Brookins Got $300,000 for Lobbying on LAX Contract

A major concessionaire at Los Angeles International Airport has paid Bishop H. H. Brookins about $300,000 in lobbying fees through a controversial city program intended to help disadvantaged minorities and women, Brookins said in an interview.

Brookins told The Times that Host International Inc. placed him in its minority business enterprise program to pay for lobbying during the firm’s unsuccessful 1986 bid to run airport gift shops. Although Host paid Brookins with profits from food and beverage concessions at the airport, the bishop said he had no involvement in the operations.

“It had nothing to do with me going out there and frying hamburgers,” said Brookins, a civil rights leader and longtime mentor to Mayor Tom Bradley. “They knew I was the bishop. . . . I was never expected to or asked to be a hands-on operator of concessions.”

Councilman Michael Woo called Brookins’ statements “shocking” and said it appears to “substantiate the charge that there was no real minority involvement” in the airport concessions contracts.

The city’s Department of Airports will investigate the contractual arrangement between Host and Brookins in an attempt to verify the bishop’s assertions, said Executive Director Clifton A. Moore.

“It certainly doesn’t fit into (the goals of the minority business program),” Moore said. The Host contract with Brookins and other minority partners was intended to involve “true minority participation where they were actually learning the business,” Moore said.

The airport minority business program has come under fire since The Times reported last June that a group of 18 minorities and women with political connections were given multimillion-dollar gift shop and food service contracts. A city audit of the airport program in November found that the group--which included the wife of Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los Angeles)-- reaped $7.3 million in profits for little or no work.

Host executives said that Brookins signed a contract that called for him to become an active joint-venture partner in the food service business. But they acknowledged that Brookins was rewarded for his prior lobbying efforts.

“He did something for us and we remunerated him,” said Thomas C. Underwood, vice president and general counsel for Host, a subsidiary of Marriott Corp. “He was given the opportunity to participate (in the minority business program). We expected him to participate. We didn’t tell him he had to.”

But Brookins stated that he was not expected to participate in the food and beverage business. “Nobody ever asked me nothing about coming to do any work,” the bishop said in the interview on Saturday.

Last week, the other seven minority joint-venture partners reached an agreement with Brookins to acquire his share of the business, because he has been living out of the area for more than a year, said Host Vice President Arthur Spring.

The food and beverage operation is one of three lucrative city contracts awarded to Brookins, who served as bishop of the Los Angeles region of African Methodist Episcopal Church between 1976 and 1984. Last week, The Times reported that Brookins obtained a $336,000 loan of federal funds to improve a Crenshaw-area office complex that he secretly owned.

The complex housed a program, headed by Brookins, that offered job training and education for poor residents of Southwest Los Angeles. Brookins received the interest-free loan through a nonexistent church corporation. City administrators say they never would have financed the renovation if they had known that Brookins owned the complex. Today, the property is worth nearly $1 million, according to loan documents signed by Brookins.

On Monday, city officials announced that they are conducting a full review of the loan, including whether Brookins returned nearly $30,000 in construction funds that district attorney’s investigators say he used for “personal obligations.” A City Council committee cut off funding to an $83,000-a-year poverty program, housed in Brookins’ building, that had a long history of problems, including fraud and mismanagement.

Brookins also is among six prominent minority figures with close ties to Bradley whose lobbying and participation helped a team of developers win a $200-million contract last year to expand the Los Angeles Civic Center. For their efforts, Brookins and his associates were awarded an undisclosed share of profits.

In 1987, Brookins was one of eight minorities selected by Host International to help operate food and beverage concessions at Los Angeles International Airport. Brookins has received at least $296,840 between 1985 and 1989, according to the city audit conducted last year.

The bishop’s share was five times that of the other Host partners, even though he was “not involved in any way with management or operations of the partnership or facilities” and did not attend a single management meeting, the audit report said. The partners included John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League.

Brookins said he supports the goals of minority business programs, but he had no intention of participating in the joint venture agreement with Host.

“My whole position is for minorities to progress,” Brookins said. “They ought to be placed in hands-on positions. That is how you learn. But that was not my deal. I was doing what I could do best in Los Angeles--that was to lobby.”

As a politically influential black leader in Los Angeles, Brookins was sought by both Host International and Duty Free Shoppers Group Ltd. in 1985 to assemble a team of minority partners. The two firms were competing for the rights to sell duty-free merchandise at the airport.

At the time, Brookins had been reassigned to an AME church post in Little Rock, Ark., but continued to maintain a residence in Bel-Air.

Brookins said he had agreed to represent Duty Free Shoppers, which had the existing gift shop contract, but then joined Host. According to copies of contracts obtained by The Times, Host guaranteed Brookins at least $50,000 in annual profit if the firm won the duty-free shops contract.

“They wanted me to lobby to win the contract,” Brookins said. “(If they lost), they gave me assurances I could get a percentage of their existing food and beverage contract. . . . It had nothing to do with my doing any work at the airport.”

Host company officials said that Brookins did everything he was asked to do to land the gift shop contract. “He really delivered for us,” Underwood said. “He came through when we needed somebody to put together a really excellent group (of minority partners).”

But the Board of Airport Commissioners awarded the contract to Duty Free Shoppers in 1986.

Nevertheless, Host paid Brookins $35,000 in advances plus $3,000 per month against his future profits as a joint-venture partner in Host’s food and beverage contract, documents show. Host’s food service contract was extended in 1987.

Brookins described the payments as “consulting fees” for his earlier services.

The following year, Brookins was reassigned as bishop of the Washington-Virginia-Maryland region for the AME church and moved out of Southern California. He failed to attend a single board meeting of the joint-venture partners.

Had airport officials known that Brookins would not serve any role for Host, they would not have allowed the bishop to participate in the minority program, said Barbara Williams, the airport’s minority business coordinator.

“Host represented that (Brookins and his partners) were going to be working as a group to operate all of the food and beverage for the department as a management team,” Williams said. “That’s how the participants were going to learn the necessary skills that it takes to operate as prime contractors.”

She said these skills included hiring personnel, ordering food items, making menus and buying uniforms.

C. Edward Corser, chief administrative analyst who audited the airport program, said, “If it was known up front that Brookins was never going to participate, then obviously this whole thing would be considered a sham. But Host and the written agreement said otherwise. All we can do is assume that Brookins was expected to participate.”

Auditors noted that Brookins received five times the amount of profits his minority partners did, while the Host contract called for no greater participation on the bishop’s part.

“Clearly, (Host) was repaying him for prior services,” Corser said.

Times staff writers Rich Connell and Tracy Wood contributed to this article.