No Bid

Owners of the legendary Club 4100 in Brooklyn Park were negotiating with potential buyers late yesterday after a morning auction failed to produce a winning bid. "We withdrew it at $650,000," said auctioneer Andrew J. Billig, who said owners Manny and Dino Spanomanolis, who want to retire, "were not going to let it go" at that price. He would not identify the potential buyers but said negotiations were particularly "close" with one. The auction of the 48-year-old former hangout of Johnny Unitas and other Baltimore Colts drew more than 200 people, a handful of them bidders.

IT'S FREQUENTLY forgotten that Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III didn't begin Baltimore's corruption-riddled no-bid housing repair program. That distinction belongs to his predecessor, Robert W. Hearn, whose academic approach to problem solving was often criticized as too slow.Mr. Hearn acted out of character in 1991 when he decided to speed up the repair of vacant houses by awarding contracts without taking the time to go through a bid process. By doing so he created the monster that Mr. Henson inherited in 1993.

WE OFFER two words of caution to Howard County officials who have awarded a handful of no-bid contracts for road projects: Daniel Henson.The county's Department of Public Works has awarded eight contracts worth a combined $1.5 million since 1991 -- three this year -- without using a competitive bidding process. Six of those awards have gone to the Rouse Co. for work on its own projects. County officials justify the shortcut by saying it is quick and inexpensive, and has allowed the county to share costs of the work with Columbia-based Rouse and two other companies that received no-bid contracts.

Concerned about the number of no-bid contracts in Baltimore County, Councilman T. Bryan McIntire called yesterday for a thorough review of all taxpayer-funded work awarded without competitive bidding.Prompted by a Sun article, McIntire called for the review even as County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger's aides said they could justify almost every one of the 260 no-bid contracts.To make the case, Ruppersberger's staff filed memos to the County Council saying the county had no discretion in awarding at least $13.1 million of the $17.7 million in contracts.

For the second consecutive week, Baltimore's elected leaders questioned no-bid, emergency repair work for the city's Public Works Department, this time totaling $725,000.The five-member Board of Estimates on Wednesday criticized the cost of sewer repairs made by R&F Construction Co. Ltd. of Baltimore. The company was low bidder on a 1996 contract to repair city sewers for $750,000.Since then, R&F has been paid an additional $1.4 million -- including the $725,000 payment approved Wednesday -- for further repairs.

THE SUREST WAY for those who run Baltimore's public school system to alienate allies in the Maryland State House is to squander money by failing to impose fiscal controls. Yet that's what seems to be happening. In the most recent episode, detailed yesterday by The Sun's JoAnna Daemmrich and Liz Bowie, two consultants were awarded no-bid contracts to oversee energy-conservation work under highly questionable circumstances that may have cost the city school board more than $1 million. Worse, the board wasn't told about one contract for seven months; the other went to a golfing buddy of the school official overseeing the project.

WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats demanded yesterday an investigation into the demotion of a senior U.S. military contracting official who publicly criticized a no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton Corp. for work in Iraq. With more than 20 years experience in government procurement, Bunnatine Greenhouse had been the Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting officer until she was demoted Saturday to a lower-level staff position. A military report indicated that she was demoted for poor job performance.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. ordered a detailed inquiry yesterday of purchasing irregularities at the Maryland Port Administration that resulted in a computer company receiving $1.2 million since 1995 without submitting a competitive bid for the work. "This is terrible negligence here," Ehrlich said. State transportation officials say they only recently discovered problems surrounding an agreement between the port and a computer services vendor, Gaithersburg-based Global eXchange Services, which has operated a component of a cargo tracking system since 1995.

Baltimore school officials have decided to expand their investigation into the handling of two unrelated contracts for energy and computing services that raised questions about the way the school system does business. The school board voted Tuesday to approve up to $50,000 more in payments, nearly double the original amount, to the outside auditing firm of Arthur Anderson LLP to look further into the award and management of the contracts. The school board has already spent $40,000 to have the firm look at two no-bid consulting contracts on a $12.3 million energy project.

Howard County's chief engineer plans to ask the county to let a Rouse Co. subsidiary design and construct some much-needed and immediate road improvements along Route 175 to accommodate traffic from this fall's opening of Columbia Crossing retail complex.Ronald G. Lepson, the county engineer, outlined that plan Wednesday night at a meeting of a task force weighing traffic control alternatives for the clogged Route 175-Snowden River Parkway and Route 175-Dobbin Road intersections.If the council approves, he said, Rouse's Howard Research and Development (HRD)