Gov. Ed 'Pay to Play' Rendell

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is reporting that the Rendell administration has awarded more than $800 million in no-bid contracts to companies that have political ties with Gov. Ed Rendell.

If this was a Republican governor, you'd have all sorts of investigations going on.

But this Ed "Pay to Play" Rendell we're dealing with here. He gets a free pass.

The no-bid contracts were awarded Unisys of Montgomery County to run the state's data center for the next five years at $400 million, and $414 million in contracts over the past five years to Deloitte, a New York City-based company with ties to Rendell's administration, according to the newspaper.

"It is a fact of history ... sooner or later, friends of an administration benefit from the procurement system," Rep. Gordon Denlinger, R-Lancaster County, told the newspaper.

However, reporter Brad Bumstead notes that no-bid contracts were the exception, rather than rule, under the administration of Gov. Tom Ridge:

No-bid contracts "were clearly the exception rather than the rule," said Robert Bittenbender, who was Ridge's budget director. The Unisys contract was competitively bid under Ridge in 1999, Bittenbender said.

Read more in today's edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.