The Secret Life Of an Informant
Source: By KAREN RICHARDSON, Wall Street Journal (subscription req.), October 21, 2006
........ Using his knowledge as a public official, he helped companies bid for municipal contracts. Two big-name clients were M.R. Beal & Co., a minority-owned New York investment bank, and Waste Management Inc., a giant garbage-hauling company based in Houston.
Municipal contracting has expanded rapidly in recent years as cities turned to private companies to provide basic services. Last year municipalities issued $408 billion in bonds to pay for filling potholes, laying sewers, wiring street lights and picking up trash -- nearly double the sum of a decade earlier. It is a business notorious for corruption, in part because of the clubby nature of city governments.