The attorneys for the firm that Mayor Ashton Hayward recommended to be awarded the airport food concessions contract has sent City Attorney Jim Messer a letter threatening to challenging any decision to extend the existing lease.
Attorney Dirk Smith of Vernis & Bowling wrote in the letter, dated Feb. 5, “Awarding, extending or any other circuitous efforts subjects the city to substantial liability.”
The News Journal reported earlier this week that Mayor Ashton Hayward had rejected an offer by Varona to extend his lease for a few months while the city completed a new Request for Proposal process. The article does not mention any letter from Vernis & Bowling, which was received via email by Messer at 2:23 pm.
When asked about the timing of the letter, one city councilman told me that he suspected the “seventh floor”, meaning the mayor’s office, had asked OHM for such a letter to give Hayward cover for his decision to reject Varona’s offer.
Read OHMThreat
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The Independent News will submit today a public record request for city emails regarding Varona’s offer to see if the mayor and his advisors played any role in the letter. However, the city public records department will probably not fulfill the request until early March at the soonest.
The paper has requests from Jan. 11, 2014 that have yet to be answered. The city public records department can not even tell the Independent News how many outstanding requests it had as of Dec. 31, 2013.
In July 2013, the State Attorney’s Office issued a report that blistered Hayward’s administration for how it handled public record requests. New software was bought, Jane Bollard hired to run it and city staff spent a day in seminar on public records. The system has not improved. The delays in answering requests have been longer than they were a year ago.
Prior to Hayward’s administration, most requests from the Independent News were answered in no more than three days.
I’m not sure if we have been singled out for “punishment.” I won’t know that answer until the city releases information on its outstanding requests.