Roosevelt Boulevard Sewer Contractor Was Debarred From Working With Dade County After Being Accused of Bribing A Utility Inspector
Who is John Chaney?
According to FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation) the alleged drunk driver and cop-briber is not one of the contractors working on the Roosevelt Boulevard construction project. Not only is FDOT lying to us, but interestingly enough for Key Westers, Chaney’s involvement is in laying water/sewer pipe, a portion of the project that is locally funded with 4.3 Million dollars of the City’s money.
This affair began like a police thriller. It was 2:30 a.m. Deputy Sheriff Juan Martin-Reyes was engaged in a high-speed chase behind a black Hummer. They were passing cars at 110 mph along the bridges of the Florida Keys heading toward Islamorada. When the Hummer finally came to a stop the irate driver allegedly threatened the officer and when that failed offered a $20,000 bribe. In the police report, Deputy Reyes states, I told John that was not too much money, to which he replied to me, ‘How about $30,000?’”
The Hummer driver is John Q. Chaney. That night he claimed to be in charge of the 41 Million dollar Roosevelt Boulevard project.
In the morning, both the Key West Citizen and the Miami Herald would report on their front pages that a Roosevelt Boulevard subcontractor had been arrested for DUI and charged with bribery of an officer.
But the story died a few days later with an explicit correction by FDOT spokesperson, Dean Walters, who emphasized that, “Mr. Chaney has absolutely nothing to do with the construction of the Boulevard.”
So we asked ourselves here at KWTN, why did he make up that story? Well he didn’t. Chaney is President of State Site Development, Inc., a company that is clearly listed in FDOT documents as a subcontractor that has laid underground pipe on the Boulevard. He is also closely connected to J S & L Site, Inc. a company that has been paid over $9 Million for utility work on the Boulevard. Chaney and his wife created J S & L in 2004. Chaney was on the board of directors until 2010. Since 2012 his wife has been the sole officer listed in official documents.
We can only speculate as to why FDOT decided to cover up Chaney’s involvement. In 2000 Chaney and his wife and their company Lijo Inc. were at the center of a scandal that cost Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department some 3.3 Million dollars. 4 Million dollars worth of sewer work had to be dug out just a few months after it had been installed. Leaky joints, pipe buried too close to the surface, and other defects were blamed on Bruce Gondeck an independent building inspector who was moonlighting for Chaney. Gondeck admitted to having received $25,000 from Lijo and the use of a townhouse owned by Chaney and his wife while employed by CAP Engineering as an independent inspector of Lijo’s sewer work. According to the September 11, 2000 Miami-Dade Inspector General Report on the matter, Lijo Inc. was later debarred from contracting with Miami –Dade for a two-year period.
So, on November 16, 2012 there he was again, this time trying to bribe a government official, Deputy Reyes, who we hope made a name for himself by turning down the $30,000 bribe. And we have FDOT going out of its way to cover it up.
So what else is going on? So far we know FDOT estimated the costs for the project at around $26 million. We reviewed the bid submittals side by side and found line items are sometimes as far apart as ten times more for the same work, but in the end, all three bidders mysteriously agreed about one thing: the job should pay in the neighborhood of 41 Million dollars; 15 Million more than FDOT’s official estimate.
The difficulty with investigating the Boulevard construction project is that FDOT is about as forthcoming and transparent as that infamous opaque green screen that bars the lethargic work site from the scrutiny of angry drivers. Many of our requests for documents have been left unanswered.
Apparently even FDOT’s own internal audits tend to disappear. Matt Dixon of the Florida Times-Union, a newspaper based in Jacksonville, reported that a 2010 audit by the FDOT’s Contract Administration Office (CAO) was buried after analysts found potential bid rigging, “sham” bids, and collusion among road building contractors across the state.
When the audit was reviewed by FDOT’s Inspector General’s Office, the recommendation was “staff reduction and office reorganization” at the CAO. In other words – fire the troublemakers. The reports, wrote Dixon, “Never saw the light of day.”
FDOT claims that the construction project on the Boulevard is “right on schedule”, but we’ve been asking to see the mandatory monthly scheduling reports for over two months to no avail. The contract for the project requires the contractor to submit monthly reports and diagrams giving detailed information on the advancement of the work. So far we have only gotten two such reports, the most recent one is dated November 29, 2012. We were notified by FDOT that it had been “rejected”.
So, what is really going on out on the Boulevard? Stay tuned.