You wouldn’t know it from the press release, but a move by Sound Transit’s board of directors to formally award a construction contract to a Kirkland-based firm today broke some new ground of its own.

“It’s very unusual,” Bob Marconi, a longtime Seattle attorney who specializes in public works bidding and contract law, told me. He was referring to the agency’s relatively abrupt change of course in awarding a construction contract to his client, MidMountain Contractors, Inc.

(The long-anticipated D to M Street project, as it’s called, will connect the Sounder commuter rail line from D to M Street in Tacoma’s Dome District, effectively extending commuter rail service from Tacoma to Lakewood.)

The regional transit authority ultimately awarded the contract to MidMountain after initially disqualifying the firm’s low-bid. Sound Transit staff instead had planned to recommend that the agency’s directors board award the contract to PCL Construction Services, the second-lowest bidder.

PCL, which submitted a bid $800,000 higher than MidMountain’s, got the nod from transit staff after complaining to them that MidMountain had turned in a supplemental bid form late.

That led MidMountain last month to retain Marconi’s high powered law firm, hire a Seattle PR company, enlist politicians and take its case to the media: Taxpayers were going to take a pasting, they claimed, all because of the transit agency’s wrong-headed approach toward a minor paperwork error.

Sound Transit officials initially dug themselves in, saying they had to disqualify MidMountain’s low bid as a way to protect the integrity and fairness of the agency’s bidding process. We detailed the dispute here and here.

But after reviewing Marconi’s second appeal two weeks ago (and suggestions of potential litigation), Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl decided to accept the MidMountain bid after all. Agency lawyers determined that MidMountain’s legal reasoning about why the bid was valid was supported by law, Sound Transit spokeswoman Kimberly Reason told me today.

But the bid dispute, which caused a delay in the contract’s award, didn’t muster even a mention in today’s press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — August 26, 2010

Sound Transit to award Sounder D-to-M Streets contract to MidMountain
Project will extend Sounder service from Tacoma to Lakewood

The Sound Transit Board of Directors today authorized the award of the construction contract for the Sounder D-to-M Streets Track and Signal project to low bidder MidMountain Contractors, Inc. The project will build a new commuter rail line from East D to South M Streets in Tacoma.

Work on the contract is anticipated to begin in late September. When complete, the D-to-M Streets track will connect with the M-to-Lakewood segment, extending Sounder south line service from Tacoma Dome Station to Bridgeport Way in Lakewood. Service to Lakewood will begin in 2012.

MidMountain, headquartered in Kirkland, Wash., submitted a bid of $40,823,190, $25.6 million below the Sound Transit engineer’s estimate of $66,423,687.

Reason explained she felt information about the dispute was irrelevant.

“For us, the real news is that we are proceeding with the contract,” she said. “That really is the news we believe the Tacoma community wants to hear.”

Read more about the issue in tomorrow’s News Tribune.