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Buffalo Schools: Sleeping Giant or Giant Mess?by Jamie Moses and Peter Koch |
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All eyes were on Buffalo Public Schools superintendent James A. Williams. “I am the CEO of a $1.7 billion operation.” He paused to allow the weight of that to sink in. Unfortunately, the fact didn’t register much on the hundred or so folks who had gathered for the free breakfast at the Polish Cadets Hall on Grant St. Standing in the center of the room in a smart-fitting brown suit, and looking very much like a retired NFL linebacker, Williams scanned the crowd hunched over their waffles and coffee and gave it another shot, punctuating his words by slowly jabbing two beefy fingers in the air. “A $700 million school budget and $1 billion schools building project. That’s $1.7 billion.”
The gathering of what looked to be mostly low-wage earners, unemployed, retired neighborhood residents and a tiny sprinkling of teachers and professionals was unmoved. The billion-dollar figure was too far out of reach to discuss its potential meaning, and they wanted to take this opportunity to ask the superintendent questions closer to their personal interests. So Williams just moved smoothly forward, fielding dozens of questions.
Williams is an excellent speaker, knows how to handle a crowd, and has a lot of folksy stories that are very moving to parents–even if it’s obvious he’s told them many times before. He gives a sense of “fresh ideas” that people embrace. For example, only days earlier Artvoice and Channel 7 hosted a mayoral debate where candidates were asked about Buffalo’s rising rate of illiteracy. All the candidates, Brown, Helfer, Einach and Flynn, offered solutions that involved getting parents into the school buildings and educating them so that they could better help their children with their homework. Williams, on the other hand, told the story of a man who sat with his boy every single night at the kitchen table while he did his homework. “Every night! Every night, that child came home and every night his father sat down with him until he finished his homework. And that man was completely and totally illiterate. You don’t need to be smarter than your kids in doing schoolwork. You need to sit with them and show them that you care.” The mesmerized room nodded in enthusiastic approval.
But thinking about Williams in the context of the recent mayoral election illuminates a perplexing problem. Williams wasn’t necessarily boasting when he cited his CEO position, he was making a point. The Buffalo Public Schools and the Joint Schools Construction project are unquestionably in control of the biggest chunk of money by far in this entire region. Far more than the less than $300 million the City of Buffalo controls. More than Erie County. Far more than Delphi, Bass Pro, Seneca Casinos, GM, Ford, the Bills, the Sabres, the Albright-Knox, the Buffalo Zoo or any other area institution you’d care to name. So why is it so little attention is paid to the people controlling this staggering sum of money?
Out of 164,244 registered voters in Buffalo, only 13,139 people voted in the 2004 School Board election. And in 2001 only 5,526 people voted, less than three percent of registered voters. Ralph Hernandez, representing the West District, was elected to the School Board in 2004 with only 308 votes. What does that say? We don’t care?
And what about this billion dollar schools building project? Let’s repeat that – $1 billion. That money is being spent on Buffalo. Hello? The contracted ten-year project manager is LP Ciminelli Construction. Not to disparage the many people working at Ciminelli—there are probably several fine people there—but maybe we should keep in mind that this company is owned by Louis Ciminelli, the same guy who, before he was nudged out as chairman of the New York Power Authority, put together the generous $1.3 billion relicensing package for Niagara County while screwing Buffalo and Erie County with an offer of $2 million a year. The same Louis Ciminelli who is vice chairman of the power-hungry Buffalo Niagara Partnership. The same Louis Ciminelli who had a web page bio implying he graduated from four colleges when in fact he never graduated from any of them.
Frankly, no one cares about Lou Ciminellli, and this story is not about him. But the point is that no one should be inspired to feel that our $1 billion is automatically in trustworthy hands simply because LP Ciminelli is in charge of the building project. Over a year ago, two Artvoice writers attended a School Board meeting where the Joint Schools Construction project was discussed. Afterwards a reporter from a radio station stopped us in the hallway and asked who the guy from Ciminelli was who was answering all the questions about the project. “He wasn’t from Ciminelli. That was Roy Rogers, chief operating officer for the Buffalo Schools District.” “You’re kidding? He sounded like he worked for Ciminelli. All he did was dodge every question.”
AN UNSETTLING CORRESPONDENCE
An accusation that has been circulating around the construction trade for the past several months is that because Ciminelli has a fixed price contract to build the schools, they’ve been reducing the scope of what they’re putting in each building in order to maintain their profit. A few weeks ago, School Board member Ralph Hernandez dropped off a large envelope to Artvoice containing several email correspondences and some letters alleging that Ciminelli Construction was doing a less than stellar job. The following are some excerpts of those correspondences:
From: Frank Sandarelli, Jr.
