"Philadelphia airport and the mayor's tradition of not knowing"

Thursday, November 30, 2006

The mayor's tradition of not knowing
By Dave Davies
The Philadelphia (PA) Daily News


I'M BEGINNING to wonder if Mayor Street's office is actually a sealed,
soundproof chamber. Or if he rides around in his van with earplugs in and
eyeshades on.

I mean, consider what he's managed not to know:

He didn't know anything about the stomach-turning corruption his friend and
fundraiser Ron White and city Treasurer Corey Kemp were engaged in, though
it included pressuring city vendors for contributions to Street's own
campaign.

And he didn't know his friend and contributor Len Ross was using his
chairmanship of a Penn's Landing panel to extract contributions for Street's
re-election campaign.

And he somehow didn't know his brother Milton was hanging around the airport
for three years, getting paid $30,000 a month - let that figure roll around
your head for a minute - by a company whose only business was a fat city
contract.

"Maybe when I see more information on this, I'll see something that maybe I
could have done something about," Street said when commenting on Milton's
indictment Tuesday. "I don't monitor his business. I don't do his tax
returns. I do not represent him legally. I just don't know much about it."

How much should he have known?

Let's go over the facts.

Milton was issued an airport security badge in February 2002 at the request
of Philadelphia Airport Services, a company holding a $13 million-a-year
maintenance contract, and Milton was seen regularly at the airport.

Presumably nobody at the airport reported this to the Mayor's Office - or if
they did, it didn't matter.

But you'd think it might have rung a bell with someone, because the year
before Milton had actively lobbied city officials for the contract on PAS'
behalf, enlisting the help of a Mayor's Office employee to ask for
information on the bidding process. A deputy procurement commissioner said
the questions made her "uncomfortable."

So here's a business with a multimillion-dollar contract to be renewed or
canceled every fall at the option of the city, and has the mayor's brother
on the payroll for $30,000 a month.

We don't know what conversations Milton had with airport director Charlie
Isdell or others there, because they don't talk to reporters about Milton,
or much else.

But even if the government is as honest as Mayor Street would have us
believe, PAS was presumably under the mistaken impression that it would help
to slip $360,000 a year to the mayor's brother.

The city renewed PAS' contract in the fall of 2002, and Milton kept getting
paid. But his presence at the airport exploded into public view in June
2003, when both newspapers reported Milton was in line for a $1.1 million
airport contract maintaining baggage conveyors.

I wonder again, did nobody at the airport think to tell the Mayor's Office
they'd approved Milton's company for this lucrative and highly technical
work - in an election year, no less?

We don't know. We know that Mayor Street then scotched the contract, saying
it could be seen as "a kind of insiders' deal."

But while it appeared the mayor had done the right thing and cut Milton out
of the action, that wasn't what was happening at all.

The $30,000-a-month payments to Milton, which weren't public at the time,
continued. Milton kept his airport security badge for another year and a
half and was quite visible at the airport. And PAS got its contract renewed
again.

Again, after the public spectacle of June 2003, nobody at the airport
thought to tell the mayor that his brother was still very much around? Or
did he have his earmuffs on?

I'll buy Mayor Street's argument that he doesn't do Milton's taxes and can't
control his brother. Nobody can.

But what the mayor could do was to make it clear throughout the government
that if Milton shows up anyplace, the Mayor's Office is to be promptly
informed.

And more important, everybody is to be told that Milton's clients get no
special treatment at all, period.

But if he'd done that, when Milton was indicted, it wouldn't be so easy to
say, "I just don't know much about it."

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