Reports: Contracts went to friend

Reports: Contracts went to friend

Text messages show the mayor’s office provided the friend with sensitive information.

DETROIT (AP) — Companies headed by a longtime friend of embattled Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s won millions of dollars in contracts while the friend secretly consulted with the mayor’s chief of staff, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The Detroit Free Press said records and text messages it obtained indicated that Bobby Ferguson and companies he partnered with have collected at least $45 million in city contracts.

The text messages from 2002 and 2003 show that then-chief of staff Christine Beatty provided Ferguson with bid strategies and sensitive information on potential projects. The mayor was directly involved in at least one discussion about Ferguson’s bid strategy, the Free Press reported.

Ferguson, the city and a lawyer for Beatty all denied wrongdoing in the handling of contracts.

A prosecutor has been investigating whether Kilpatrick and Beatty lied under oath about having an affair during a trial in a whistle-blower lawsuit.

Ferguson Enterprises Inc. companies generally have received good reviews for their work and have been among the lowest bidders on major city projects. But text messages from Beatty’s city-issued pager show Ferguson directly and repeatedly communicated with her about pending bids, giving him access that may not have been available to others seeking city contracts, the newspaper said.

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, Ferguson Enterprises said it obtained its work through public bids in which “it was the lowest and most qualified bidder.”

The company said it “objects to any suggestion to the contrary and to any attempt to impugn its integrity or the integrity of its principals.”

In a statement given to the AP on Sunday by the mayor’s office, Waymon Guillebeaux, Detroit Economic Growth Corp. vice president of project management, said the city’s contract decisions are based purely upon economics and qualifications. Guillebeaux’s responsibilities include such decisions; his agency is the city’s public-private development arm.

A lawyer for Beatty, Jeffrey Morganroth, said Sunday that his client spoke with other contractors in person or by phone. He said the bid process was “entirely impartial and unbiased.”

The Free Press didn’t explain exactly how it obtained the messages, but it said it cross-referenced the messages with the mayor’s private calendar and credit card records to verify events in some of the notes.

Beatty resigned last month.