He initially was hired as a consultant in September 2014 tohelp the authority choose a new food vendor for the convention center. After he took his job with the facilities authority, records show thatMyers received professional football tickets from Centerplate and also asked for the use of thecompany's luxury suite in New Orleans. ¢ Rodney Myers, the convention center's former operations manager, was fired abruptly in Januaryafter board members learned that Centerplate had secretly paid him as a consultant to help thecompany land the contract. Raphael is now awaiting sentencing on a federal felony charge that he extorted campaigncontributions to Columbus officials from another client, red-light-camera vendor Redflex. Raphael later removed himself fromthe selection process after officials from a competing company pointed out the conflict ofinterest. He later placed himself on theselection committee for the convention center's new food vendor. ¢ Raphael was actively lobbying for Centerplate as early as May 2014, including taking companyleaders to the Memorial Tournament, sources told The Dispatch. The records, obtained by The Dispatch through Ohio's Open Records Act, and interviews withfood-industry and government officials show the lengths to which Centerplate went to land acontract to control the roughly $6.7 million in annual food sales at the sprawling conventioncenter. The contract, awarded to Centerplate in December 2014, is the subject of investigations by boththe Ohio Ethics Commission and the FBI. For months, officials in charge of the Greater Columbus Convention Center said the process toselect a food vendor for one of the busiest hubs in the region had been legitimate.īut from the beginning, records and interviews show, the process had been tainted by JohnRaphael, a member of the Franklin County Facilities Authority's board and also a lobbyist forCenterplate, a food-service company that was looking to break into the Columbus market.
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