This past week, the county commissioners took up the discussion of fairness in county contract procedures with the idea of giving local vendors preference in the bid process.

They also discussed centralizing the bid process.

We agree with the thoughts of giving local merchants a leg up on the bid process; after all, they already are county tax payers and the job creators in the county.

 On the idea of a central bidding process, we can see on large bid contracts that this would be a good idea, but on smaller ones — not so good an idea. We think that too much red tape would be added to the process if this were to happen.

Our suggestion is that the commissioners set a fair limit on what their department heads can secure bids for without going through a big process and then allow them to do their jobs.