I've worked in government (California), in the past, and this was not my experience. Most large vendors had contracts with the state which we would use to buy

I've worked in government (California), in the past, and this was not my experience. Most large vendors had contracts with the state which we would use to buy equipment which avoided having to go out for bid. And, competitive bid only came into effect if a purchase price exceeded $50K (and no existing state contract). For equipment purchases, I never saw the bid process used-- the preferred vendor always had a pre-existing contract. We got very good prices from Dell, much less than their retail pricing (I don't recall the exact percentage off list, but Dell orders were a fraction of the retail pricing the Dell website "build your server" page stated). Cisco would not discount hardware more than 30% for us (software and contracts 40%), but Alcatel Lucent gave us 73% off list. Nobody but giant telecoms buying massive volumes could get an equivalent discount from Alcatel Lucent. We did however favor local contractors for services (somewhat rural area), and often times, those contractors were less competent / did poorer work than out of area alternatives at similar cost. The last contractors that expanded the fiber plant were complete clowns, and took 30 times longer to do the equivalent amount of work (they had to redo a lot of their work that failed testing, and they were just plain slow) compared to a great contractor, from LA, that we used previously (before the 'use local companies' mandate was handed down).