"Mayor's brother to keep Philadelphia airport contract"

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

Mayor's brother to keep contract
After cries of patronage, Milton Street said he'd end his airport job. Now
he says he'll sue to save it.
By Thomas Fitzgerald
The Philadelphia (PA) Inquirer


Renewing a family conflict, Mayor Street's older brother yesterday reversed
course and vowed to hang on to a $1.2 million no-bid contract for
maintenance work at Philadelphia International Airport.

T. Milton Street Sr. said that to keep the money, he would drag the city and
his brother into court if necessary.

"I'm not going to give up my business," Milton Street told reporters. "I'm
not willing to close down and go home. There's no impropriety here... . If
some people decided it doesn't look right, that's their problem."

Those people include Mayor Street, who called a news conference yesterday to
say that he still thinks the deal, disclosed June 6, looks too much like
nepotism. The mayor said he asked officials at the airport to review the
contract and void it "within the limits of the law." If it means an eventual
court fight, so be it, the mayor said.

"It's unfortunate that we are likely to go down this path, but it looks like
there is no alternative," Mayor Street said. "My brother is an independent
person. No one controls him, and I respect that. But I have a responsibility
to maintain the integrity of the government."

At issue is a subcontract that Milton Street's new Notlim Service Management
Co. received to maintain and repair baggage-conveyor systems,
passenger-loading bridges that connect terminals to planes, and airport
buses. The private firm that formerly did the work, Philadelphia Airport
Services, contracted with Notlim and transferred its employees to the new
company.

Airport officials said that Philadelphia Airport Services subcontracted the
work to Notlim - Milton spelled backward - to increase the share of
minority-owned firms at the airport. Milton Street had no experience in the
field, although Philadelphia Airport Services hired him as a consultant when
it won a $13.6 million contract for overall airport maintenance in 2001.

Milton Street's new company is scheduled to receive about $1.2 million a
year for its subcontract to maintain the baggage and other systems. But
according to the deal, Philadelphia Airport Services would retain
"administration and liability" for the work.

When the deal came to light this month, Mayor Street asked his brother to
withdraw because, he said, "it has the potential to be looked at as a kind
of insider deal." Milton Street agreed to withdraw.

But then Milton Street changed his mind. Yesterday, he cited the
"substantial" amounts of money he had spent to get his business started,
including lining up insurance carriers.

"Did it look right when [Mayor] Frank Rizzo appointed his brother fire
chief? Did it look right when John F. Kennedy made his brother the United
States attorney general?" Milton Street said. "I mean, come on. I'm entitled
to do work in the marketplace. I had no unfair advantage."

Milton Street - who has been a state senator, a food-cart vendor and a
patronage employee in Traffic Court - has put his brother on the political
hot seat. It is reminiscent of how Billy Carter embarrassed President Jimmy
Carter in the 1970s and how President Bill Clinton was forced to deal with
Roger Clinton's struggles a decade ago.

Milton Street has been in legal scrapes with the city before. He had overdue
licensing and storage fees to the Penn's Landing Corp. for a food-vending
business. News reports in 2001 pegged that liability at $85,000.

Court records also show that the city Revenue Department filed a lien
against Milton Street last year for $8,878 in unpaid business taxes from
1997 through 2001, as well as for failing to file tax returns for a decade.

Republican candidate Sam Katz has sought to make an issue of "cronyism and
cynicism" in City Hall, and yesterday he said that Milton Street's deal
"stinks."

Katz said the arrangement abused the city's goals for fostering minority
businesses.

"That's cynical right there," Katz said. "That's not what the minority
business enterprise system is designed to do. It's not to create fictitious
companies, or shift employees and create income for the brother of the
mayor."

Mayor Street also called the arrangement "suspect," suggesting that it was a
roundabout way for Philadelphia Airport Services to meet minority hiring
goals.

"We are clearly for minority contractors being involved, but this is
different," he said.

Attached Photo:

"There's no impropriety here," T. Milton Street Sr. said of the $1.2 million
contract.

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