Bidders fret that lucrative BWI Airport contract may be rigged

On a steamy summer morning, hundreds of business owners, lawyers, lobbyists and government contractors packed into a hotel ballroom near BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. They were there to hear about the state’s plans to find a new contractor to run the concessions operations — food, drink, retail and other hospitality services — at the busy transportation hub. “The purpose is to improve on a very good airport concession and make it exceptional,” Morris Williams III, manager of the Commercial Business Activities Section in the Office of Commercial Management at the Maryland Aviation Administration, told those assembled at the hotel.