More No Bid Contracts Fall Out
July 24th, 2006
Remember when the Doyle Administration awarded HNTB a no-bid $600,000 contract to create an informational
website for the Marquette Interchange construction project?
The folks at HNTB seem to.
Six officials from an architectural and engineering firm that got Marquette Interchange design and information-management contracts donated a total of $17,684 to the re-election campaign of Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle on June 1, records show.
According to the report filed by the Doyle campaign with the State Elections Board, the $17,684 came from officials of the firm HNTB.
Doyle campaign spokesman Anson Kaye said the donations had “absolutely nothing to do” with contracts the firm has won, which included sharing the job of designing the $810 million new Marquette Interchange and a $685,000 contract in 2002 to design that project’s Web site.
I’ll talk about the continuing controversies this morning at 8:05 on the Early Spin.
Oh, and here is the ‘amazing’ $685,000 website.
July 24th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
I could have done this website at home with Frontpage. These IT Firms, if you let them sucker you into a ton of meetings and concept reviews, cost a lot of $$$$$$$.
July 24th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
HNTB is a political company stretching back to before Craps; they got that contract in 2002, with the Craps administration approving “only” the cost overruns.
They were, however, one of the companies represented at the DOT-hosted Craps barbeque last September.
July 24th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
[…] Revisions/extensions (1:36 pm 7/24) - Brian reminds us that while the original $600,000 contract was indeed approved under the McCallum administration, it was under the Craps administration that gave final approval to the overrun-plagued site. [link] […]
July 25th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
I wonder if Doyle’s campaign spokesman is tired of saying “the donations had absolutely nothing to do with contracts the firm has won”
Perhaps Anson should just make a recording and play it for the media.