More competition for airport work

A perennial--and politically connected--consultant at O'HareAirport is getting a one-year contract extension, but soon will facemore competition for the type of lucrative city work it has dominatedfor decades, officials said Monday.

Landrum & Brown, which has reaped tens of millions of dollars inno-bid business in the last decade alone, could see its O'Haredominance and fortunes diminish as the city looks to "diversify" thenumber of companies that qualify for aviation planning work,officials said.

The decision to enlarge the pool of qualified consultants from ahandful to about two dozen, and tap more minority and localcompanies, had nothing to do with one of Mayor Daley's moreembarrassing political moments, city officials said.

That came two years ago when it was publicly disclosed thatmayoral friend Oscar D'Angelo--although he wasn't a registeredlobbyist--might have lobbied city officials on behalf of Landrum &Brown for a contract extension, and plugged two friends of Daley'swife into an O'Hare deal with W.H. Smith gift shops.

Landrum & Brown also has become a lightning rod for critics ofO'Hare runway expansion who claim the consultant has manipulatedflight projections and blunted aircraft noise reports to suit thecity's political will.

"We're doing it to make sure we don't have all of our eggs in onebasket," Chicago Aviation Commissioner Thomas Walker said of thechanges. "We want to make sure where other people are qualified andcompetent to do the work we don't stick with the larger firms justbecause they're doing the work all these years.

"We're certainly going to be doing it differently from whenLandrum & Brown was retained for the current agreement," Walkeradded. Landrum & Brown's current contract started in 1995, withextensions allowed until this year. "I don't think we're squeezingout anybody. We're providing opportunities for large consultants,middle size and small ones."

Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Aviation Department,said airports around the country are altering their landscapes, soit's increasingly important to have an array of qualified plannersthat can be tapped for everything from new runways to securityimprovements.

Saying they were still finalizing terms with some companies, cityofficials refused to release the list of the two dozen companies.

What chunk of O'Hare's planning contracts they--including Landrum& Brown and another leading consultant, Ricondo & Associates--mightget isn't yet known, Walker said. But because Landrum & Brown'sextension is for up to one year, other consultants might be tappedfor jobs in as soon as a couple of months.

Doug Goldberg, vice president at Cincinnati-based Landrum & Brown,said the city's changes are "consistent with what we've expected."

"I think a lot of the work we've done in the past has beencompleted," he said. "It's been successful, it's helped them achievea lot of their objectives, so there's probably less work to be done."

Joe Karaganis, attorney for the anti-expansion Suburban O'HareCommission, said O'Hare contracts historically have gone to"insiders" with ties to the political establishment. "It's been asystem based on kickbacks and cronies," he said. "The question is, .. . [are these changes] real or cosmetic?"