Is the Federal Emergency Management Agency refusing to let local Arizona companies bid on contracts? According to Latitude Catering, a Tucson based catering company, yes. Latitude says that FEMA has refused to give them a chance.
On the James T. Harris radio show, on 104.1 KQTH, Steve McBryer and Catrina Sneva of Latitude Catering told Harris’s radio audience that FEMA did not allow any Arizona companies to bid on supplying food, health services, hygiene services, or any or the other services associated with emergencies. Instead, the two claimed that FEMA granted an automatic contract to a company in New York.
On his radio show, James T. Harris said, “The government can pay ICE to bring these kids to our state and dump them off here and of course they get paid for Border Patrol to play with them, but when it comes to the job of feeding and caring for them they contract out to a different company in a different state.”
Latitude Catering often sub-contracts for another company in Phoenix. According to McBryer and Sneva, when that company sought to bid on a contract in Texas for the same type of illegal immigration shelters, FEMA told the Arizona company that FEMA was only accepting bids from local companies.
McBryer told Harris, “We got a call from a company in Phoenix that had been contacted by the government about the camp over in Texas. He was pulled off of that because he wasn’t a quote-unquote local company. Then he was contacted, because now they opening up a camp in Arizona. Now he is a local company. They wanted him to put together a proposal. They don’t do food service; we do so he contacted us. Because we did work with them on hurricanes, Katrina, work like that. He contacted me to see what we could put together to present to the government. Low and behold a couple hours later they changed their tune on a local company and went with a company in New York.”
McBryer continued, “There is a warehouse full of illegal immigrants in Nogales, Arizona and no media, no State government officials, or anyone else has been allowed access to these warehouses. Pictures have leaked and rumors have spread that the conditions are unsanitary and not satisfactory. Clearly the federal government needs immediate local support to hold these people in a responsible way.”
“We put a pretty nice deal together for the government and it went into FEMAs hands and FEMA didn’t have the budget for it so it was going through the GSA schedule and no one had the opportunity to bid for it and whoever was on the GSA schedule got the contract,” said McBryer.
Sneva told Harris, “When there is a natural disaster there are a handful of caterers in the country that can handle feeding this amount of people. Feeding anywhere, we are fully self-contained. We’ve been doing that for 21 years with the USDA and with FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Feeding thousands of kids would have been a piece of cake compared to what we’re used to,” said Sneva. “The fact that the government paid mileage for them to come from New York City is unreal… I mean we have state of the art kitchens in 18-wheelers.”
“The Federal government tries removing the A-10, impose ludicrous EPA regulations on Arizona, and refuses to contract with any Arizona company,” said Sneva “it is no wonder Arizona and the Federal government have had a rocky relationship of late. Arizonan’s should never accept discrimination by their federal government, but that may be exactly what is occurring.”