Read enough public-works bond statutes and a default emerges: the bond equals the contract price. Maine says “full contract amount”, North Dakota “equal at least to the price stated in the contract”, Connecticut “a bond in the amount of the contract”, Indiana “equal to the contractor’s total contract price”, Florida “shall equal the contract price”. Federal work reaches the same place through a percentage — 100 percent of the original contract price under FAR 28.102-2(b).
Then there are the states that decided otherwise, and the ways they decided it are not variations on one idea. They are four different ideas.
Idea one: a lower percentage
Two states in our reading put the floor at half.
Nevada. NRS 339.025 requires a performance bond “in an amount to be fixed by the contracting body, but not less than 50 percent of the contract amount” and a payment bond on the same terms.
Louisiana. La. R.S. 38:2241 requires, for each contract in excess of twenty-five thousand dollars per project, “a bond with good, solvent, and sufficient surety in a sum of not less than fifty percent of the contract price”.
Idaho sits between the halves and the wholes. Idaho Code § 54-1926 requires a performance bond “in any amount to be fixed by the contracting body, but in no event less than eighty-five percent (85%) of the contract amount”, and repeats the figure for the payment bond. Across the 48 states we write in, we found no other statute using that number.
Notice what all three share: the percentage is a floor on the contracting body’s discretion, not a computation. Each says the amount is fixed by the body, subject to a minimum. So none of these tells you what your bond will be — only how low the solicitation is permitted to go.
Idea two: the same percentage, a smaller base
South Carolina keeps one hundred percent and changes what it multiplies.
S.C. Code § 11-35-3030 requires bonds “in an amount equal to one hundred percent of the portion of the contract price that does not include the cost of operation, maintenance, and finance”.
Two steps, in this order: remove operation, maintenance and finance from the contract price; then bond all of what is left. On a conventional construction contract with none of those components the base and the price are the same figure and nothing changes. On a contract bundling construction with an operating term, or carrying a financing component, the base is materially smaller — and so is the bond.
This is the subtlest of the four, because the statute reads as a full-value requirement and is not one. A bidder cannot derive the penal sum from the contract value alone; it needs the breakdown.
Idea three: a fraction of something other than the price
Colorado phrases its floor against a different noun again.
C.R.S. § 38-26-106 requires the contractor, before entering upon performance, to execute and file “a good and sufficient bond or other acceptable surety approved by the contracting board, officer, body, or person, in a penal sum not less than one-half of the total amount payable under the terms of the contract”.
Total amount payable under the terms of the contract is not identical to the contract price on every contract, and the statute chose the former. Colorado also permits “other acceptable surety” alongside the bond, which puts it with the states that treat the instrument as open.
Idea four: no percentage at all
West Virginia abandons the frame entirely. W.Va. Code § 38-2-39 requires a bond “in a penal sum equal at least to the reasonable cost of the materials, machinery, equipment and labor required for the completion of such contract”.
That is a cost of inputs. Contract price and input cost are the same number only on a job priced at cost; on any contract carrying overhead and profit they differ, and West Virginia sizes the bond to what it would take to pay everybody rather than to what the owner agreed to pay the contractor.
It is the only rule of its kind we have found, and it is the only state where the penal sum cannot be computed from the contract documents alone at all.
What the exceptions have in common
Very little, which is the finding. They are not a family of “reduced bonding” states. One lowers the percentage, one shrinks the base, one changes the noun the fraction applies to, and one replaces the fraction with a cost estimate. No rule of thumb predicts which approach a state took, and none of them is inferable from anything else about the state.
What they do share is a consequence for claimants. Every one of these states produces a payment bond smaller than the job it sits on — often substantially — and a payment bond is a ceiling shared by everyone who claims against it. In a full-value state a queue of unpaid trades is competing for a fund the size of the contract. At half, the same queue is competing for half.
What this page does not cover
It covers the states whose amount provisions we have read in full. Absence from this page means we have not finished reading that state, not that it requires the full contract price.
It also does not address bid security, which is a separate percentage in a separate provision — usually a much smaller one, and usually in the procurement code rather than the bond statute.
