Over one billion dollars after the completion of the Dan Ryan Expressway on Chicago's South Side, federal investigators have siezed the business records of one Minority Business Enterprise proved a sham front in a recent negotiated guilty plea entered in US District Court in Chicago.

     NWACO reportedly earlier that Chicago's Walsh Construction built both the Dan Ryan project as well as other leading heavy & highway road building, commercial office building & CTA multi-family highrise homes around the City of Chicago & surburbs.

     The Chicago Sun Times (06/28/09) reported the former that former Chicago Bears offensive lineman Ron Harper plead guilty for his role in allowing a majority Bensenville landscaping contractor--Monahan Landscaping--to use his Rohar Minority Business Enterprise certification to grab Chicago Public School set aside contracts. Harper earned $80,000 for his trouble & must serve probation.

     With Harper again running interference for the feds, Rohar's $22Million sub-contract work on the Dan Ryan Expressway will be under scrutiny.

     The Chicago Sun Times reports that, following the April, 2009 indictment of Castle Construction for failing to give minority subcontractors their share of business on the construction of a $20Million fire station and of other CTA train- and bus-washing facilities, other leading Chicago general contractors were back charged millions of dollars for short-changing minority contractors on several Cook County Public Building Commission projects. The Public Building Commission constructs police stations, fire stations & public libraries & then leases these buildings back to the respective governmental agencies without so much as a taxpayer referendum.  

     What may interest the US Attorney's Office & the FBI is whether contractors secured these public projects contingent upon hiring MBE, WBE & DBE sub-contractors & then failed to honor negotiated contracts or kicked MBE contractors off of job site over performance concerns. In one familiar scenario, spurned sub-contractors are forced to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees to convince general contractors to honor these contracts without the assistance of governmental agencies who may decline to recognize the MBE's contractual relationship. In another scenario, small sub-contractors are forced off of construction projects, lacking requisite cash flow to pay employees & equipment vendors while awaiting government payments trickling down from general contractors. The former O'Hare International Airport private landscaping contractor--Zapeda Construction--was forced to re-organize in bankruptcy court after rapidly growing in to the heavy & highway construction business beyond the pace of government payments & Lawndale Bank credit lines.

     To paraphrase the late US Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-IL), “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money."

 

Mark Arnold Fredrickson

President

Northwest Area Citizens Organization

 

This blogger recently audited a leading insurance company's construction payout to Walsh Construction for an architecturally insignificant building which overlooks Walsh's completion of the structurally & financially-challenged Millenium Park underground parking structure.