PROVIDENCE — For 15 years, the state has been storing boxes and boxes full of records with the same company.

And in all that time, the state has never bothered to go out to bid to see if it could get a better deal.

Until now.

Governor Carcieri’s administration announced yesterday that it has awarded a new bid — to the same company — that will cut the state’s document-storage fees by 75 percent.

That’s not a typo.

Since 1992, Rhode Island has been paying more than $1 million a year to Capital Records Management Inc., of Providence, to store old documents. Under the new bid, Capital Records will provide the same services, but at a cost estimated to be less than $250,000 a year.

Carcieri said this contract shows that companies that have done business with the state for years are “starting to get the message” that things are now different.

“As we have demonstrated our willingness to award old contracts to new vendors, those companies are beginning to realize that this isn’t business as usual,” Carcieri said in a statement. “Long-established state vendors can no longer take it for granted that they will automatically get new state business. As a result, they are coming to the table with better deals for the state and for the taxpayers.”

Asked yesterday why his company was able to come down so much in price, Capital Records president Harvey Swartz said, “We’re much more efficient now.” The company used to track the boxes with hand-written records, Swartz said. Now, every box has a bar code.

“We passed the savings along to the state” in this new contract, Swartz said.

The state is storing nearly 85,000 boxes containing about 25 million pieces of paper, including documents from the state’s credit-union crisis, income-tax filings, Medicaid records and state purchase orders. State and federal laws require that the state keep these records for a specific length of time.

Rhode Island used to store its old records at various state buildings. But in 1989, a fire in what was then called the Veterans Memorial Building destroyed 1,000 boxes of old and relatively insignificant estate tax documents and left thousands of other papers soaked in water. After the fire, the state looked to house its files in a more secure facility. Capital Records was hired at the time to recover water-damaged documents.

A long-term storage contract then went out to bid. In 1992, Capital Records was awarded a three-year contract to store all of the state’s old records. The contract has not gone out to bid since. Every few years the state has signed a contract extension with Capital Records, paying the same rate for essentially the same services, according to Brian P. Stern, the state’s purchasing director.

Since 1992, the state has been paying 60 cents a month to store each of the 85,000 boxes. There are other fees attached to the contract, for retrieving old records and bringing them to state offices. That per-box fee never changed over the life of the contact, Stern said.

A 1990 Providence Journal article featuring Capital Records and its services said the company was charging its commercial companies at the time 35 cents a box for each month of storage.

Under the new 5-year contract negotiated by Carcieri’s staff, the state will now pay 15 cents a box for each month of storage. Carcieri is trumpeting the new price as one of his “fiscal fitness” savings.

(Municipalities, school districts, courts, state colleges and any quasi-public agency can use this contract. Several of these entities already use Capital Records and will see the new, lower rate within weeks.)

Capital Records was one of 16 companies to submit bids in June. Seven of those companies bid on the storage of documents while the others bid on a related contract to store digital versions of the state’s records. Besides several Rhode Island companies, there were bidders from California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York.

But before all of the bids were in, the matter became complicated when a powerful state senator decided to intervene.

Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III, D-Providence, introduced a late bill that would have prohibited any state records from being stored out of state. While the bill — which was vetoed by Carcieri — didn’t specifically mention Capital Records, it would have given the Providence company a significant leg up in the bidding process.

Ciccone spent two decades running the state’s Judicial Records Center, which used Capital Records, and now works for an arm of the Laborers International Union of North America. He introduced the bill again this year but it has yet to have a hearing.

“If anyone wants to bid on a contract like this,” Ciccone said yesterday, “I think they should establish a location within the state of Rhode Island, hire employees from within the state and they should pay the corporate tax, sales tax, property tax and income tax.”

In the end, the bidding field was narrowed to two companies: Capital Records and Iron Mountain Inc., of Massachusetts. Capital Records was awarded the contract on Friday. Next, the state hopes to streamline the process further by storing some documents in electronic form only, Stern said. The state is investigating if it makes sense to scan old documents or just start scanning documents from now on. Those bids are still being reviewed.

smayerow@projo.com