Street will win Philadelphia mayor race... Clinton was in a the city few days ago to support street and associate the fbi bug in his office with Washington republicans trying to get Street out of office.
Latest article doesn't mention Street brother who a year or so got a million dollar contract for cleaning maintenance of airport floors , rest rooms without any experience or company..
Airport contracts a family matter
The wife of Ronald A. White - an influential lawyer and a figure in the FBI's City Hall investigation - is the part-owner of five airport bars.
By Marcia Gelbart, Mark Fazlollah and Joseph Tanfani
Inquirer Staff Writers
In five bars at the airport, a share of the take goes to the wife of a man at the center of the FBI's City Hall corruption investigation.
An Inquirer review of state records shows that five of the 16 bars at Philadelphia International Airport are partly owned by the wife of Ronald A. White, the politically influential lawyer whose role in city contracts at the airport and elsewhere is under federal scrutiny.
As part of their wide-ranging corruption probe, FBI agents have sought financial records of a company called Redbug Inc. It is owned by White's wife, physician Aruby Odom-White, and in the last two years it has become part owner of the five bars, the review of state records shows.
Shares of food and gift concessions at the airport, which is run by the city, have previously gone to White's son and to the treasurer of White's political fund, city records show.
Aruby Odom-White's interest in the bars - where a draft beer can cost you $7 to $10 - is one more way that the Whites stand to make money from the airport and the city that runs it. City Hall has paid Ronald White $150 an hour to serve as its lawyer on airport land issues; in all, his firm has earned more than $1.6 million from various city agencies.
White has said he did nothing improper. Efforts to interview his wife for this article were unsuccessful.
People who do business with the airport say White has had broad, if unofficial, influence over its awarding of food, liquor, and other concession contracts. Former airport chief Alfred Testa, who was fired by Mayor Street, says a top aide to then-Mayor Ed Rendell told him that White "gets you all your concessionaires."
The FBI's "pay-to-play" probe, which came to light Oct. 7 when police found a bug in Street's office, focuses on whether city contracts were traded for campaign money or anything else.
White, 54, who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Street's campaigns and received a steady flow of legal work from City Hall, is a key figure in the probe. FBI agents searched his Center City law firm on Oct. 16 and seized 59 boxes of documents.
Federal prosecutors also have subpoenaed records from a firm the city pays to handle the awarding of airport food, drink and gift concessions.
Four current and former city officials, all of whom had oversight of the airport, said they were surprised when Inquirer reporters told them last week of White's personal ties to airport bars, which are considered a lucrative business. One official, who asked not to be identified, used the word "stunned."
Another, City Controller Jonathan A. Saidel, said that he had long been concerned about "favoritism" at the airport and that his auditors would investigate. "I'm going to expand our audit," Saidel said Friday. "I'm looking for the interrelations between different entities."
Odom-White is a surgeon who is also chair of a youth charity that White founded. Ronald White's attorney, criminal defense lawyer Nino V. Tinari, said White has done nothing wrong and has not been told he is a target of the federal probe.
"I don't care what the government speculation may be, they will not see any connective link between Ron White and the mayor" regarding city contracts, Tinari said Friday. "They came after bear, but they'll be lucky if they get even a rabbit."
Tinari said he knew little about White's role at the airport and nothing about the role of White's wife in airport liquor franchises.
Odom-White is not the only politically connected person to share in airport bar ownership.
The wife and two daughters of former State Sen. Frank Salvatore, who once shaped state liquor policy, also own a piece of the bars, Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board records show.
So does the widow of a late South Philadelphia power broker, State Sen. Henry J. "Buddy" Cianfrani.
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The airport's concessions - bars, restaurants, pretzel carts, gift shops - operate under the umbrella of a nationally established management company, MarketPlace/Redwood. Since 1994, this firm - whose executives are major donors to Street campaigns, and whose records were subpoenaed last month by federal investigators - determines who gets an airport lease and who doesn't.
Under MarketPlace's umbrella, longtime Philadelphia bar and restaurant operator Eric Blatstein is now the dominant player in the airport's food and liquor sales. Of 16 liquor outlets there, his companies run nine - under names such as Jet Rock, Cibo, Sky Asian Bistro, and Philadrink. Five of the nine include Odom-White's Redbug as a partner.
With Odom-White and the Salvatores as his partners, Blatstein landed four more prime bar-restaurant spots this year under MarketPlace - at New York's LaGuardia Airport.
Barbara Grant, a spokeswoman for Mayor Street, said she didn't know whether the mayor knew of White's wife's airport businesses.
While the administration weighs in on airport contracts, MarketPlace/Redwood chooses its own concessionaires, Grant said. "We hired them to do this operation, and we let them do it," she said.
According to records, White has billed the city this year for about $36,000 in airport legal work, mostly for land condemnations related to the expansion of the employee parking lot.
He has also done legal work for Redwood Advisory, one of the partners in the MarketPlace/Redwood contract.
And White's wife was not the only one with ties to him who got business under the Marketplace umbrella.
Algernon Hopkins, a treasurer for one of White's two political action committees, has pretzel concessions. In an interview last month, he defended White as a skilled lawyer but would not discuss what role, if any, White had played in his getting that business.
