Ron White: Czar of the airport and all who work there
A very interesting article. I knew that White was a scumbag after his rant concerning "the man" holding african-american men down and only wanting them to "have babies out of wedlock."
Go get 'em Stacey (who is a Temple graduate by the way).
Blatstein should be brought up on federal charges and sent to Rikers Island for pulling this bullshit post 9/11.
Quote:
Posted on Thu, Aug. 26, 2004
Suit: White hurt woman's career
An airport worker claims the powerful lawyer played a role in her demotion.
By George Anastasia
Inquirer Staff Writer
Stacey Robinson says she was just doing her job at Philadelphia International Airport last year when she told a powerful businessman that a security grate at one of his airport restaurants didn't meet post-9/11 security requirements and had to be replaced.
The businessman, Eric J. Blatstein, balked, she said.
And then Blatstein, whose companies control more liquor licenses than anyone else at the airport, took his complaint to a higher authority - lawyer Ronald A. White.
By December, Robinson was no longer acting properties manager. Instead, she was reassigned to a lesser-paying, less-influential job.
In January, she said, the FBI knocked on her door. That's when she says she learned that her career was short-circuited because she had failed to "play the game."
In a civil suit filed in federal court last week, Robinson has provided details about her fall and offered an insider's view of business at Philadelphia International - business that the FBI has been investigating for months in a pay-to-play probe focusing on the awarding of lucrative concessions and the role White has played in designating who gets those contracts.
Robinson contends that she was denied promotion, transferred to a meaningless job, and shunned by her fellow workers and supervisors because she raised questions about the grate at Blatstein's property - a restaurant known as Cibo in the new international terminal.
Robinson says the FBI told her that her job status was undermined by Blatstein and White, who were picked up on wiretaps discussing the situation.
Two agents who visited her in January, she said, told her of a phone conversation in which Blatstein allegedly called White and complained about her.
White replied, "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it," the suit alleges.
Robinson said she believed the conversations were picked up on wiretaps that were part of the FBI's ongoing investigation into the awarding of contracts at the airport.
The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office have declined to comment about ongoing investigations. White, a top fund-raiser for Mayor Street, was indicted in June with former City Treasurer Corey Kemp in an alleged scheme to steer city financial contracts and bond work to White's clients.
White's name has surfaced repeatedly in connection with a separate investigation into the awarding of concessions for stores, shops and restaurants along the various airport terminals.
Blatstein, according to city records, dominates the food and liquor concessions there. Of 16 liquor outlets, his companies run nine. White's wife, Aruby Odom-White, is a partner in five of those, records show.
Robinson has named White, Blatstein, the City of Philadelphia, and her bosses, airport officials Charles Isdell and James Tyrrell, as defendants in the suit, which she filed herself.
When contacted by phone yesterday, Blatstein said he was unaware of the litigation. "I don't want to comment about something I don't know anything about," he said.
Neither White nor his attorney could be reached for comment.
Both Isdell, the director of aviation, and Tyrrell, the deputy director, have testified before a federal grand jury in the airport probe. Calls to their offices were referred to the city Law Department.
City attorney Donald Marino said his office had investigated Robinson's allegations and had determined that they were "unfounded" with regard to Isdell and Tyrrell.
Marino said that he had no knowledge of what, if anything, Blatstein and White said or did and that "we are not privy to [FBI] wiretaps."
He also said the security grate issue was "resolved in a satisfactory manner."
Robinson, 38, of Philadelphia, is a graduate of Temple University who began working at the airport as a college intern in 1997. She was hired as a properties specialist in 1998 after graduating and has worked there ever since.
In 2003, she said in the lawsuit, she was asked to assume the position of acting airport properties manager, a position that, she said, included a raise.
City records show that when she assumed the post in June 2003, her salary was increased to $56,803.
She contended that she "fell out of favor" with Tyrrell, her immediate supervisor, in the fall of 2003 after denying Blatstein a waiver for the security grate he had installed.
She said she was transferred back to a position as properties specialist in December. At that point, records show, her salary dropped to $52,442.
On Jan. 28, she said, two FBI agents knocked on her apartment door in Old City.
Robinson said she was told by the agents that day to "be careful" and that "someone's trying to get rid of you."
In an interview earlier this week, Robinson said she was frightened and asked, "What do you mean by 'get rid of me'? Are you talking about someone tying me up and throwing me into the Delaware River?"
She said she was told that the reference was to her job at the airport and that someone was trying to "get her out of the way" because she "won't play."
In a subsequent three-hour meeting at the office of a lawyer she briefly retained, she said, the FBI agents provided more details, including references to wiretapped conversations in which Blatstein complained to White that "Stacey's out of control."
White, she was told, replied that he would take care of it.
"Ron White doesn't work for the airport," Robinson said during the interview this week. "Who the hell is he to take care of anything at the airport?"
In her lawsuit, Robinson is seeking reinstatement to a permanent position as airport properties manager. She is also asking for reimbursement of the $3,500 she spent to retain a private lawyer after the FBI visit and is seeking unspecified damages and lost pay that resulted from her job change.
She said she filed the suit on her own because she could not afford an attorney. Lawyers for District Council 47 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the municipal white-collar workers' union, helped her draft the document, she said.
But more important than winning the litigation, Robinson said, she wanted to go public with what is happening at the airport.
"There's no competitive pricing," she said. "Every concession is controlled by the same people."
She paused, then added, "I caused a problem. I wouldn't play the game."
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Oh the wonderful Philadelphia Democratic machine keeps churning and churning. It is as if Ron White was trying to become the black Vince Fumo. I hear that Fumo is now threatening to close down Tayoun's medical practice if he lends any assistance to Fumo's challenger in the Fall.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/9498836.htm
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"If you have the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed." -- David Viscott
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08-26-2004, 06:16 PM
