In a surprising reversal, D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray has agreed to put a contentious lottery contract on today’s voting agenda.
Gray had resisted pressure to the put the $120 million contract up for a vote, but the matter was quietly slipped on the council’s calendar Monday afternoon. If ratified, the deal would sever the city’s 25-year relationship with Lottery Technology Enterprises and its president, Leonard Manning, who has deep ties to D.C.’s political establishment.
The new contractor would be W2I, a partnership between a local firm and a Greek consortium.
City hall sources told The Examiner that Gray opposes the new contractand had hoped to sink it by not taking any action on it. Many city hall sources believe that Gray has the votes to torpedo the contract today.
Gray didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Manning and his partner company, G Tech, have steadily fallen out of favor with the city’s lottery board after a series of foul-ups, including a 2006 incident in which hackers were able to print out nearly $80,000 in phony tickets.
After a two-year bid process, the city finance office, which supervises the lottery, awarded it to W2I. Finance officials say W2I will update the lottery’s antiquated technology and save the city up to $8 million per year.
But W2I has come under fire for its purported relationship with Mayor Adrian Fenty’s flamboyant fraternity brother, Sinclair Skinner.
Skinner, a businessman-activist from Petworth, has clashed with District Council members repeatedly. According to city hall sources, he was bragging about his involvement in the new lottery contract months before it was submitted for council approval.
Fenty’s spokeswoman said that the mayor had nothing to do with the W2I contract. W2I’s president, Alaka Williams, said Skinner was a family friend but had nothing to do with her deal. The company’s lawyer, A. Scott Bolden, sent a letter to Gray last week, saying that questions about Skinner were “irrelevant.”
“There was a selection process and the best bidder won and yet we’re in the 11th hour and we’re not sure whether the city is going to be able to save itself millions,” Bolden told The Examiner. “There were a number of questions raised. They’ve been satisfactorily answered.”
Ann Walker Marchant, spokeswoman for LTE and G Tech, said that the city has acted in bad faith. There have been technological problems — but that’s in part because city officials told her company not to update their technology and instead focus on bringing in new games, she said.
“What is important is how the vendor handles the situation – are they responsive, reliable and committed to getting the systems up and running as soon as possible?” Walker Marchant told The Examiner in an e-mail.
