Delay at KCI? Council’s bungled contract could slow progress on new airport terminal
The hot mess involving a contract for the Kansas City International Airport terminal project is about to get hotter and messier.
G2 Construction Services, a company owned by a woman named Lisa Garney, has drafted a civil rights complaint for submission to the Federal Aviation Administration, alleging the city violated her civil rights by denying her part of a major paving contract at the airport.
The draft was provided to The Star Editorial Board.
Garney’s draft follows a complaint letter to the FAA from ESCO Construction of Denver, which makes essentially the same claim: The City Council improperly overturned a recommendation from the airport project team and steered the contract to Ideker, a St. Joseph company.
If Garney proceeds with her filing — on Saturday, she would not confirm or deny submitting a complaint — the FAA will have no choice but to poke around. That means a federal investigation into the City Council’s decision on the paving contract could delay the work, or lead to lawsuits, or cost the city a lot of money.
And things were going so smoothly, too.
“The illegal and improper scheme by the City was … to direct the contract to Ideker which resulted in discrimination,” Garney’s draft complaint says. She wants the FAA to deny the city any grants or other funds until the alleged discrimination is fixed.
“The city basically ignored the extensive bidding and evaluation process of the airport project team so that the concrete contract could be steered to Ideker,” Garney said in a statement last week.
ESCO seeks an FAA investigation, too. “From ESCO’s perspective, the City of Kansas City clearly failed to follow its own rules to competitively bid (the project),” its letter says.
The complaints could gum up the terminal project for months. They became inevitable, though, when the City Council clumsily inserted itself into a bid process that is supposed to be insulated from political considerations.
The project team recommended ESCO and G2 for parts of the paving contract in part because the companies’ bid was lower. This summer, under pressure from the Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City and other groups, the council overturned that recommendation and gave the $75 million deal to Ideker.
“Our only interest is to see the most qualified local contractors that provide needed local jobs, get their fair share of work at the airport,” Bridgette Williams of the Heavy Constructors Association said Friday, in a tweeted message.
Ideker is, of course, from St. Joseph. Garney’s firm is from Kansas City.
This council-created mess has exposed the terminal project to unnecessary delays and legal entanglements. The procurement process is supposed to be isolated from politics so that contracts can be decided based on cost, quality of work and inclusion — not pressure tactics.
Other contracts are coming up. Will council members steer those deals only to favored firms? If bidders get that idea, they’ll refuse to participate, and the cost of the project will go up.
The FAA and potentially other federal agencies will have to decide the merits of ESCO’s complaint, as well as Garney’s. The courts could get involved. But the blow-up is an unforced error for the city’s elected leadership, which — for the first time since voters approved the terminal project — allowed politics to play a major role in a decision.
In statement Friday, Mayor Quinton Lucas was, um, noncommittal. “In a conversation this week with one of our leading airline partners, the mayor was proud to discuss the fact that the KCI terminal project continues to proceed on time and on budget,” his office said.
Yeah, well. That on-time, on-budget promise now faces a major legal hiccup, one the City Council and the mayor could have — and should have — avoided.
