“Little Miller Act” is a useful phrase that hides a misleading implication. It suggests the state statutes are smaller copies of the federal one. They are not copies. They are independent statutes built on the same skeleton, and every state filled in the values itself.
The skeleton they share
Read enough of them and the same five questions appear in the same order:
- A threshold — how large must the contract be before bonds are required?
- A penal sum — how much must the bonds be worth?
- A claimant class — who may sue on the payment bond?
- A notice — what must a claimant who did not contract with the prime do first?
- A deadline — how long is there to sue?
The federal answers are at 40 U.S.C. §§ 3131–3134 and, for the operative acquisition figures, FAR part 28. The state answers are in fifty separate chapters, and none of the five carries across.
Where the thresholds land
Among the states whose statutes we have read in full, the spread on question one alone is roughly fifty-fold.
| State | Threshold | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | exceeding $5,000 (and $10,000 for a defined contracting body) | 8 P.S. § 193 |
| Louisiana | bond required above twenty-five thousand dollars per project | La. R.S. 38:2241 |
| Idaho | equal to or greater than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) | Idaho Code § 54-1926 |
| New Hampshire | $75,000 state / $125,000 political subdivision | RSA 447:16 |
| Texas | performance above $100,000, payment above $25,000 | Tex. Gov’t Code § 2253.021 |
| Maryland | exceeding $100,000 (security, not “bond”) | Md. State Fin. & Proc. § 17-103 |
| Maine | exceeding $125,000 | 14 M.R.S. § 871 |
| Illinois | over $150,000 | 30 ILCS 550/1 |
| North Dakota | in excess of two hundred fifty thousand dollars | N.D.C.C. § 48-01.2-10 |
| Virginia | $500,000 nontransportation / $350,000 transportation | Va. Code § 2.2-4337 |
| West Virginia | no threshold stated in the section at all | W.Va. Code § 38-2-39 |
Nothing in that column is predictable from anything else about the state. Population does not predict it, construction volume does not predict it, and neither does geography.
Illinois is the coincidence worth using
One state landed on the federal figure. 30 ILCS 550/1 requires a bond on public work
“costing over $150,000”
which is the same figure FAR 28.102-1(a) states for federal construction contracts. They arrived there independently — the federal number is an inflation-adjusted acquisition threshold, the Illinois number is a legislative choice — and the coincidence makes Illinois the single cleanest place to see what else differs, because the threshold is held constant.
Hold that variable still and the remaining differences stand out. Illinois carries a much higher figure for transportation work, a sunset date on the face of the statute, and a set of terms deemed into every bond whether or not anybody printed them. None of that has a federal counterpart.
The penal sums vary more than the thresholds
Question two produces a wider spread than question one, and a stranger one.
Maine requires a performance bond “in an amount equal to the full contract amount” and a payment bond at the full amount as well (14 M.R.S. § 871). North Dakota’s bond “must be for an amount equal at least to the price stated in the contract” (N.D.C.C. § 48-01.2-10). Federal work sets 100 percent of the original contract price under FAR 28.102-2(b), though the statute itself names no percentage.
Then it starts to diverge. Idaho floors both bonds at “eighty-five percent (85%) of the contract amount” (Idaho Code § 54-1926). Louisiana requires “not less than fifty percent of the contract price” (La. R.S. 38:2241). South Carolina requires one hundred percent — but of “the portion of the contract price that does not include the cost of operation, maintenance, and finance” (S.C. Code § 11-35-3030), which is a smaller base than anyone else uses. And West Virginia sets the penal sum at “the reasonable cost of the materials, machinery, equipment and labor required for the completion of such contract” (W.Va. Code § 38-2-39) — a cost of inputs, with no percentage anywhere in the section.
Where the state statutes converge
The claim mechanics are the one place the family resemblance is real, and even there the details move.
The federal second-tier rule at 40 U.S.C. § 3133(b)(2) — written notice to the prime within 90 days of last furnishing, stating the amount with substantial accuracy and the name of the party furnished to — reappears almost word for word in Maine, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Maryland. The 90-day period and the “substantial accuracy” phrase survive intact.
What changes is everything around it. Maine and North Dakota specify registered or certified mail and where it must be addressed. Oklahoma extends the suit window to two years where a claim was filed within the first. South Carolina fixes venue to the county or circuit of performance. Maryland reaches a supplier to a “sub-subcontractor” by name.
So the shape is federal and the operative details are local — which is the most accurate one-sentence description of the whole family.
What this page does not settle
It does not cover all fifty. The figures above come from the state rows we have read in full; the rest of the corpus is still being read, and a state absent from the table is absent because we have not finished it, not because it has nothing distinctive.
It also says nothing about bid bonds, which in most states live in the procurement code rather than the bond statute — a genuinely separate body of law that a Little Miller Act comparison does not reach.
And it is not advice about your job. It is a map of which questions to ask, in which order, of whichever statute is actually on your contract.
