LOGAN BUS CO. SET TO RECEIVE $206 MILLION CONTRACT DESPITE ADMITTING TO BRIBING CITY OFFICIALS
Education officials are poised to give a $206 million no-bid contract to a school bus company – even though its owner has admitted company employees regularly bribed city officials and a mobbed-up union.
Logan Bus Co. owner Michael Tornabe – who has a quarter of the city’s school bus routes – told the FBI the company paid off inspectors and the union for years. Granted immunity from prosecution, Tornabe described how the company bought dozens of bus routes along with advance warning for safety inspections.
On Friday, Education Department officials still defended the contract as “the best deal for the city,” citing new provisions to allow more flexibility when changing the routes.
Related Article: FBI CLAIMS SCHOOL BUS OWNER PAID MOB UNION
“We consulted with the U.S. attorney, and we’re working …on assigning a monitor or an inspector general for the contract,” Education Department spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said.
Without seeking bids from other bus companies, the Education Department extended Logan’s decades-old contract another three years. The extension is up for a vote by the agency’s Panel for Educational Policy contract committee today.
Neither Tornabe nor his lawyer returned calls for comment.
Tornabe is the son-in-law of the late Richard Logan, who founded Logan Bus Co. and whom the FBI identified as a mob associate.
After federal prosecutors granted him immunity from prosecution, Tornabe made confessions in 2007 and 2008 to FBI agent Mike Gaeta that he had been involved in multiple crimes, documents obtained by the Daily News show.
Related Article: SCHOOL BUSES, UNIONS AND THE MOB: A SPECIAL REPORT
To avoid safety inspection “problems,” Logan employees bribed Dino Winkler, then-head of the city’s school bus safety inspection unit, as well as inspector Geoffrey Berger.
In 2005 and 2006, Tornabe coughed up between $40,000 and $80,000 to get 40 more bus runs for Logan, the documents state.
Tornabe described one meeting with union officials, including a mob soldier named Salvatore (Hot Dogs) Battaglia and an associate named Julius (Spike) Bernstein.
During the sitdown at a Brooklyn diner, Tornabe complained about losing bus runs he had “paid for.” The gangsters patted him down, suspecting he was wearing a recording device.
Related Article: AMPLY POWER & LOGAN BUS ANNOUNCES ELECTRIC SCHOOL BUS PILOT PROJECT IN NYC
Sources familiar with the case said prosecutors did not charge Tornabe. Winkler, Berger and Battaglia have all pleaded guilty to corruption charges. Bernstein died after he secretly began cooperating with the FBI.
This ARTICLE was written by Greg B. Smith and Rachel Monahan and published in The New York Daily News, on December 13, 2009.