Philadelphia Airport Maintenance Contract Not Yet Resolved
A controversial Philadelphia International Airport maintenance contract is about to be extended for a second time - reaping millions of dollars for a politically connected company that was once tied to Mayor Street's brother.
The four-year, $50 million contract, held by Houston-based Philadelphia Airport Services since 2001, was set to expire Sept. 30.
But it did not. City officials explained that because they were still studying the company's bid to renew the deal - a bid that was $2.3 million higher than that of the only other competitor - they were extending the old contract until the end of the year.
That gave Philadelphia Airport Services an estimated $3.3 million in additional revenue from the city - and now the company is about to get yet more tax dollars.
With no new deal in place, Procurement Commissioner William Gamble confirmed this week that Philadelphia Airport Services' old contract will be extended once again, at a cost to taxpayers of about $1.1 million a month.
"This is a large contract, and it is getting a lot of scrutiny from all sides," Gamble said in an interview.
He said he had not yet determined the length of the extension. "We can't afford to make any mistakes with it, so we are taking our time," he said.
Philadelphia Airport Services, a joint venture, includes a 40 percent minority partner: U.S. Facilities, which is partly owned by former City Controller Thomas A. Leonard, a major Democratic fund-raiser, and businessman Willie Johnson, one of the mayor's longtime financial backers. The 60 percent partner is a subsidiary of a Houston-based company, Linc Facility Services.
The contract at issue - under which elevators and escalators are maintained at the city-owned airport, and landscaping and other work is performed - has long caused a stir.
For 11 straight years, the work went to Elliott-Lewis Corp. of Northeast Philadelphia. But in 2001, Elliott-Lewis lost the job to Philadelphia Airport Services, a newcomer that submitted a bid that was $2 million lower.
Elliott-Lewis unsuccessfully sued, contending that its rival had received special treatment, in part because it had hired T. Milton Street Sr., the mayor's brother, as a lobbyist to help it secure the deal.
Unrelated court documents later revealed that Milton Street was kept on by Philadelphia Airport Services as a $30,000-a-month consultant. The company says Street no longer does any work for it.
With a new contract up for grabs this year, the two rivals again went after it. This time, Elliott-Lewis submitted the lower bid, $14.9 million, compared with Philadelphia Airport Service's $17.2 million.
But instead of making an award decision, the administration announced in October it would ask both companies to submit new bids. Top mayoral aide George Burrell said the city was unsatisfied with how Elliott-Lewis proposed to meet a 25 percent minority-participation goal.
Bid documents obtained by The Inquirer show that Elliott-Lewis proposed hiring 22 minority subcontractors, with most of them receiving less than 2 percent of the total work.
"I have short patience for situations where we are awarding nominal contracts that are not strengthening these [minority] companies," Burrell said at the time.
Gamble said the administration has decided to let anyone compete for the new contract. Under initial plans, only Elliott-Lewis and Philadelphia Airport Services were able to submit new bids.
"The more extensions, the more delays, the more the process for rebid is drawn out... the longer the one company stays in position," City Councilman Michael A. Nutter said. "It seems the current company is, in essence, getting the contract by default.
"The whole situation and process," he said, "bears some extreme scrutiny."
A story in yesterday's Inquirer about a maintenance contract at Philadelphia International Airport falsely implied that U.S. Facilities is still a joint-venture partner of the company that currently does the work. U.S. Facilities left the joint venture more than two years ago but this year teamed up with it again in a bid to renew the contract.
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