LAX concession circus (cont'd)

Greg Nelson, who was chief of staff to former City Councilman Joel Wachs, astutely sums up the city's dysfunctional contracting system on City Watch:

City staff designs bid documents and evaluates them after they are returned. A team gives scores to each qualified bidder and makes recommendations. Cost or revenue generated for the city, ability to perform the work, delivery times, and quality of the product are some of the factors. From my experience, it's a high-quality and objective process. But after every evaluation, there is usually one winner and a bunch of losers. Then politics rears its ugly head. The losers hire lobbyists to demean the winner, and sometimes even the staff, and the winner hires lobbyists to fend off the attacks.

With regard to the mess over LAX concessions, I've taken quite a few shots at the lobbyists working for HMS Host, the losing bidder that's created a ruckus over the process by which the airport contract was being considered. But as the LAT reports, the winning bidder, SSP America, has its own firepower: Richard Alatorre and Mike Roos. Ron Kaye sizes up the pair:

While the public gets two minutes of public comment and sees their leaders from a distance at various events and occasional office hours, Alatorre and Roos can stride past the security guard outside the mayor's office with no more than a nod of the head and sit down with Council members in their offices or buy them expensive meals any time they want. For high-powered lobbyists like them, City Hall could not be more open and transparent and easy to manipulate. That's why they are paid the big bucks.