Supervisor of Building Construction for Buffalo Public Schools (recently resigned)
To: Bill Mahoney, Project Manager at LP Ciminelli:
July 14, 2004: Sandarelli, writing to Mahoney
“Your staff seems shocked at times when I am asked to review a supposedly finished product, and I reject it. I am not rejecting finished products to make people’s lives miserable, I am rejecting completed work because it either didn’t meet a generally accepted standard, or the specification wasn’t met. Excuses, to date, from Ciminelli have been numerous. For instance, I have been told, ‘This is going to put this company under if we don’t accept concessions.’ Very weak, Bill.”
March 30, 2005: Sandarelli, writing to Mahoney
“The BPS will expect LP Ciminelli to respond ‘in writing’ as to the corrective actions that will be performed in order to satisfy your obligation to the BPS.
Bill, you may want to refer back to the July 14, 2004 letter in which I expressed identical quality issues! Nine months have passed and I would’ve expected that conversations of this nature would not still be topics of discussion! Evidently, they still are, and as past history shows, probably will continue to be. It’s a shame!”
August 2, 2005: Sandarelli, writing to Obi Ifedigbo, Asst. Superintendent of Plant Services, Buffalo Public Schools
“There was no confusion on the plant department’s side. The problem was Ciminelli felt that we didn’t buy it in our scope of work. This was not true, as the specifications clearly indicated the level of finish… Also, just walk thru School 31. It is deplorable! By the way, I spent 80 hours rewriting the specifications for Phase 2. Why are they claiming there is an issue? They were given the specifications back in December of ’04. This is how they begin to start screwing us. It will only get worse!”
September 14, 2005:
Building Engineer Charles Weed (PS 97), writing to Arnold Cubins, LP Ciminelli
“I am getting very frustrated. I keep writing and calling, but nothing gets done. Ciminelli did come two weeks ago and corrected some things, but then left without doing anything else… I think it would be good public relations if I heard from Ciminelli on a regular basis, or even once in a blue moon, just to ask me how things are going. It seems that I have to fire off these emails when I get too frustrated. The bottom line is that you never hear from anyone when they leave [the job site], with work unfinished, I might add.”
The correspondences from Frank Sandarelli, which were numerous, were particularly forceful and well written. We phoned the Buffalo School offices several times to speak with him directly but kept being connected to a phone that just rang and rang. Finally, a friend in the construction business told us he no longer worked there and gave us his cell phone number. (Maybe someone at the BPS will read this and know now that he’s gone.)
“I resigned my position in July” Sandarelli said. “When I talked to Ralph Hernandez, I had already submitted my letter of resignation. I left because with the Joint Schools project there were just way too many players.
“I was just the guy in the field, you know, that’s all I was. I inspected the jobs. If there were problems I would bring it to the attention of the architects. My job was just to verify the adherence of the document specifications. If I found a flaw or found an accepted standard wasn’t met, I brought it to the table, verbally, in letter form or in photographs. That’s as far as I could take it.
“A lot of the issues in my letters to Bill Mahoney are typical construction issues. Ciminelli has been around many, many years and they’re a reputable company. I’m sure they’ll address the issues. But one problem is that the school board doesn’t have enough knowledgeable staff. With construction you have to have a vast knowledge and it’s difficult to find anyone who is proficient in all the needs of a construction project.
“The new superintendent, he’s new to this. There’s Roy Rogers, who is more in tune with the financing. But this whole project is different. It isn’t like the School Board procured or sold a bond for the project. It’s a very complex project and I was never privy to any of that financial stuff. But when it was a School Board project and we internally sold the bond, and bid the job, there was a lot more transparency.
“You also have to keep in mind that this project was designed to get a lot of the city’s non-working work force into an employed existence. When you’re a union contractor, you come up through an apprentice program. As you gain experience you progress from apprentice to the journeyman stage and work that for many years. Then you move up to the master stage. You can’t just grab a local non-union workforce and expect master craftsmanship. It takes many years to develop that. That’s why they call it ‘skilled trades.’ So there’s going to be some growing pains in a project like that.
“Maybe my expectations were a little too high,” Sandarelli concluded. “But if you were having work done at your own home, of course, you would strive for the best. And that’s all I was trying to do for School District, is give them the best that I could give them.”
