Request Legal Advisory Svcs on D. C. Commercial Real Estate Tax Laws & How Those Laws Apply to USDOT HQS Bldg

Nature/Description of the action being approved:  Expert legal services and opinions regarding the applicability of District of Columbia real property taxes to the building occupied by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) at 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, and the assessment of such taxes by the building's owner upon DOT.

 Description of efforts made to ensure that offers are solicited from as many potential sources as is practicable:  Research was done to identify all possible law firms with relevant expertise that did not have conflicts of interest through prior work performed for or on behalf of JBG, the owner of the building at issue.  Five firms were identified through that process.  We contacted all five of those firms to inquire about their interest in this project and whether they indeed had a conflict due to representing or doing work for JBG.  Four of the five firms indicated that they had a conflict and as a result, they were not interested in this project.  An additional three firms were contacted using references received, and those firms also had conflicts and could not proceed.  This firm is the only firm that was interested in this project and willing and able to obtain a waiver of their conflict from JBG.  We engaged this firm in January 2012 for this project, and the Purchase Order for that engagement expired on March 31, 2012.  We now need to engage this firm again to continue its work on this project.  Because this firm has already done the work on this project and it would be a redundancy of effort and not cost effective for a different firm to come up to speed on this project in order to do the work now required to be continued, soliciting offers from other sources in order to continue the work on this project would create significant redundancies.

     Any other facts supporting the user of other than full and open competition.:  We contacted several firms and this was the only one that was interested in this project and willing and able to obtain a conflict waiver from JBG.  We engaged this firm in January 2012 for this project, and the Purchase Order for that engagement expired on March 31, 2012.  We now need to engage this firm again to continue its work on this project.  Because this firm has already done the work on this project and it would not be cost effective for a different firm to come up to speed on this project in order to do the work now required to be continued, soliciting offers from other sources in order to continue the work on this project would create significant redundancies.