STARTING OVER ON BIDDING FOR A BILLION-DOLLAR IAH TERMINAL EXPANSION 
Mayor Turner announced this week that bidding will start over for the first few contracts for a $1.5-billion expansion to United’s international Terminal D at IAH. Mike Morris of the Houston Chronicle reports that both the former and current city controllers have refused to certify the contracts, citing possible irregularities in the procurement process. Current controller Chris Brown noted that some proposed vendor prices did not match the funding numbers submitted for approval by the council; a particular contract for which the winning bidder was initially ranked lowest in the first round of scoring caught his eye as well. Former controller Ron Green previously expressed concern over the same contract, “on which Marsh USA, which employs Councilman Dave Martin, was the winning bidder, and state Rep. Borris Miles’ insurance agency was included as a minority subcontractor. Martin has said he had no contact with the Marsh employees involved in the bidding.” [Houston Chronicle] Rendering of planned Terminal D replacement: Houston Airport System
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Oh Baby!!! Look at the size of that honey pot!!!!!!
If we had real journalism in Houston, this would be all over the news and would spark public outrage at the elected officials involved. Instead, a few years from now we’ll get a slideshow showing the Top 10 places to eat inside the new terminal. (Pointing at you, Chron).
Superdave, you are right, but when was the last time you paid to read Chron? Been many years for me….
@ Toby
Agreed. He came in saying he would fix the pension mess, these raggedy-ass streets/roads, and shore-up the police department. That got him elected and lasted about 30 days. Instead of doing that, kissing babies, and attending punch-and-cookie meetings like a good mayor, he’s starting sh!t. Like a typical lying liberal, he’s re-distributing the $1.5B in wealth to benefit his campaign contributors that got him elected in kick-back payoffs that will keep him, the ambitious new controller, and all who play along in power for the next 8 years. The problem for Houstonians (beyond the outright stench of the matter) is that phucking with the project now may cause it to blow-up in their faces and cause the great much needed project to be delayed or even scrapped. He needs to leave well enough alone, focus on pension/streets/police/rail mass transit, and find another cookie-jar to raid. The mask is off/honey-moon is over…he’ll be worse than Parker.
Southwest paid for a new terminal at Hobby and United issued statements to the effect that IAH was going to suffer because SW had a couple planes flying to Mexico, IAH would shrink, other carriers would cancel flights and essentially, the big airport would go away as an economic driver. So why is the COH pouring money into a facility that the prime tenant says is doomed to failure? Graft and corruption are a hallmark of COH government, but this seems outrageous even for Houston.
The Houston Chronicle is what happened when Seventeen Magazine and Better Homes and Gardens had a baby, dumped it in the ghetto and let it drop out of school at the age of 8 to become a newspaper. By journalistic standards it’s about as inquisitive as mom and dad where in their formative years as publications and about as worthless as a phone book in the 21st century.
You’re right SuperDave. Even good ‘ole Wayne Dolcefino might have done a story on this back in his day. Now all we get are top 10 lists and tv news stories of the latest gas station robbery.
TXT, I think you’re looking at the wrong administration to your corruption angle. If you read the whole story, you’ll see this reflects badly on Mayor Parker and her cronies.
@ ShadyHeightster
I hear you, Parker started it with her cronies…now the new mayor will re-do it to benefit him and his cronies, when he needs to leave it alone and go forward…not backwards. He has enough to do than to go back rewriting done deals.
Toby if you don’t get Comment of the Day for that I’m going to cry.
@TXT So you’re saying that the irregularities in the contract process should just be ignored and the contracts approved against the controllers protest? I mean seriously you’re shilling through the teeth here for United, one of the biggest ongoing self-destructions in airline history. The fact that they can’t even see good returns on their stock when fuel contract prices have completely collapsed says a lot about them. So yeah, if we’re going to throw pearls before those swine let’s just make sure we don’t end up choking on them in the process.