Atlanta rigged airport contract, lawyer contends

By Bill Rankin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The city of Atlanta awarded a lucrative airport advertising contract to a political insider by rigging it from the get-go, a lawyer told the federal appeals court in Atlanta on Wednesday.

By doing this, city officials discriminated against Corey Airport Services, which lost out on the contract in 2002, Corey’s lawyer, Mike Bowers, said.

The airport’s advertising concession was awarded to Clear Channel Airports of Georgia and its minority partner, Barbara Fouch. Clear Channel had held the advertising contract since 1980.

Bowers asked the three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a federal judge’s ruling allowing Corey’s lawsuit to go to trial. Corey filed suit in 2004 against five city employees, including the airport’s general manager, Ben DeCosta; concession manager Kyle Mastin; and Hubert Owens of the office of contract compliance.

The city’s request for proposals was rigged to heavily favor the incumbent over all competitors, Bowers said. The city then manipulated the contract so Clear Channel could win it and then allowed DeCosta to conduct improper negotiations with the company after it was found to be the winning bidder, Bowers said. Moreover, the lawyer said, if city officials had investigated Fouch, a close friend of late Mayor Maynard Jackson’s, they would have found she maintained no office space or business equipment.

Corey, owned by Billy Corey, seeks unspecified money damages and the airport’s advertising concession.

“Some of the evidence in this case is very disturbing, to say the least,” Judge Stanley Birch said. “It smells to the average citizen, I suspect.”

“This thing was rigged from Day One,” Bowers replied. “There’s no question it smells to the high heavens.”

Chris Riley, a lawyer representing the city officials, said the contract was properly awarded to Clear Channel. At that time, he noted, Clear Channel held advertising contracts at eight of the nation’s 10 largest airports.

Riley also argued that Corey’s lawsuit should be barred by qualified immunity. This is a legal doctrine that requires government officials to have been put on notice — typically through a prior court ruling — that their alleged conduct violated clearly established constitutional law.

Corey contends the city’s conduct violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, in that the city discriminated against Corey by awarding the contract to a political insider at the expense of a political outsider.

Riley told the judges that equal protection cases most often involve allegations of discrimination based on race, gender and national origin — not politics.

There is no prior court ruling that says the conduct alleged in Corey’s case is a constitutional violation, Riley argued.

Riley found a sympathetic ear in Judge J.L. Edmondson. Qualified immunity presents “a problem” for Corey’s lawsuit, he said.

Edmondson also expressed concern that a ruling in Corey’s favor would open the courthouse door to anyone who brings “at least a colorable equal protection claim.” This could make life “awfully hard” for government officials, such as zoning inspectors, who may think any decision they make will spark a federal civil rights lawsuit, Edmondson said.