SCHOOL BOARD VOICES
While the public may seem to lack interest in the Joint Schools Construction project, School Board members we spoke to are deeply concerned.
“I’m probably the most vocal critic of Ciminelli on the Joint Schools Construction Board,” said at-large School Board member Chris Jacobs, who also sits on the JSCB. “At the majority of the board meetings, I’d say ninety percent, the talk is about minority goals. Not to diminish the importance of minority goals, but rarely is there any discussion on the quality of the construction. We need a sub-committee just to talk about construction.
“Frankly, I’m very concerned,” he continued. “The project is designed to achieve some grandiose goals beyond just the construction, but first and foremost we’re here to build quality schools for our kids. It’s not first and foremost a jobs program or anything else.
“On the whole, people are happy with the product in Phase I. We want to make sure that all the schools are to that level, and I’m concerned that we are risking not getting that.
“In the past couple of years, Ciminelli cast a lot of the talent out of their organization and I think that they are now back to being a basic contractor. They are working on a very complex model put together by people who thought outside the box, but those people are no longer at the company. Now Ciminelli is really grappling with how they can move this forward. They may be in over their heads. That’s a real concern I have. I feel that they don’t want to admit that they’re struggling. I want to get them back on track, because I view it as a partnership.
“The school district has a fixed price contract with Ciminelli, where they agree to provide what is within the scope of the contract. How they go about doing that is up to them. But they can’t come back and change-order us to death [driving up the cost]. So we are in some ways protected. The problem is that they are going on the other side and reducing the scope of the work they are doing [which maintains profit]. Sometimes if it’s a minor thing like changing the type of tiling we’re using or something like that, fine. But when we start carving out significant portions of a project then we’ve got to worry. That’s what I’m worried about in Phase II. I’m worried we’re going to be disappointed.
“If you look at the schools in Phase I, it’s impressive what we did in terms of renovation and historic restoration. My goal is to make sure that is what we get in Phase II.
“But there are problems with us making sure that we get the maximum we can from Ciminelli with funds that were allocated. I wanted an additional person on our side to represent the board, someone with construction experience to make sure we’re getting everything possible. The board had somebody who we wanted, Steve Rollins, but Ciminelli balked and threatened to sue us if we brought him on because Rollins had worked for Ciminelli in the past.
“Nevertheless, I wanted Steve to be an oversight person. Roy Rogers is a finance person not a construction person. So when we sit at the table it’s an unfair balance between Ciminelli and us because we don’t have somebody who can talk turkey on specific things in regards to construction. Steve is also somebody who understands the complicated, convoluted state reimbursement formula for construction and how to make sure we maximize it and squeeze every dollar out of the state and get as much as we possibly can into the schools. That’s not easy to do and someone like Steve Rollins is great because he knows that, he knows the Joint Schools, he helped design the Project Labor Agreement. So we need someone like that.
“Certainly Ciminelli has challenges–the cost of petroleum products has risen dramatically. I share the frustration with Ciminelli. I want them to succeed. I want these schools done. I don’t want to miss this opportunity with the high state reimbursement. This is the only place in the country doing something like this and we’ve got to try and get this back on track. And hopefully Ciminelli can be a partner in it.”
Although Jacobs and Ralph Hernandez may not always agree, they do agree on the need for a construction expert to represent the District.
Two days after talking to Jacobs, Artvoice talked to Ralph Hernandez.
“No one on the School Board really understands construction,” said Hernandez. “And neither does the Joint Schools Construction Board, who has been designated to oversee the operation of the project. I just introduced a resolution on that front because the JSCB is operating with only six members. They don’t even have the full charter number, which is seven. So maybe we need to fill that vacancy with a construction person who represents us.”
AV: Let’s clarify this: Ciminelli Construction is the project manager and they subcontract out any work that needs to be done. The JSCB deals with Ciminelli, and then reports to the School Board–and you’re on the School Board?
RH: “Correct.”
AV: But you’re not on the JSCB?
RH: “No, I’m not.”
AV: So as a school board member, you don’t have any direct communication with Ciminelli? All your communication runs through the JSCB?
RH: “What limited communication there is. It’s very limited. Roy Rogers reports to us. He works for the superintendent. He’s responsible for making sure the inspectors are out working on behalf of the district. If there are problems, I guess he’s responsible.”
AV: How qualified is he in construction projects? Does he have an engineering degree or history as a construction project manager?
