No-bid Detroit airport contract raises concern
The Detroit News
Detroit - Before she even started as Detroit Metropolitan Airport's CEO, Turkia Mullin feuded with staff over granting a no-bid, $54.7 million airport contract to a donor of the county nonprofit agency that gave her $150,000 in bonuses, according to emails obtained by The Detroit News.
Mullin wrote that the airport's then-chief financial officer, Tom Naughton, "may be evil" because he was still having talks with another firm for the shuttle contract, according to an Aug. 13 email sent to then-Deputy County Executive Azzam Elder.
Mullin was pushing Great Lakes Transportation Shuttle for the seven-year contract to transport employees and passengers, according to two sources with knowledge who spoke to The News.
"I was rocked last night by this," wrote Mullin, who started at the airport Sept. 6. "My confidence in Tom dropped to a negative in terms of loyalty. ... I think I need to find a new CFO stat!"
Mullin, in her role as the county's economic development czar, had worked with Great Lakes' investor Gary Sakwa. His development company, Grand Sakwa, gave $12,500 to a nonprofit agency set up to supplement Mullin's county salary. A subsidiary of Great Lakes, Metro Cars, had donated another $10,000.
Last fall, Metro Cars and Grand Sakwa were named along with a dozen other donors in a federal subpoena served on the county for documents.
On Sept. 29, the airport awarded the work to Great Lakes, which previously had the contract through Metro Cars.
Sakwa's spokesman, John Truscott, said Great Lakes landed the contract fairly and that it was just one of many to support the county nonprofit agency. Sakwa, who is a passive investor in Great Lakes, has not been contacted by the FBI in the eight months since the subpoena was issued, Truscott said
But union leader Denis Martin said Sakwa companies' backing of Mullin's nonprofit group and the business owner's airport contract raise concerns.
"It looks like you donate so much to my organization and we'll do whatever we can to make sure you get that contract," said Martin, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1862, which represents 120 airport staffers. "And Tom Naughton wasn't playing ball."
Mullin's attorney, Raymond Sterling, said the nonprofit donations had nothing to do with Great Lakes' selection, adding Metro Cars had a long record of "great on-time service."
Sterling called Naughton "extremely smart and well-meaning" but that when Mullin took the airport job, she was "concerned that he and others were spending valuable time doing business as usual.""Anyone who knows Turkia knows that she has many times facetiously referred to people as 'evil' if they do not immediately meet her high standard," Sterling wrote in an email. "Mr. Naughton later proved that he did, and he and Turkia ended up having a mutually respectfully and great working relationship."
Airport spokesman Michael Conway said Naughton, now interim airport CEO, "consistently exercised his fiduciary responsibilities ... including raising concerns where appropriate."
The shuttle contract was bid out twice unsuccessfully, before the airport altered the terms and gave it to Great Lakes. Officials said the revised contract saved the airport $13 million. But a Cincinnati firm, First Transit, which lost in the second round of bids, filed a protest, arguing the airport had violated its ordinances.
"The (airport) violated its own procedure in not rebidding the work, and as a result, taxpayers are stuck paying millions of dollars more to have shuttle service provided by the previous contractor," a spokeswoman for First Transit wrote in an email to The News.
Another email obtained by The News last week shows Sakwa pitched two airport proposals to Mullin through his attorney in June before she had applied to become its CEO. Eleven days later, Sakwa donated $5,000 to Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano's political action committee.
Truscott said county officials had requested ideas from Sakwa's development company on how to streamline airport operations, and Sakwa wasn't going to bid on the work. Sterling said it was common for Mullin to field similar airport-related proposals as economic development chief.
Mullin's email to Naughton is one of several showing that she ran airport business by Elder. That included giving him a heads-up on a television reporter's requests for her airport contract to asking how she should work with consultants and a potential concessionaire.
At least one critic said the emails support contentions that Mullin's selection was engineered to give the county control over the airport.
"It lends credibility to the idea it was a predetermined process to get her in there," said Wayne County Commissioner Bernard Parker, an airport board member.
But Sterling said Mullin only sought Elder's advice sparingly.
"She respected his experience and business expertise," Sterling wrote.
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Detroit News Staff Writer Joel Kurth contributed.
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