Contracts, Race Bred WSSC Rift

Md. Lawmakers to Consider Options for 'Broken' Utility

The commission surreptitiously tried to fire General Manager John R. Griffin as tensions came to a head last February.

Members of the Maryland General Assembly will meet tomorrow to debate a stack of bills aimed at restructuring the region's largest water and sewer utility, an effort to fix an agency that many lawmakers believe has been rendered dysfunctional by long-running internal strife.

The turmoil at the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, decades in the making, surfaced dramatically last February when WSSC commissioners tried to oust the two top managers of the utility, which has 1.6 million customers in Prince George's and Montgomery counties.

Since then, General Manager John R. Griffin and his top deputy were bought out of their contracts; the three commissioners appointed by Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) were asked to resign, and other commissioners have faced allegations including conflicts of interest to violations of the state's open meetings law.

The damage has been substantial, according to dozens of interviews and an extensive review of agency records. The infighting has raised the cost of what is already some of the most expensive water and sewer service in the country. It has hindered maintenance of WSSC's 10,000 miles of pipes. And, in at least one instance, it imperiled the safety of the drinking water.

Legislators have introduced 11 bills aimed at bringing significant change to the utility, including several that call for the dismissal of three appointees of Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D). Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) has described the turmoil at WSSC as "a cancer."

"Public confidence in the ability of this board to govern is nonexistent," Miller said.

The conflict at WSSC is about money and race. An agency that spent decades doling out work to white-owned companies has struggled over how best to give minorities a larger stake in the $100 million in contracts awarded each year. The two figures who have embodied this battle in recent years are Griffin and Shaaron W. Phillips, head of WSSC's minority business office.

Phillips, 44, a hard-driving Howard University graduate, has worked in the office for more than a decade. She has been at the center of a push to improve access for minority contractors, aided by a loose-knit but influential group of current and former commissioners, politicians, agency staff members and contractors.

To Phillips, change has been frustratingly slow. For fiscal 2004, WSSC awarded 28 percent of its contracts to minority-owned businesses, down from 40 percent two years ago. The utility does not have a specific goal, but minority participation between 20 and 28 percent is required for many types of contracts.

Her efforts to engage more minority-owned firms repeatedly put her at odds with Griffin, 58, a former head of the state Department of Natural Resources with connections to former governor Parris N. Glendening (D). He and other top managers -- including whites and blacks -- said they considered Phillips's goal worthy but grew to resent the divisive way it was pursued.

Griffin said race was being wielded as a weapon. "They were more interested in using regulations to bludgeon people, and if they didn't agree, to say they were anti-minority."

Phillips said it was never her intent to divide the agency, but she added, "True change is messy."

Racial tension has plagued WSSC for decades. In the 1960s, the utility maintained segregated quarters for blacks and whites in some of its facilities.

From the agency's start in 1918, when Italian immigrants began to build and maintain pipes, the work has been heavy and labor-intensive, requiring capital and equipment that few minority firms were able to muster. As late as 1980, the same 30 companies won contract after contract.