Section 271.102 and similar provisions. But for a service already exempt from bidding, a co-op adds an administrative layer without adding legal protection you need. Co-ops earn their value on commodity purchases, not on judgment-based professional services where fit matters more than price.
Whatever your contract says, so say it explicitly. The city should own all deliverables outright, including policies, templates, investigation reports, and data. Also address Public Information Act handling directly: assume that most of what the consultant produces for the city becomes subject to disclosure, and make sure the consultant knows how to write accordingly.
It depends on structure. Fixed-fee diagnostic projects are quoted after scoping. Ongoing retainers are commonly priced per employee per month with a published minimum. For a 50-employee city, published advisory retainers commonly run $1,000 to $5,500 per month depending on depth of involvement. Insist on a fixed number before the work starts rather than an hourly arrangement with no cap.
A necessary note. I am an HR and organizational consultant, not an attorney, and this is general information rather than legal advice for your city. Statutory descriptions reflect Texas law as of August 2026, including the S.B. 1173 threshold change effective September 1, 2025. Charters, purchasing policies, and grant conditions vary and frequently impose stricter requirements than state law. Your city attorney is the right person to confirm which path applies to a specific procurement, and the sample clauses above are starting points for your attorney to draft from, not finished contract language.