Paver allowed to bid again

Owners of the District’s largest paving company haven’t done enough to ensure that its officials never again bribe city highway inspectors, a D.C. government panel has ruled.

At the same time, the D.C. Debarment and Suspension Panel said D.C.-based Fort Myer Construction Inc. should be allowed to resume bidding immediately for millions of dollars in city transportation and public-works contracts.

The decision comes nearly a year after the city’s chief procurement officer, Jacques Abadie III, debarred Fort Myer for three years after the company’s guilty plea last year in a scheme to bribe city highway inspectors.

According to federal prosecutors, city engineers and inspectors overstated the amount of asphalt Fort Myer was delivering to city job sites from 1995 through 1998 in exchange for cash bribes from the firm.

Nine D.C. engineers and inspectors were fired and two Fort Myer employees lost their jobs as a result of the investigation, which federal authorities dubbed “Operation Hot Mix.”

The D.C. Council overturned Mr. Abadie’s ruling last fall and handed the case to the D.C. Debarment and Suspension Panel, which the council had created through special legislation.

On April 2, the panel, headed by Chairman Herbert R. Tillery, D.C. deputy mayor for operations, ruled that Fort Myer’s reforms after the bribery scandal “are insufficient to ensure that similar offenses do not occur in the future.”

The panel said in its 23-page decision, “The cause for Fort Myer’s debarment, conviction of conspiracy to commit bribery, is a serious offense that goes to the heart of the integrity of the procurement process.”

The Washington Times obtained a copy of the decision earlier this week in response to a request to the D.C. Office of Contracting and Procurement.

“It is not acceptable behavior for a contractor to win a contract by bidding low and then recouping its costs through submission of false billings and bribery of District officials,” panel members said.

Despite its concerns, the panel said Fort Myer should be allowed to resume contracting with city government, even though sanctions against the company are pending in Maryland, Virginia and the federal government.

The panel debarred Fort Myer for six months in its ruling, but also essentially granted the company “time served,” saying the road paver can immediately resume doing business with the D.C. government.

City officials have been refusing to contract with the road paver for nearly a year while the Fort Myer debarment proceedings were ongoing.

Therefore, the panel ruled, “With application of credit for debarment time, the six months’ debarment period has been met, and they are eligible for award of District contracts and subcontracts.”

D.C. Council member Harold Brazil, at-large Democrat, whose legislation created the panel last year, yesterday said the decision “really supports what I was saying all along, that the penalty was excessive and that we needed a process that is fair.”

Fort Myer’s case was bolstered by a D.C. Contract Appeals Board ruling in January, which stated that the District did not have enough evidence to tie company President Jose Rodriguez and Vice President Lewis Shrensky to the bribery scheme.

Mr. Rodriguez and Mr. Shrensky told the panel that they were unaware of the bribery scheme until it had stopped.

But the panel said the two were in positions to “have had reason to know” of the wrongdoing being committed by “one of Fort Myer’s senior employees and his subordinates.”

The bribery scheme involved Fort Myer employees who drove company trucks loaded with asphalt onto scales that city inspectors used to determine how much to reimburse contractors.

Prosecutors say the employees drove the same trucks onto the same scale two or three times to make it appear as though the company had been using different trucks. In return for cash, city inspectors issued phony job tickets.

Fort Myer agreed to pay $900,000 in fines and restitution to the federal government last year as a result of the company’s guilty plea.