The Michigan Municipal Services Authority (MMSA) is a unique entity with the goal of leveraging the power of scores of communities, both in Michigan and beyond to get the best value out of their procurement deals. While cooperative agreements among entities can gain the power of scale in their procurement deals, MMSA differs discernably in its structure. In fact, it is a “virtual” city, which can do anything a municipality can do, but has no geographic boundaries, nor any reliance on a single city to get the ball rolling.    

It was created over a decade ago under the auspices of then Governor Rick Snyder who was known for his dedication to efficiencies in government, including sharing services. Although it had something of a slow start, there’s every reason to believe MMSA efforts are beginning to pay off now.

Michigan is an ideal state for such an organization to help. With about 530 cities and villages and 83 counties, “there's a lot of government in Michigan,” says Samantha Harkins, CEO of MMSA. The Authority’s goal is “to be a space which can help (governments) work in collaboration, without requiring them to collaborate.”

The potential for MMSA is abundantly clear. For small communities who want to put together a request for proposal (RFP) themselves that can devour a great deal of time and effort. Many of them don’t even have the staff with the expertise to undertake that task effectively. Says Harkins, “MMSA can take that off the plate of community leaders who are doing 500 things in any given day – and that doesn’t even include times when there’s something like a flood to which you need to respond.”

This isn’t a new issue, of course, but the pressure for efficiencies at a time when communities of all sizes are fearful of their fiscal futures is particularly high. In fact, MMSA originated during a rough fiscal time for cities, counties and states and, particularly with the loss of federal funding now, the pressure is on for such an innovative approach, in Michigan and elsewhere.

There’s currently a great deal of excitement about MMSA’s potential in the wake of proposals that it put out last summer for cybersecurity services. “We had about 28 responses from around the world,” recalls Harkins, “and a Lansing based IT company called Dewpoint won it.”

One of the advantages of working with MMSA is that it carefully vets the IT vendors who are making a pitch for a municipality’s business. What’s more, “pricing has been negotiated with the understanding that as clients are added to the program,” explains Dewpoint, “costs for the services are reduced.”

There are efforts to expand MMSA’s reach beyond the boundaries of Michigan. Toward that end, MMSA and the Alliance for Innovation (AFI) are collaborating with Civic Marketplace to give “every Michigan jurisdiction – large or small – access to fully compliant, competitively bid contracts, simple purchasing tools, and a pathway to keep more taxpayer dollars,” according to the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments.

The idea of this partnership has a number of benefits, not the least of which is that in most instances when entities set out to work together on a single contract, “they do not source across the country,” says Angela Rogensues, city council member in Warren Michigan, who was appointed as chair of MMSA by Governor Gretchen Whimer in February 2021. “But there’s a real opportunity to be able to broaden who folks might be utilizing as vendors through partnership with Civic Marketplace.”

Though MMSA was founded over a decade ago, and appears to be gaining steam right now, its first effort, though much ballyhooed, was something short of a success. Back in 2013, soon after MMSA was formed, it explored and initiated   what seemed like an exciting opportunity to help cities in the state to procure financial management systems in a cost-productive way.

Grand Rapids, and Kent County got the ball rolling when they signed up for the effort. The project achieved lift off and provided financial management services for those project partners for the life of the system.  Looking back, this first initiative took a significant misstep, largely because the system would only be of use to larger cities, counties or other units of government, and that didn’t present a big enough marketplace to gain the necessary benefits of scale and sustainability. “The system for which we contracted worked adequately for us in Grand Rapids,” the second largest city in the state, recalls that city’s former deputy city manager Eric DeLong. But it presented a kind of overkill for smaller units of government, there were “lighter” FMS solutions available and so they didn’t sign on.  

In the years that followed MMSA worked on figuring out a better approach, and based on its experience with the first iteration, advance research and growth in understanding of the market, DeLong believes it’s hit on it now. “I’m very optimistic,” he says. “They’re in a really good niche right now, and it’s a timely idea, maybe ahead of its time, but I believe that it will become more important as communities in Michigan and elsewhere gain experience.”

“Right now,” says Rogensues, “the key is getting the word out throughout Michigan and beyond. So, some of our work is really making sure that it's well advertised and we're meeting folks where they're at, but I think the opportunities are really quite endless for the work that MMSA might be able to do. 

“As a city leader,” she says, “we often don’t have as much opportunity to innovate or think innovatively, because we’re literally putting out fires and responding to emergencies. And I really think that the greatest opportunity that MMSA has will be making the resources available to innovate within their general operations.”

This article was supported by Civic Marketplace

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