"I have a lifelong relationship with Mr. White. He's from the same community I came from," Hopkins said. "There's no partnership here."
In addition to his son and his PAC treasurer, White's sister had an airport hot dog concession at one time under Redwood.
The airport's former boss contends that those connections were no fluke.
Soon after he came to work as Philadelphia's airport director in 1999, Testa - who now runs Harrisburg's airport - said he was told to go to White before deciding who would get the airport's coveted concession slots.
Testa, who unsuccessfully sued the city after Street fired him, said he took that seriously: The word came from Greg Rost, top aide to his boss at the time, then-Mayor Rendell.
"Ron White was in Greg's office," Testa recalled, "and Ron White said to me, 'I'm the guy who gets you all your concessionaires.' And I said, 'Well, I get my own.'
"And Greg Rost said, 'No, he gets you all your concessionaires.' "
How did Testa interpret that?
"From the chief of staff? As an order."
Rost, now a Temple University administrator, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Told on Friday about Odom-White's share of the bars, Testa laughed. "Doesn't surprise me one bit," he said. "There's a little piece for everybody."
Testa has since talked to the FBI about what he believed was corruption in airport work. He declines to say whether White's name came up in those conversations.
David L. Cohen, who preceded Rost as Rendell's chief of staff, said White was just one of many people looking for city business who got a "polite" hearing but no favors from the Rendell administration.
"When Ed Rendell was mayor, the role that Ron White played when he was representing clients that wanted to do business with the city was to facilitate introductions between his clients and the people who would be making decisions as to whether to award them the business. And that is what he did," Cohen said. "I don't even remember him bringing me anyone on the airport."
City Commerce Director James Cuorato, who oversees the airport, said that he, too, was not aware of Odom-White's role in bar ownership there, and he declined further comment.
The airport's store and restaurant operators, such as Blatstein, pay a guarantee plus a percentage of revenues to MarketPlace/Redwood, which keeps a share and turns over the rest to the airport.
The business of selling food and liquor is the biggest cash cow of the concessions, generating $45.7 million in gross sales last year.
Marketplace/Redwood's executives and vendors have donated $56,000 to Street, almost all of it since getting the contract. Redwood executive Ricardo Dunston and two of his employees gave a total of $5,000 to a Ron White PAC in 2000. Blatstein has given at least $25,000 to Street since 1999, according to records.
"We've made a conscious decision as a local company to participate in the political process," Dunston told the Inquirer last year, adding that the donations weren't related to the airport contract.
Blatstein, who could not be reached to comment for this story, has run Delaware Avenue clubs such as Maui, Philly Rock Café, and Engine 46 Steak House. He has been controversial, trailing a string of bankruptcy cases and unhappy business partners.
In the airport, he's been doing bar business since at least 1996.
He began partnerships with Odom-White in 2001. Members of the Salvatore family had come aboard a few years earlier, when then-Sen. Salvatore was still a force in Harrisburg.
"My husband handles everything," Gloria Salvatore said. The former senator declined comment except to confirm his family's role in the bar partnerships. He added: "Neither my wife nor any other family member is involved" in managing the restaurant, saying that role was Blatstein's.
Blatstein has two other partners in one airport venture. One is Laura V. Foreman, Cianfrani's widow, who fell in love with Cianfrani when he was a state senator and she was chief Inquirer political reporter in the 1970s. She left the paper before her relationship was disclosed.
The other Blatstein partner is Renee Enterprises, which lists its corporate address as White's law office. Its president, Janice Renee Knight, has ties to White: He is former owner of a printing business she now owns, RPC Unlimited Inc. RPC handles printing for airport construction, for city bond issues, and for the Whites' charity. White sold her the Cherry Hill house she lives in, and she gave $5,000 to his PAC in 2001.
In a 1999 court deposition, Blatstein said he and his wife also borrowed $700,000 from investors to start an airport bar-restaurant, the Jet Rock Bar & Grill. Foreman and Salvatore put up money, too, he said.
Asked in the deposition about Foreman, Blatstein said, "She came forward and wanted to invest... . She's a friend with Gloria Salvatore."
As for Renee Enterprises: "I was putting together a company looking for a minority partner to meet the goals of the airport in order to open up another location," Blatstein said.
In an interview last week, Foreman said she remains a limited partner in the business, but added, "I cannot enlighten you on any of this." Janice Knight declined comment.
White's son, Ron Ali White, 26, also was an airport entrepreneur for a time, with two carts selling popcorn and toys. The younger White, in an interview Friday, said he gave that up to start a hip-hop music company.
His first album, MamaDrama, tells his life story, he said, and one of his rap lyrics is about the airport - though he wouldn't give out the title.
"You'll have to buy it," he said.
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Contact staff writer Marcia Gelbart at 215-854-2338 or mgelbart@phillynews.com. Staff writers Cynthia Burton, Mario Cattabiani, Nathan Gorenstein, Maureen Graham, Linda Harris, Maria Panaritis, John Sullivan and Tom Turcol contributed to this article. |
