The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority made public the billion-dollar, 118-page contract to design and build the first half of Dulles rail Thursday, but blotted out numerous passages dealing with pricing, business and personnel information.
MWAA, which is slated to take over the 23-mile rail extension project, has already drawn charges of lack of accountability and openness. The airports authority says it has a complete exemption from state and federal information disclosure laws, and critics — including some Fairfax County supervisors — have blasted the agency for not disclosing details of its public-private partnership with two contractors.
The posting of the contract on MWAA’s Web site is an apparent reaction to those charges and comes four days after Fairfax County Chairman Gerald Connolly threatened to refuse approving the county’s $400 million funding share unless the contract was handed over.
“The authority has tried to operate in a transparent way since it was established,” MWAA Chairman Mame Reiley said Wednesday shortly before the contract’s approval.
The redactions, however, restrict a full look at how the cost of the rail project could rise due to the fluctuating price of materials and future sub-contracts. For example, the unit prices of items such as asphalt and diesel fuel that are subject to escalation are blacked out as “proprietary pricing information,” according to a document explaining the redactions.
“The Airports Authority and the Commonwealth must protect their financial interests as well as those of Fairfax and Loudoun Counties as funding partners,” the paper stated.
Also hidden is information pertaining to liability insurance limits and the names of candidates for specific jobs on the rail project.
The $1.6 billion contract is with Dulles Transit Partners, a consortium made up of Bechtel Infrastructure and Washington Group International. MWAA redacted an entire section with information that “reflects specific business relationship of [Dulles Transit Partners] shareholders.”
MWAA spokeswoman Tara Hamilton said the agency withheld a “very limited amount of information.”
