aramark, wexford, illinois corruption

this is an excerpt from a new book by a fellow burner whom i kind of know named Charles Shaw, Exile Nation. The link is to part 2 of chapter 3, and the parts before that are up for free on the same website as well. the paras below specifically have to do with aramark, which as we know is the company that manages almost all of the food on campus here at the university of chicago.

In 2004, amidst a rash of controversy, Wexford was granted a $114 million contract to provide health care to IDOC. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that this came about mere days after Wexford contributed $10,000 to then Governor Rod Blagojevich’s reelection campaign. In July 2007 former IDOC director Donald Snyder was indicted for allegedly taking $50,000 in illegal kickbacks to hand out state contracts to favored companies during the previous Administration of George Ryan, $30,000 of which came from Wexford lobbyist Larry Sims.

Krause complained about Rod Blagojevich, who, after becoming Governor of Illinois in 2002, unable to close any prisons, immediately slashed IDOC’s budget citing the $4 billion state deficit as his rationale. Krause claimed the food quality had taken a nose dive alongside health care. This was not surprising since Aramark, the international food service leviathan, held the contract.

Headquartered in Philadelphia, Aramark has approximately 240,000 employees serving clients in 18 countries. Publicly traded since 2001, they pulled in $12.4 billion in sales in 2007 from food and hospitality services for businesses, schools, stadiums, hotels and resorts, and senior assisted living. They also manage large facilities, provide a vast array of uniforms and work apparel, and have contracts for food, laundry, and uniforms at 475 correctional institutions. Aramark’s record is almost as scintillating as Wexford’s. For two health-based companies, the level of sickness attributed to their products and services is staggering.

The $10 million IDOC contract “awarded” to Aramark in 2000 was a sole-source, no-bid deal. Aramark has been accused of fraud and over-billing, driving up state budget deficits, poor service, and poor treatment of workers. Their worst transgression (considering the nature of the hand that feeds them) appears to be serving tainted food to schools and universities. On two occasions rodents and worms had been found in school lunches. Here in Illinois, Aramark paid more than $3 million to settle a 2004 class action suit charging they defrauded approximately 50 school districts in the state by accepting national school lunch program food donations from the USDA without reducing the cost for the schools, which was in violation of federal law and the district's food service contract.

If the food is bad in the schools, one can only imagine what it is like in the prisons. The list of Aramark’s prison indiscretions spans correctional systems in Illinois, Texas, Oregon, Tennessee, New Jersey, New York, Missouri, and Florida. However, tales of bad prison food shock no one, so it’s a waste of space to even make that a story point. What’s interesting is the number of scandals in which Aramark finds itself embroiled.

In the same case that brought indictments against former IDOC director Donald Synder, John J Robinson, a former lobbyist, Senior Vice President for Aramark, and Undersheriff of Cook County (take a moment to drink in all those luscious conflicts of interest), pled guilty in July of 2007 to federal charges of mail fraud relating to alleged kickbacks paid to Snyder. While Aramark contracts were not implicated in the indictment, Robinson did obtain correctional food service contracts for Aramark from Illinois state and local governments. Connecting the dots on that one does not take a Herculean measure of aptitude, and one is hard-pressed to differentiate between the criminals in prison blues shuffling around the yard, and those in business suits running the show.