MOCO JUDGE:

MD MTA VIOLATED

PROCUREMENT LAW, REGULATIONS

IN I-95 TRAVEL PLAZA

BIDDING PROCESS

Circuit Court Issues Temporary Injunction

Requested by Bethesda's HMSHost

Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Eric Johnson sided with Bethesda-based HMSHost in a dispute over who will renovate and operate two I-95 travel plazas.

The Maryland Transportation Authority had selected Spanish subsidiary Areas USA, but HMSHost charged that the state excluded it from a final round of negotiations. Areas has little experience in the travel plaza field, but its bid offered the best financial deal for the state.

Maryland's powerful Board of Public Works had delayed its ruling on the Areas contract Wednesday, in deference to Johnson's imminent ruling in Rockville. The BPW plans to take the matter up at its March 7 meeting.

But, in another dramatic twist in this rest stop soap opera, Johnson has scheduled a hearing for the same morning - just one hour prior to the BPW meeting!

One reason the issue has become unusually sensational by Maryland standards, is the perception that a taxpaying Bethesda, MD company has been rudely knocked aside in favor of a foreign subsidiary.

HMSHost's complaints are substantive. For example, the pie-in-the-sky financial projections in the Areas bid seem hard to believe.

While that has been noted in most media accounts, there's an additional obstacle to those rosy projections of massively-higher gas sales at Maryland travel plazas: the new gas tax hike expected to be passed by the General Assembly this session. Most drivers have smartphone apps that tell them gas prices at each station. If drivers know that gas is cheaper in Delaware and Virginia, who in their right mind would plan to fill up in Maryland along I-95?

Expect more twists and turns before this is over. But Johnson's ruling indicates that HMSHost's claims of exclusion are more than just sour grapes; the court would not have stopped the process otherwise. That bodes well for one of Bethesda's largest international firms going forward.