The Atlanta City Council on Monday decided against a move that could have slowed the changeover to new restaurants and bars at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
In the wake of a finding by the Federal Aviation Administration that there may be problems with the certification of some airport vendors as "disadvantaged business enterprises," three members of the council sponsored a resolution to prompt the city's chief procurement officer to renew the current restaurant and bar contracts at the airport for 90 days.
The goal was to ensure uninterrupted service and to give the city room to digest the potentially damaging revelations about the multimillion-dollar procurement, said Councilwoman Felicia Moore, the resolution's author. Councilman Michael Julian Bond, who supported the resolution, said the extra time would help shield the city from potential legal liability.
But the city's attorneys apparently convinced most members of the council -- including the resolution's third sponsor, Councilwoman Natalyn Archibong -- that the more dangerous path would be to delay. The resolution failed by a 9-2 vote.
"My ears were on my attorney, and that's how I made this decision" to vote against the resolution, Councilwoman Yolanda Adrean said.
The vote came after a 2.5-hour meeting -- including an 80-minute discussion with Mayor Kasim Reed and the city's attorneys in a closed conference room.
Ken Hodges, an attorney for losing concessionaire SSP America, said he was disappointed by the lack of opportunity for public comment.
"They asked for absolutely no input from the public," Hodges said. "It's sad, it's troubling. It shouldn't happen. That's not democracy."
In big rounds of airport contracting, small, female-owned or minority-controlled businesses are supposed to be given chances to compete with larger companies, according to federal rules.
But the FAA documents suggested that several companies that recently won slots at Atlanta's airport should not have been certified as "disadvantaged" at all -- either because their owners were too wealthy or because of missing documents.
Several council members said last week that the city should take up to 90 days to figure out how to deal with the latest controversy to hit a batch of concessions contracts at the world's busiest airport.
Those businesses popped up in numerous winning bids submitted by larger companies, who teamed up with disadvantaged-certified firms to boost their chances of winning lucrative slots at the airport.
That means the changeover of contracts for eateries at the airport can go forward. That changeover was scheduled for Tuesday, May 1, followed by a transition period to make way for new restaurants such as The Varsity, Shane's Rib Shack, Willy's Mexicana Grill and Sweet Georgia's Juke Joint.
The Reed administration pushed back against any delay in moving forward with the airport contracts, which are potentially worth a combined hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the contracts. The contracts typically last a decade.
In this case, Georgia's Department of Transportation certified companies as disadvantaged, with assistance from MARTA.
"We haven't made a mistake," Sonji Jacobs, spokeswoman for Reed, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week. "We did everything we were supposed to do."
The final fallout is not clear, and it may not be limited to restaurant contracts at the airport. The council's transportation committee is set to consider a vending concessions contract with Coca-Cola Refreshments USA Inc., which has a company called Mack II Inc. listed as its disadvantaged business partner.
Mack II Inc. should not have qualified because its top executives exceeded the $750,000 cap on personal net worth, according to the FAA.
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