RH: “I haven’t seen any credentials on him whatsoever, but my understanding is that the inspectors who are out there don’t feel he’s qualified for that position, period.”
AV: The way the JSC deal is structured, ninety-four percent of the funding is coming from the state, leveraged by six percent private investment. Where is that private investment coming from?
RH: “I don’t know. That’s entirely Ciminelli’s business.”
AV: So as a School Board member you don’t talk to Ciminelli. You have no one on the School Board in your negotiations who’s a qualified construction engineer.
And you have no idea where the private funding comes from. Correct?
RH: “That’s correct. There are some public funds that we draw down from the state. If we draw down the $300 million for Phase II, the money obviously isn’t used immediately; it’s spent as the project progresses.”
AV: Where does that money sit?
RH: “Nobody knows. There are two banks, and nobody knows the interest of the money—where it goes, if it’s applied anywhere, we don’t see any financial data on any of that, and we’re supposed to.”
AV: That kind of money has got to be drawing substantial interest.
RH: “Absolutely. But we have no numbers on that and we don’t even know if the district’s entitled to any of that money.”
AV: What is the opportunity to change the structure of this arrangement?
RH: “We need to change the composition of the JSCB. When the board was created by the Common Council and the Board of Education, they created it with seven members—the mayor, the comptroller, two (school) board members, the superintendent, a councilmember and one member that would serve from the NYS Regents. The state opted not to sit on the JSCB, because they felt there was a conflict. So that became a vacant seat and has remained vacant since 1998, so they’ve been operating with six members since 1998, in violation of their own charter. We want to fill that vacancy with another (school) board member or someone who represents us, which means we’d have four members on that board out of seven, then we’d have influence. Right now we only have three, the superintendent, and two board members—Chris Jacobs and Betty Jean Grant.”
AV: What is the racial composition of the school board?
RH: “Five African Americans (Florence Johnson, Betty Jean Grant, Vivian Evans, Janique Curry and Dr. Catherine Collins), one Hispanic (Ralph Hernandez) and three Whites (Jack Coyle, Chris Jacobs and Don Van Every).”
AV: Chris Jacobs has said ninety percent JSCB discussion is about minority goals.
“In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen in the past year and a half as a board member, the way the JSCB operates is ‘Let’s focus on the minority situation,’ and then nobody knows what else is going on around here. But there’s huge things going on around here. There are serious questions that they should be asking. I should not be submitting data like these Sandarelli emails to the School Board. This should’ve been taken care of by the JSCB, that’s their job.
AV: Is Roy Rogers the person who signs a change-order?
RH: “Correct. They bring all their change-orders in, and we don’t know what they are; we’re part-time board members. None of us are engineers, so we don’t have the capacity to figure out whether or not we’re being taken for a ride on a change-order or not. We’re just not equipped for that, we don’t have that kind of expertise. So when they put this stuff before us, and they give us whatever rationale they want to give us, who’s going to step into that arena and dispute it? Who’s going to debate those issues, without having the kind of knowledge that’s required? You just aren’t going to make it. So a lot of the board members just don’t say anything at all. The administration says we need to approve it, so that’s what we do. We get a list with a number, and then we vote on it in our agenda. That’s it. We don’t know any of the specifics, and we never have. Hopefully that’ll change.”
CONSTRUCTION VOICES:
“Jacobs is right, the Joint Schools Construction Board doesn’t really know how to question Ciminelli about construction,” said Steve Rollins, contruction manager at Centerstone Development. “I’m an ex executive officer of the Ciminelli Construction company. So I was recruited as a candidate by Chris Jacobs and others on the board to represent them. We talked, and after I expressed interest in the assignment they voted unanimously to put me under contract to come in and act as their representative to interface with Ciminelli and help them through complex construction issues that they didn’t understand.
“I had the support of everyone on the Joint Schools Board including the mayor, who thought I was an excellent candidate. In fact, the mayor instructed Roy Rogers, who is the chief operating officer for the District, to get me under contract. Roy dragged his feet for so long that the mayor actually had to send Mr. Rogers a letter directing him formally to hire me. So Roy had no choice then. He contacted me and asked if I could write up a contract. I said ‘you want me to write up my own contract?’ He said, ‘yes, I don’t have time.’ The day that I delivered the contract to Roy was the same day that Ciminelli’s attorneys, Hodgson and Russ, advised the city’s attorneys that if they hired me Ciminelli would sue the city and would sue me. The reason given was that it was a conflict of interest given that I have ‘proprietary’ information about the Buffalo Schools program.
