North Carolina Bond Threshold Now $500,000

North Carolina House has passed a new requirement for all projects over $500,000 to have a bond for Department of Transportation, Department of Administration and University of North Carolina.  This was done to decrease the amount of losses on project for these entities.  These agencies are required to report their defaults to the Joint Committee on Government Operations.  This amendment will allow the SFAA and AIA to collect data on the number of defaults now that the threshold is $500,000.  For comparison, the federal government gets projects for workers and suppliers over $30,000 to be bonded.  For payment and performance bonds the limit is $100,000.  This amendment is something that was supported by the SFAA and AIA because it protects taxpayer monies on these larger projects.  Increasing the bond amount will help to encourage further public participation on smaller projects and to keep costs down on these smaller projects.  It will be interesting to see how this effects the budgets for those agencies affected and if the rate of defaults will reflect this change in threshold.