“Toyo owes general contractor $3.4 million”: In White, Georgia, Toyo Tire and Rubber Co. owes its general contractor $3.4 million for a portion of the work on the construction project, according to a claim filed in Bartow County Superior Court. Toyo officials say they are withholding payment because they are dissatisfied with James N. Gray Co.’s construction work. The amount owed covers a specific period and includes amounts owed to subcontractors. Because Toyo has not paid the amount owed the Lexington, Ky.-based company, most of Gray’s subcontractors have also not been paid, including Bartow Paving Co., which filed a $324,000 lien against Toyo March 1. Toyo and Gray are trying to resolve their differences, officials said, but neither side will discuss specifics.
“Judge in Metro case may clamp down on witnesses”: In St. Louis, a judge has ordered lawyers to propose a procedure to control witness communications with the news media in the controversial, multimillion-dollar suit over cost overruns on Metro’s eight miles of light-rail extension. St. Louis County Presiding Judge Carolyn C. Whittington told attorneys for Metro and the Cross County Collaborative on Friday that a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article in January quoting the extension’s former project manager had upset her, and had appeared to be “a clear attempt to try the case in the paper.”
Attorneys for the Collaborative denied accusations by lawyers for Metro that they had leaked to the press a confidential memo of an informal meeting they had with the former project manager, Willie Noble, at a restaurant in December. The Post-Dispatch interviewed Noble, the former project manager now working in Charlotte, N.C., who alleged that higher-ups at Metro had been informed of all developments and problems regarding the light-rail extension. The extension is late and more than $132 million over its $550 million budget. Metro has alleged fraud against the contractors.
The Collaborative consisted of Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade and Douglas; Jacobs Civil; STV; and Kwame Building Group. They are seeking $17 million in a counterclaim for money they say Metro still owes them. Whittington has set the trial for Metro’s lawsuit for January 2007. Roger Edgar, an attorney for the Collaborative, denied that anyone from his law firm had contacted the Post-Dispatch or provided the memo of its meeting with Noble to the newspaper. Edgar said Larry E. Salci, Metro’s chief, has repeatedly accused his clients of fraud in local and national news outlets, and in construction magazines and journals. A prior post about this project and dispute appeared here (9th item) in August 2004.
“Family Of Man Killed On The Job Set To File Lawsuit”: Overcome with grief, Dawnn Duncan can hardly speak. On Monday, she had to bury her father Tony, six days after he was killed at a Brooklyn construction site. Investigators say he was doing excavation work here on Ocean Parkway March 7th when the concrete wall of an adjacent building collapsed, burying him. The Duncan family says the accident happened because the property owner and contractors were negligent. The Department of Buildings says the proper permits for the work were never obtained. Prior posts on this tragedy appeared here (2nd item) and here (8th item).
“Reilly’s vow of silence on the Big Dig”: An editorial in one of the Boston Herald’s publications comments on the consensual “gag” imposed upon himself by Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly as he investigates alleged fraud in the Big Dig project [prior post about this appeared here (3rd item).]
More than a year ago, Attorney General Tom Reilly took upon himself responsibility for recovering some of the billions of dollars in cost overruns for the Big Dig project. There were reasons to endorse the move, since Reilly’s office had the staff and the tools needed to get to the bottom of complicated Big Dig contracts. But there were also reasons to be skeptical, both practical — would his pursuit of a cash settlement interfere with a possible criminal investigation? — and political — would his campaign for governor interfere with his cash recovery efforts?…
According to the Boston Herald, Reilly has agreed to an unusual “gag clause” covering his investigation of leaks in the Big Dig tunnels. A clause in a $150,000 contract with a firm hired by Reilly to report on the impact of the leaks on the project says that data on the leaks may not be divulged without the written consent of Bechtel Parsons Brinkerhoff, the Mass. Turnpike Authority and Reilly’s office.
Bechtel, the contractor that bears the greatest responsibility for the overruns that ballooned the Big Dig’s costs to $14.6 billion, keeps everything secret as a matter of corporate self-interest. The Pike Authority, which has been criticized from the floor of U.S. Senate to the streets of Boston for fudging the Big Dig books, is almost as secretive. If you’re going to give these two outfits a veto over the release of information important to the public, you might as well pack the consultant’s report in concrete and dump it in Boston Harbor…
As far as we know, the “gag clause” doesn’t apply to Reilly’s cost recovery efforts. We hope an accounting is forthcoming. Without it, people will assume the attorney general is following in the path of a long line of governors who have done their best to sweep the mismanagement of the Big Dig under the rug.
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