Olympic bid reviewer is seeking city contract to run international airport terminal

LEK Consulting, the company that recently pronounced the Olympic bid (mostly) financially sound is competing to run concessions in O’Hare Airport's international terminal, which generates $33 million in annual revenue. The terminal obviously would see a spike in business if Chicago wins the 2016 Olympics.

To the Civic Federation’s credit, they list LEK’s conflict in their Olympic analysis. To the Civic Federation’s discredit, they dismiss any conflict of interest out of hand:

Although L.E.K. has not been involved with the Chicago 2016 bid, the firm disclosed that it has been hired by the City of Chicago in the past and has one outstanding bid pending with the City regarding a concessions project at O’Hare International Airport. However, the Civic Federation does not see such involvement as creating a conflict of interest or jeopardizing the independence of this review.

We’re a year into a recession whose major lesson is that businesspeople will miss or look past their peers’ flaws if a lot of money stands to be made. So for the Civic Federation – an organization essentially of businesspeople – to so quickly dismiss the potential conflict of interest is troubling at the least.

Whether the Civic Federation knew that the concessions project is the International Terminal or not isn’t clear from the disclosure. Since a major selling point of the Olympics is that it will generate a large increase in international visitors for several years before and after the games, the fact that LEK wants to run the international terminal is significant enough to be included in the disclaimer, at the least.

Here are three questions that anyone reading LEK’s review of the Olympic bid should ask themselves:

1. Would a company that is bidding for city business while evaluating the Mayor’s #1 priority reasonably feel that a negative evaluation would impact their bid?
   
   
2. Would a company that is seeking to run the International terminal at O’Hare believe that harming the Olympic bid also harm their own business interests?
   
   
3. Would a company that wants to bring international visitors to Chicago just be predisposed to thinking the Olympics is a good idea, regardless of whether there is an overt conflict of interest?

There are also some questions that Olympic skeptics should ask themselves before they cry conspiracy: Is LEK large enough and decentralized enough that some of their employees can critique the bid while others work on projects that would gain from the bid? Was LEK’s role in the study large enough that their potential conflict of interest would color the Civic Federation’s analysis?

It’s a shame that Chicago’s press and political leaders haven’t asked questions about LEK’s potential conflict of interest, because, frankly those questions deserve to be answered before anyone accepts the Olympic bid analysis.