It would be much more effective to have the response to being screwed be, "We have the option of saying you are not allowed to submit bids on public projects in

It would be much more effective to have the response to being screwed be, "We have the option of saying you are not allowed to submit bids on public projects in the future." Then you don't have to legislate every last detail of when that happens. This happens in the public sector as well. Case in point: Parsons-Brinckerhoff is persona non grata when it comes to bidding on MA projects (MA tried to legislate the ban and weren't able to, but I know firsthand that PB has been thrown off several teams bidding for MA projects when the team was told they would have no chance of winning the project with PB on board).