CHICAGO — The Chicago Tribune reports that companies affiliated with a politically connected consultant won millions of dollars of business from Metra even though they didn’t always submit the lowest bids for the work, according to documents under scrutiny by federal prosecutors.
Since 1990, the commuter rail agency has awarded at least $2.9 million in business to firms affiliated with Roger Stanley, a former legislator who has been implicated in a sweeping probe of Gov. George Ryan’s campaign operations. Stanley’s contracts were approved by Metra’s board members, including Donald Udstuen, Stanley’s political mentor and a top official of the state’s clout-heavy physician lobby.
Metra officials said Stanley’s firms were chosen through a competitive process and that such professional-services contracts aren’t required to go to the lowest bidder.
But documents and interviews show that Metra paid tens of thousands of dollars more to Stanley’s firms in at least two instances in which it could have chosen lower bidders. In many cases it wasn’t possible to evaluate the bids and qualifications of Stanley’s competitors because Metra officials said they cannot locate the rival bids.
For example, Stanley’s Midwest CompuService of Bridgeview won a contract to do a ridership count for Metra in 1993 even though its bid–$305,148–was higher than two other proposals. When Metra requested bids for three subsequent counts–the last in 1999–Midwest CompuService was the only bidder for work totaling $1.1 million.
“It is all spoken for or decided for and we don’t have a chance,” said Ashref Hashim, whose Chicago-based Blackstone Group put in the low bid of $267,922 on the 1993 work. Hashim said he stopped bidding after that year because “we got kind of discouraged.”
Again in 1996, Midwest CompuService won a $110,000 contract to survey Metra passengers, beating out three competitors including Market Shares of Mt. Prospect, which bid $61,020. Nick Panagakis of Market Shares (which does political polling for the Tribune) said Metra officials had questions about the subcontractor he picked to satisfy set-aside requirements for minority- and women-owned firms.
Midwest CompuService’s subcontractor was Harstan Enterprises, owned by Stanley’s wife, Elizabeth.
Stanley’s businesses have attracted attention since the federal indictment this month of Ryan’s campaign fund and two of his top campaign aides.
Though Stanley isn’t listed by name and has not been charged with wrongdoing, the indictment refers to him as “Vendor A” and states that he got a no-show state job that boosted his pension and obtained a state contract under the name of another company to disguise his involvement in the deal.
In exchange, Stanley allegedly paid state workers, who were still on the state payroll, to do campaign work for candidates supported by Ryan. He also paid for vacations for Ryan aide Scott Fawell, including paying for prostitutes in Costa Rica, according to the indictment.
Federal authorities subpoenaed all records from Metra related to Stanley.
Stanley’s attorney declined to comment. Udstuen could not be reached for comment.
Metra spokesman Frank Malone praised the work done by Stanley’s companies. If they were not the low bidder, they won the jobs for other reasons like experience, he said.
Other politically connected individuals involved in Midwest CompuService’s contracts at Metra included Orland Township Republican committeeman John Doria, a former aide to Fawell; and Doria’s brother Lawrence, president of a security firm that Metra paid $1.8 million in 1999.
Metra also awarded about $20,000 in no-bid consulting contracts in the early 1990s to American Management Resources of Morton Grove, owned by Alan Drazek, a vice president of Midwest CompuService. An attorney for Drazek, a former state official now on the Chicago Transit Authority board, declined to comment.
The federal indictment refers to American Management Resources as “Company A” and alleges that it paid Fawell and two others $30,000 for work on the 1996 presidential primary campaign of U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas). Federal campaign records show that American Management Resources was paid at least $36,000 by the Gramm campaign during that period.
The only Stanley firm currently working for Metra is Universal Statistical, known as Unistat. Records and interviews show that Unistat could earn $1 million by the end of this year on a contract that began in 1997 as a $30,200 marketing program.
After submitting the 1997 proposal, Unistat was awarded a $375,000, three-year contract with two one-year extensions, for a total of about $1 million. The contract covers production of brochures on Metra services, including direct mailings to new Chicago-area residents.
Contract documents do not explain how the $30,200 proposal grew into the bigger contract. They also suggest that Unistat has done more extensive work for Metra, dating to 1990, but Malone said he had no information about such work.