COLUMBIA--The contract for the Carolina Bays Parkway was improperly awarded, an attorney for a government watchdog argued before the state Supreme Court.

Jim Carpenter, the attorney for Greenville resident and advocate Edward Sloan, argued Wednesday that state law does not allow for any method of awarding contracts other than taking the lowest bid for a specific project.

Sloan wants a ruling that the state Department of Transportation can no longer use the method of contract awarding that it used for the Carolina Bays Parkway, new Cooper River bridge and Cross Island Parkway in Hilton Head Island.

The agency says it saved the taxpayers money on those contracts and has not done anything wrong.

The method, called design-build, asks for proposals that include both the design of a project and its construction. It differs from the traditional way of issuing a contract for a project in which the transportation agency did the plans and designs, then asked for bids and picked the lowest bidder based solely on price.

Points are awarded for different aspects of a proposal including the completeness of a presentation, "so a lot depends on how good your presentation is," Carpenter said.

Transportation Department attorney William Coates argued the agency is acting lawfully because the law does not forbid the design-build method and contracts for the three projects in question went to proposals with the lowest cost.

In addition, Coates said, the state procurement code allows for both design-build and traditional bidding methods. But the agency is exempt from the procurement code at its own request, said Chief Justice Jean Toal.

"The department can't have it both ways," she said. "This is a repetitive course of conduct. This is a big, big question on whether this is permitted by the statutes."

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