in Houston, Texas

Metro CEO Frank J. Wilson has spent more than $3 million in five years as head of the transit agency on contracts that were not presented publicly for competitive bids, a review of contract documents shows.

Using these sole-source contracts, the transit agency may disregard rules that would ordinarily require using small or minority-owned businesses for a portion of the work. Metro also need not seek competing, and perhaps less costly, bids under such agreements.

Many of those contracts, issued since 2004, did not require review by the transit agency's board of directors, and a number of them were extended multiple times.

Only contracts that exceed $100,000 must be approved by the agency's board. Most of the sole-source contracts were at or slightly below that figure.

"When doling out 100-grand contracts, there ought to be a bidding process or review process of a contract that size," said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, an Austin-based liberal advocacy group that tracks the influence of money on state officials.

Metro uses sole-source contracts, which the agency refers to as personal contracts, to avoid the cost of paying employee benefits to people it doesn't need long-term, a Metro spokeswoman said by e-mail.

The majority of the sole-source contracts were spent on consultants who advised the agency on its light-rail project, called Metro Solutions, now in its second phase. When complete, the project will extend 30 miles of light rail throughout Houston along five routes.

The sole-source contracts are like the one extended to light-rail consultant Clyde H. Garrison Jr., a former colleague of Wilson. Garrison stands to make more than $500,000 for his work on the multi-billion-dollar project.

Garrison's contract led Texas Watchdog to request records pertaining to other sole-source contractors during Wilson's tenure. In response, Metro produced dozens of contract files.

Wilson, through a spokeswoman, declined an interview request for this article.

Instead, Raequel Roberts, an agency spokeswoman, issued this statement:

"The material you asked for and the material we sent you show that the $3 million you refer to is a mere 0.6 percent of our management labor costs ($472.7 million) over that time frame."

Roberts described what Metro sees as the advantages of not using competitive contracts.

"1. These people have special skill sets needed to complete METRO projects.

2. These are people we don’t need for the long haul.

3. This eliminates the need to hire and lay off people – something METRO doesn’t like doing.

4. We only pay them for the hours they work, so while they may work intensely for several weeks, they may not be here for several weeks depending on the status of the project.

5. We don’t need to pay for their pension, their medical care (their family’s medical care) and other benefits, which typically adds 37 to 40 percent to an employee’s salary. This is, in short, a less expensive way to employ experts to complete short-term projects."

When asked whether Metro could get the same benefits through a competitive bid process, Roberts said, "As we said in the points, these people have special skill sets."

Bill King, a Metro observer and frequent critic of the agency, questioned the spending.

"The thing that concerns me about these contracts is they come at a time when Metro's raising rates on working families," King said. Metro recently approved a 5-cent fare increase on the heels of last year's 25-cent hike.

"Is it possible to cut some of these consultants and give working families a break?"

Continued on ...

Page 2: No-bid contracts issued for range of services

Homepage photo of a calculator by flickr user cw3283, used via a Creative Commons license.