Homegrown small minority business squeezed out to make way for Ehrlich & Steele friend
Today Nashville investigative reporter Brad Schrade of The Tennessean shows how the former Ehrlich-Steele administration's misuse of the minority business program at Baltimore Washington International Airport to benefit a close political ally of Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele is squeezing out a small homegrown minority owned business that has operated two shoe shine stands at Nashville International Airport since 1992.
Mr. Schrade reports that James Druett, who has been shining shoes at Nashville International since 1979, has been notified that his disadvantaged business certification no longer assures him space for two shoe shine stands at the airport because the airport’s new general concessionaire, the national giant, Hudson News, fulfills its federal and state minority participation agreement through a joint venture with a home-based business owned by Michael Steele’s friend, Sandy Roberts.
Mr. Schrade reports that Mr. & Mrs. Druett have continued at the Nashville airport on a month-to-month basis while their appeal is pending before the Federal Aviation Administration.
A Predatory Pattern
The Druetts are not alone. As Meredith Cohn of the Baltimore Sun first reported in May 2007, the owner of a long standing chain of four minority certified stores at BWI has sued the general concessionaire selected by the Ehrlich-Steele administration, claiming that her business was squeezed out to make way for Hudson News and the same friend of Mr. Steele.
Hudson Running Olympic Behind the Scenes
Recently Maryland auditors concluded an 18-month investigation of Olympic News, the formerly on again/off again home-based certified minority wholesale business owned by Mr. Roberts for which the Ehrlich-Steele administration fast tracked minority retail certification even though Mr. Roberts had no prior retail experience, as the Baltimore Sun’s Meredith Cohn reported, and did not prove his status as an ongoing independent business in good standing.
The Maryland Aviation Administration auditors reported that Olympic News was not operating independently; Hudson News managed Olympic’s payroll, employee benefits, computer system, sales and banking records, accounts payable, marketing, inventory, etc., concluding,
“[Hudson] was determined to be providing almost all, if not all of the business services for Olympic to operate, and it was determined that if [Hudson] withdrew its services, [Olympic] would be unable to operate until substitute vendors could be procured and/or appropriate/sufficient staff could be hired to handle the responsibilities that were provided by [Hudson].”
According to the report, the Maryland authorities granted Olympic provisional re-certification after months of negotiations in which Mr. Roberts agreed to start running Olympic independent of Hudson. justdafacts and others eagerly await the state’s first follow-up report.
Steele & Ehrlich Paid Roberts $417,000
Last March, WBAL Baltimore TV’s senior investigative reporter Jayne Miller reported that Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. Steele paid $417,000 in the final weeks of their last campaign to a defunct corporation owned by Mr. Roberts from four different state and federal campaign accounts they controlled. Mr. Roberts never held himself out to be in any campaign services business, and no other candidate or committee ever reported paying Mr. Roberts’s corporation. Federal and state election laws prohibit campaign committees from paying funds to “conduits” or third parties to conceal the true purposes or recipients of expenditures.
It’s time for Mr. Steele and Mr. Ehrlich to come out from under their desks and explain why they paid $417,000 of their donors’ money to Mr. Steele’s friend and what role they played in securing his peculiar contract with Hudson News at BWI and now Nashville International. Mr. Steele and Mr. Ehrlich owe the owners of two long standing and otherwise successful small businesses a full explanation--one in Baltimore and one in Nashville.
Until then, their silence, and their unwillingness to defend themselves, speaks volumes.
- Steve Lebowitz, Annapolis