“Jim McGavern, the School District’s attorney, was asked to review my separation agreement from Ciminelli and he said there was no conflict. Any information that I would know about the Buffalo Schools Project is all public information, so McGavern determined there is no conflict. Mr. Rogers went silent on me and went underground. I never heard from him again. I did find out through Chris Jacobs that at a board meeting a month after McGavern gave his opinion, the Board voted unanimously to hire me. But they never acted upon that, and I’ve never gotten a contract offer. So it appears that Ciminelli won that round.
“Are there problems with the project? Yes. There are unresolved change-orders on Phase I. There are contractors who are owed thousands of dollars on Phase I. But they’ve used up all the money, so there isn’t any money to pay for change-orders. But Ciminelli took bids, reviewed bids in detail, and awarded contracts. Well there are gaps in their scope and now they’ve got to pay legitimate change-orders, so they’ve been ramming things down a lot of contractors’ throats. One of the best contractors in the area, Ferguson Electric, filed a lien because they’re owed money.
“But here’s the problem. There isn’t a whole lot of meat on the bone around here for these contractors, and so they depend on this school work and if they look sideways at Ciminelli, Ciminelli will punish them and they’ll get shut out. The only contractors I know who might talk about this would be those who are just so disgusted they’ve said ‘the hell with it, we’ll never bid on this project again, anyway.’”
An official of a company with a small subcontract on the Schools Project was also very critical of the Joint Schools process. He asked not to be named.
“This fixed cost thing is really just a pile of shit,” he said. “They say there’s a fixed cost and guarantee a certain caliber of workmanship, services and equipment to these schools. It’s spelled out in the specifications, so how can they change it, school after school? They’re obligated to provide equipment and systems at a certain level, period.
“But there’s a lot of money that’s loose for change-orders and cost overruns. Try to find out where that money is. Roy Rogers will not release that information to the school board. He’s been asked. This has been ongoing for over a year—cost overruns, change-orders, who authorized them and exactly what equipment and services have been provided? Roy Rogers is the one who signs off on change-orders, and the JSCB has no knowledge of them even happening. Their accountant doesn’t even have the numbers.
“And when the School Board signed off on this project with Ciminelli, it had a resolution that stated that Johnson Controls and Ronco Communications systems and equipment would be the standard protocol for all schools. Johnson and Ronco received every contract, and have received, every contract in Phase I–and continuing.
“U&S Services, who is Johnson Controls’ competitor, will give you a wealth of information about the systems that they [Johnson] are installing, which are not up to date—their backbone protocol for communications is outdated, it doesn’t communicate with other manufacturers’ equipment––so it’s very much proprietary. We told the school board, ‘there’s nothing really wrong with the idea of standardization because you want some commonality, but these contractors are setting you up so you can’t go anyplace else. You can’t get competitive bidding on service contracts. When you have a problem with something—which you will—there’s only one guy now who’s gonna come out and help you, and you know what they’re going to charge you for that?
“Eventually, we got the standardization resolution overturned with the help of Ralph Hernandez, but it didn’t stop them, because they saw that coming. What they did was ensure the specifications remain Johnson Controls and Ronco Communications equipment, at least on the communications and security systems. It’s a tightly written specification built around those guys.
“Now they make purchases off of what is considered a state contract, but they’re still buying Johnson Controls and Ronco systems and equipment. What they’re doing is saying they’re making it more competitive for other contractors, like electricals, to bid the installation of these systems. So they say, ‘Oh, we’ve got more contractors who can bid on these systems, now it’s more competitive.” But, they’re still funneling the same money and they’re still buying the same systems from the same two contractors. So they circumvented the standardization by getting these guys to provide, at their chosen pricing, these systems on state contracts. $8 million was just awarded Ferguson Electric to install a Ronco Communications media retrieval system for Buffalo Schools, and we didn’t even hear about this job until it was already sold. And this is the sort of thing that goes on. Plus, they’re closed bids. They’re not public bids, even though this is mostly public money, and we will pay for it eventually.
“The schools right now are looking to do the same thing with all of the electronic white boards that they’re going to install in all of their schools. Huge, multi-million dollar contracts. This has the same flavor as the media retrieval systems—it very likely will go to one company like Ronco, and nobody else will even know it was bid. They’re buying off state contracts. Roy Rogers will have somebody sign off on it, and we won’t even see it.”
