1. (1) Composition of the Committee.

   1. (a) The Program Director of the General Tax Administration Program (GTA) will appoint a seven-member committee, known as the “Applicants Ranking Committee”, to perform the ranking function.

   2. (b) 1. This Committee will include the Contract Manager, who will serve as chairperson, and six voting members.

      2. The chairperson is authorized to recommend candidates for Committee membership to the Program Director of GTA, schedule meetings, prepare agendas and necessary materials, and chair the meetings.

      3. The chairperson will not prepare any qualification ranking forms, and will not “vote” on ranking issues.

   3. (c) Committee members will serve a term not to exceed 5 consecutive years.

   4. (d) The Program Director of GTA will use the following criteria in making appointments to the Committee:

      1. Two members will be from a program other than General Tax Administration (GTA);

      2. At least four members will possess active C.P.A. certificates;

      3. At least one member will be a lay person (non-C.P.A.);

      4. At least one member will be a minority, as defined by section 288.703(4), F.S.; and,

      5. At least one member will be from a GTA regional service center office.

      Any appointed Committee member can meet several of the guidelines listed. For example, an appointee may be a lay person from another program.

   5. (e) Each member, including the chairperson, must complete a conflict of interest disclosure statement. The member must either state the absence of any existing business or family relationship with applicants, or must list any such relationships. If relationships do exist for a particular Committee member, then the Program Director of GTA will excuse the member from participating in ranking the particular firm(s) with which the member has a relationship. The statements will be completed at the beginning of each fiscal year, prior to the start of the ranking process.

2. (2) Committee Meetings.

   1. (a) The Committee will meet to evaluate the relative qualifications of each applicant included in the ranking process. The meeting will be held within 60 business days after the application deadline. Additional meetings will be held if necessary during the fiscal year.
   2. (b) The Contract Manager will publicly notice the date, time, and location of any meeting held by the Applicants Ranking Committee. This notification will, at a minimum, be published in the Florida Administrative Register at least 14 calendar days prior to any scheduled meeting of the Committee.
   3. (c) Public testimony or discussion will not be accepted at meetings of the Committee. Only information previously submitted by applicants will be considered.
   4. (d) Persons who may wish to appeal any decision made by the Committee at a public meeting should ensure that they create a verbatim record of the proceedings, which record includes the testimony and evidence upon which the appeal will be based.

3. (3) Committee Procedures.

   1. (a) 1. The chairperson must grant each Committee member an opportunity to review the applicants’ qualification packages prior to the scheduled meeting.

      2. The Committee members can ask for any clarification of the respective applicants’ qualifications. The chairperson will obtain the requested clarification, and will provide the response to all Committee members.

      3. Although the Department may request clarification of submitted information, it is the applicants’ responsibility to submit correct and complete information. The Department reserves the right to rank applicants based strictly on the information originally submitted.

   2. (b) 1. At the meeting, the Committee will conduct an open discussion on each applicants’ qualifications prior to completing their individual qualification ranking form.

      2. After the open discussion, the members must independently complete their individual qualification ranking forms. The members must sign and date each ranking form.

      3. When each member has completed, signed, and dated a qualification ranking form for each applicant, the forms will be given to the chairperson.

      4. The chairperson or the chairperson’s designee will review the completed forms to verify that the supporting facts entered in the comments sections are consistent between members, and are accurate. The chairperson or the chairperson’s designee will resolve any discrepancies through discussion with the involved members and review of the facts documented in the subject application.

   3. (c) The chairperson or the chairperson’s designee will enter the scores from each form into a database to determine the total of the six scores of each of the applicants evaluated by the Committee. If a Committee member is excused from ranking a particular applicant due to a potential conflict of interest, then an average of the other five members’ scores will be used as the sixth score. A Ranking Report for each pool will be prepared based on the composite scores of the applicants in the pool. The Ranking Reports will reflect, at a minimum:

      1. Composite scores for each applicant in total; and,

      2. A ranking of the applicants in numerical order.

   4. (d) In the event of a tie(s) on a ranking report, the following steps will be performed, in numeric order, until the tie(s) is broken:

      1. The individual numeric calculations comprising the total score for each applicant will be recalculated to ten decimal places;

      2. Then, if the tie(s) is not broken, the applicants will be ranked against each other based on the scores for the criteria specified in subparagraphs (b)1., 6., 7., 9. and 10. of subsection 12-25.0056(12), F.A.C.;

      3. Then, if the tie(s) is not broken, the applicants will be ranked against each other based on their scores for the criteria specified in subparagraph (b)9. of subsection 12-25.0056(12), F.A.C.

4. (4) (a) After approval by the Compliance Support Process Manager, the ranking reports will be used by the Contract Manager to contact the applicants in the order determined by the ranking.
5. (b) This ranking process only determines the order of negotiation. It does not guarantee that the applicant ranked first will receive a contract in the subject fiscal year.

Rulemaking Authority 213.06(1), 213.28(4) FS. Law Implemented 213.28 FS. History–New 3-20-94, Amended 10-30-96, 7-31-00.