Dallas City Politics

[92bDad]

Should the Dallas City Council be extending decades-long, multi-million-dollar contracts to insiders without a competitive bidding process?



We're thinking NOT.



Story via The Dallas Morning News:

On Wednesday, the Dallas City Council is poised to extend – without competitive bids and with little public debate – multimillion-dollar, 12-year contracts to companies tied to state Rep. Helen Giddings and to Gilbert Aranza, a longtime political donor to several sitting City Council members.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...ons.da975.html



Together, Rep. Giddings and Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson own FORTY PERCENT of concessions tenant Hudson Retail.



More here:

Last year, Love Field fliers were bored and hungry to the tune of more than $20 million in gross sales. In fact, Love Field concessions represent the city's largest vendor contract. Yet several City Council members don't think they should bother bidding out this deal. They're perfectly content to simply extend the existing contracts – for a whopping 12 years.

Incredibly, this multimillion-dollar, 12-year deal landed on this week's City Council consent agenda, suggesting that Dallas officials were poised to approve the contract Wednesday without the hassle of a public discussion.

This lack of transparency and fiduciary responsibility would be troubling no matter who owned the concessions companies. But complicating this arrangement is the fact that a legislator and a congresswoman have financial interests in one of the ventures.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...1.2ae0b8f.html



To summarize: the Dallas City Council is set to extend 12-year NO-BID CONTRACTS to companies largely owned by local politicians. The city council members assure us that politics has played no role in this decision. If this is true, one concessionaire wasted the thousands of dollars he's given to the members of the city council:

Food and beverage sales, meanwhile, belong to Aranza's Dallas Love Field Joint Venture. Aranza has donated more than $10,000 to the campaigns of sitting council members since 2004 and thousands more over the years to former council members and candidates.

The Dallas City Council is set to vote on this arrangement TOMORROW (Wednesday). The meeting will start at 9:00 am at City Hall, 1500 Marilla Street, Dallas, Texas.

[Underdog]

[92bDad]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Cool!!!

Hey, your Chuck-300 pic is also Cool!!! Sending you some Rep!!!