“Now they’re reducing the size of the jobs so small electrical contractors can bid, like Goodwin Electric, who just won PS 91. Goodwin could’ve never gotten a job before. In the past the jobs offered were so large only Ferguson Electric and Frey Electric could get them, because nobody else could get the bonding and loans for multi-school projects.
“CIR Electrical struggled for eight schools. CIR picked up a contract for eight schools, but the other small contractors could never do it, that’s why they’re reducing the size. Now they’re bidding out one or two-school packages. So it’s more competitive for the electrical companies, but it doesn’t change anything on what’s been going on from the get-go with the equipment specifications and systems. The same group of people is still getting all the money.
“One insider suggests the school district may be finding ways to even things up. “They just put the strong arm on Johnson Controls to cough up $80,000 for the All High Stadium project. These people may now have to pay to play.”
LP CIMINELLI
On November 22, Artvoice received a call from Kevin Schuler, Senior Director of Public Relations for LP Ciminelli to set up an interview with Executive VP Eugene Partridge. Schuler, a veteran of Albany politics for many years under Tom Reynolds and Nick Spano, had been VP of Government Affairs (lobbyist) for the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, then moved briefly to public relations/lobbying firm Mercury. Apparently, Ciminelli has now hired him to serve as their lobbyist. Schuler and Partridge were quite hospitable. They explained the company’s position on the Ralph Hernandez files.
“There are members of the district that have opinions on the work based upon what has been the district’s standards,” said Partridge. “There may be a difference between the drawings and specifications that were written by a licensed design professional vs. a standard that the district has been trying to maintain and uphold for years. If the architect who designed the project wasn’t given the standards to design to, then he’s going to design to the industry standards and his own standards.”
“There were things on the Hernandez documents that supposedly Ciminelli didn’t deliver on that were really outside the scope of work,” said Schuler.
“And there was some work identified by the district that we couldn’t figure out a way to fund, so we didn’t do it,” added Partridge. “Those were never part of the original contracts. I walked through all of the information that was attached to Mr. Hernandez’s memo, and that documentation contains a mixture of what we would consider ‘punchlist’ work—that’s work that needs to be done, and is done by now—warranty work and a list of portions of the work that weren’t identified in the documents, and to date, we haven’t figured out a way to pay for them.
“People don’t really understand construction and want to take some shots at it, and really when you take into account all the construction that’s been done, it doesn’t cost the taxpayers anything,” said Schuler. “What concerns us is that Albany reads the clips. We’re trying to build support for similar legislation further down the road. Syracuse is trying to get a program like this off the ground.”
“It’s difficult to get everybody to understand what a complex delivery this really is here,” said Partridge. “And what we’re jeopardizing by all this bad press about the program is its continuance. What other means is there for the district to reconstruct the schools? They don’t have one, there isn’t one, not anywhere in the country. This has not been done before. It’s also the reason why the state education department and the state comptroller’s office are looking so closely at this project, to understand how it was done so it can be replicated in other cities.”
“My sense is that people think there’s some mystery to it [the project],” said Schuler, “and maybe it’s just because it is this big, $1 billion program.”
HEVESI TAKES A PEEK
Finally, Artvoice was able to speak with State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, whose office is in the midst of an audit of the Joint Schools Contruction Project.
“I’m limited in what I can say because the audit is currently being performed–but it’s been underway for a while. Audits generally take about six months, and then we have to give the target of the audit a chance to respond. I initiated the audit. Why? Wherever there is state money, any institution, any private organization, any expenditure of large public funds, even if it’s a charity, we have authority to audit.
“The schools construction is a phased program and there are a number of stages that have to be approved by the legislature,” Hevesi continued. “So they’ve completed the first stage, and we’re auditing whether they’ve met goals. But I can’t comment on what we’re finding. First of all, I don’t know the answers with any specificity. I direct auditors where they should go and what our strategy is, but once they do an audit whatever they find, they find. So they will complete the audit and we will bring it back to, in this case, Ciminelli and any others who were involved in the program.
“If they’ve done well, we will say they’ve done well. And if there are minor problems, we’ll say so. And if there’s corruption, we’ll expose that to prosecutors. Because this is a construction project that is in phases, we’ll move from one phase to the next until they’ve completed the work satisfactorily, and the legislators are using us as a sounding board as to what has to be changed before moving to the next phase. We’re not looking to kill the project; obviously, it’s critically important. But if there’s a flaw we need to find it. But I can’t comment on the process—I’ve probably already said more than I should.”
To be continued…
To respond, mail Artvoice or send an e-mail to editorial@artvoice.com.
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