Contract to College With Ties to Ridge Draws Fire
March 19, 2005
Democrats in Congress are questioning a small no-bid contract that the Department of Homeland Security recently awarded to a college in Erie, Pa.
Written by Eric Lipton, The New York Times
Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge
WASHINGTON, March 18 - Democrats in Congress are questioning a small no-bid contract that the Department of Homeland Security recently awarded to a college in Erie, Pa., the hometown of Tom Ridge, the former department secretary.
The contract, with Mercyhurst College, has a maximum value of $96,000, a tiny sum for a department that expects to buy $11 billion in goods and services this fiscal year.
But Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said Friday that the arrangement "certainly raises eyebrows," given Mr. Ridge's longstanding ties with Mercyhurst.
The chairwoman of the college's trustees, Marlene Mosco, and her husband are longtime friends of Mr. Ridge, and a profile published by Mercyhurst describes her as co-chairwoman of his state finance committee when he ran for Pennsylvania governor, the post he held before coming to Washington.
Mercyhurst is also constructing a new academic building named for Mr. Ridge and his wife, Michele, because he supported state financing for it as governor.
"The department cannot play patronage games when America's security is in question," Mr. Thompson said in a statement accompanying a letter about the matter that he sent Friday to Michael Chertoff, the department's new secretary.
Mr. Ridge could not be reached for comment Friday despite queries to the department and his former aide there, and Mrs. Mosco did not respond to a message left at her home.
But Michelle Petrovich, a department spokeswoman, and Gennifer Biggs, director of public relations at Mercyhurst, both said in interviews that Mr. Ridge's relationship with the college and with Mrs. Mosco had not influenced the decision to award the contract there.
"I think it is absurd," Ms. Biggs said. "Secretary Ridge had far more important decisions to make than to micromanage the department to the point that he had a hand in approving $96,000 contracts."
The contract was first reported this month on the Web site of Congressional Quarterly. It provides for Mercyhurst, which has experience in intelligence training, to offer classes to entry-level analysts on how to investigate terrorist threats. Mr. Ridge stepped down as homeland security secretary on Feb. 1, a month before the contract was formally awarded, but after the department had begun to search for an institution that could provide the training.
"They won it on merit," Ms. Petrovich said of Mercyhurst.
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