PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Federal prosecutors have recommended a sentence of more than two years for the former Portland parking manager who pleaded guilty to taking bribes from a business owner seeking a contract to install high-tech parking meters.
Four years ago, federal agents raided the home and Portland city office of Ellis McCoy and filed bribery and tax evasion charges.
They alleged he’d taken money and travel favors in exchange for getting the city to install a Florida company’s smart meters, designed to slash the labor and maintenance costs involved in collecting parking fees.
McCoy pleaded guilty the next year, but sentencing was delayed as prosecutors proceeded with the investigation of the meter company owner, George Levey of Tarpon Springs, Florida. His offices were raided the same day as McCoy’s.
The government says Levey paid McCoy $56,000 in phony consultant fees and promised $137,000 more, at $100 a meter, for recommending Levey’s products to other cities. That was to be payable after McCoy left city employment.
McCoy, 63, is to be sentenced next week. The U.S. attorney’s office filed a sentencing recommendation Wednesday that calls for a 30-month term and said that takes into account McCoy’s quick decision to plead guilty, saving the expense of trial preparations.
Prosecutors said McCoy hasn’t agreed to the sentence. Calls to his federal public defender were not immediately returned Thursday.
Levey, 58, was indicted and pleaded guilty last month. His sentencing is set for August. The terms of his plea deal suggest a sentence of less than three years.
The government has said a second, unnamed executive was involved, but that person has not been named.
The prosecutors’ sentencing recommendation contains details of the bribery.
At one point, it says, the scheme appeared to be in jeopardy when other city employees objected to the performance of the meters: Those the city tested weren’t working well in Portland’s winter drizzle.
But, the document says, McCoy was feeding Levey inside information to give him an advantage in the bidding process, which eventually resulted in a contract worth about $1.6 million for the installation of 200 to 500 meters.
The document lists 61 separate trips over nine years, many involving golf or gambling, many to Las Vegas or California and a few to overseas destinations: Paris, Milan, Antigua and the Bahamas. Levey paid some or all of the expenses, the documents said.
Some of the trips involved Levey traveling to Portland to take McCoy to a casino to play blackjack, the documents said.
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