Some of the Faces of Corruption in Oklahoma
We have been following the Tar Creek Audit for years and with the release of the two audits thanks to pressure on the AG office by a lawsuit, everything that was alleged years ago has turned out to be completely true. David Van with Sooner Politics ran a story on the release of the audit last week and we read both audits and there is no doubt that this was corrupt.
Three Attorney Generals fought to hide this corruption. Drew Edmondson, Scott Pruitt, and the current weasel Mike Hunter. No doubt the corruption was protected thanks to campaign donations or political power from those that profited. What should have been a $600,000 project to clean up some old houses at Tar Creek turned into over $3,000,000 in taxpayer dollars wasted.
Current AG Mike Hunter made sure that the theft and corruption went unpunished by holding off the release of the audits till one day after the seven years statute of limitations had expired. Investigators in his office colluded by claiming that there were no prosecutable crimes committed despite the audits clear results and clear statements that the bids were rigged and favoritism was shown. Even the bidders on the project did their part by suing and halting the process, shining a bright light on the bidding process yet they were so brazen as to steal the taxpayer money anyway.
Imagine, a carpet cleaning company with zero experience beats out three other experienced demolition contractors, some of which had handled tens of millions of dollars in such demolition work. The carpet cleaning company is able to obtain a bond and magically comes up with a quality control document/plan that matches word for word what the original project engineer submitted despite state and federal law that prohibits the sharing of bid information. The experienced demolition contractors score 1's on the scoring process set up by the project engineer and board members while the carpet cleaning company scores a 10.
An alternate contract that is put in place in case the local EPA landfill or the local state dumping site can't be used suddenly is approved despite only 15% of the debris being hauled to the Kansas dump site. What should have been a $150,000 payment for the extra miles and dumping fees turns into over one million dollars windfall for the contractor/carpet cleaning company.
Thousands of dollars were billed for non existent structures on empty lots, allegedly paying for asbestos abatement and demolition of the homes and the hauling away of hundreds of yards of debris despite photo showing the empty lots before the work began.
Micky Mantle's home was sold to a neighboring town and hauled away at their expense, yet the carpet cleaning contractor billed thousands of dollars for demolition and debris hauling and disposal. That same home still exists and is on display in the neighboring town.
Initial bids on the entire project were under one million dollars, with the lowest being just under $600,000. The state realized that the Davis Bacon law didn't have to be followed so they rebid the contracts, expecting to save money for the taxpayers. Indeed, that lowest bid came back $41,000 cheaper than the original bid. But somehow the project was given to the highest bidder for ultimately $3.4 million dollars based upon the carpet cleaning company having a better quality control plan than the other three experienced demolition contractors.
Here is part of the summary of the 2nd audit:
"This report describes various problems with the LICRAT Property Improvement Clearance Project that was bid and awarded through the Department of Central Services(DCS) in December 2010. Although our investigation did not provide direct evidence fora conspiracy against the state, it did provide considerable circumstantial evidence that a conspiracy may have existed.
We observed that the DC$ bid process resulted in this contract being awarded to the same vendor implicated in our report for Objective I, CWF Enterprises, Inc., despite the fact that the March 2010 bid process contained significant violations of the Title 61, Public Competitive Bidding Act and was voided by an Ottawa County District Court on an Open Meeting Act violation.
Every change, modification, or re-interpretation of this second demolition contract served only to increase the eventual payout to the contractor and increased the appearance of favoritism directed to the benefit of CWF Enterprises (CWF). As a consequence of highly questionable change orders and extremely lax contract administration of the December 2010 contract, the payments to CWF, under this second bid award/contract,totaled $3,050,785.93.
This amount, along with a payment to CWf of $366,282.56 under the March 2010 contract, brought the total payments to CWF for the Property Improvement Clearance Project to $3,417,068.49. Contrast this total amount with the original bid received on the project in October 2009, of $599,988.00.
To attribute the following sequence of events surrounding the December 2010 contract to simple coincidence or merely poor management, it would have to be "reasonable" to believe:
experience in actual demolition work would receive a perfect "10" across the board in the DCS pre-bid qualification process led by Jack Dalrymple, the LICRAT project manager.
- • That a restoration-cleaning company with no heavy equipment and little experience in actual demolition work would receive a perfect “10” across the board in the DCS pre-bid qualification process led by Jack Dalrymple, the LICRAT project manager.
- • That this same pre-bid qualification process would attempt to disqualify all three other demolition companies by rating them near across-the-board "l's" on a scale of 1to 10, although two of the three initially disqualified companies provided examples of prior experience of major and more complex demolition contracts totaling tens of millions of dollars.
- • That all parties signed a contract omitting the Alternate bid as unnecessary, only to subsequently add the $1.3 million Alternate two months later using "clerical error" as the ostensible justification for increasing the contract award by nearly 78%.
- • That adding the $1.3 million Alternate bid as a "clerical error" change order was reasonable and appropriate, although state law prohibits cumulative "change orders or addenda" from exceeding 10% on contracts exceeding $1 million.
- • That it was acceptable to invoke the Alternate bid for additional costs to haul debris to a fee-based Kansas landfill when non-fee based facilities were still receiving debris.
- • Finally, after invoking the Alternate bid, that it could be presumed legitimate for the contractor to charge LICRAT on a "lump sum" basis for the entire $1.3 million Alternate, even though billing documentation reported only approximately 15% of project debris was hauled to the fee-based Kansas landfill, resulting in a "windfall" to the contractor of over $1 million.
We do not believe that the above events can be explained away as poor management or"clerical error." We believe the above provides sufficient circumstantial evidence for additional investigation into a potential conspiracy against the state."
Five years after the initial audits were done this gets released, again a few days after the statute of limitations runs out. The two audits even disagree on a few points, as well as disagreeing with a 2013 EPA investigation, showing that political pressure was brought to bear on the auditor who is running for Governor.. Hunter claims he found "found prosecutable evidence of criminal activity.", well if you wait til the statute of limitations expires that might be the case. Yet the original audit found evidence of violations of the competitive bidding act, bidder choosing, collusion among bidders, unlawful disclosure of information prior to bidding, conspiracy against the state, open meetings act violations, violations of contractor and bidding bonds, and illegal federal award payments used to pay legal fees for violating the law. Yet somehow these same findings were changed and watered down in the second audit by Gary Jones.
Dalrymple was hired as the project engineer and managed to get the contract language changed allowing him to approve changes in the contract instead of the Trust Board. He stood to profit as he was to be paid 10% on top of the winning bids for the work, so the higher the bids the higher his paycheck. Ten percent of $600,000 is lower than ten percent of $3,400,000 and that was his motivation for rigging the bids according to the audits. The bid inspection and awarding was not done in an open meeting and the awarding of the bid to the highest bidder was never explained as required by law. Why a $599,000 bid was turned down for demolition work and a $2,100,000 bid was accepted has never been explained. Time lines were jumbled, bids were awarded weeks after emails from the principles showed that the bid had been decided upon. Emails proving collusion between parties involved were ignored by prosecutors.
The fraud and collusion is plain to see yet three Attorney Generals fought long and hard to prevent this audit from being done and once done they fought to prevent it being released. Drew Edmondson, Scott Pruitt, and Mike Hunter all protected this corruption and whether they did so because of personal gain or because they were paying off political debts is of no matter, it stunk, it still stinks, and all three men ought to be in front of a grand jury explaining their actions.
