In Colorado there has been little notice that the storied multi-billion dollar department in charge of the state’s transportation needs, CDOT, has evolved into little more than a massive piggy bank for former employees who have set up consulting firms to perform the jobs that CDOT used to perform itself.
When the State Auditor did a Performance
Audit on CDOT it found that 80 of the 84 consultant contracts it looked at had
serious flaws including “unapproved consultants labor rates, contracts without
proper approvals and contract terms that did not comply with state
requirements.” Yet in 2019 another quarter billion dollars will have been
squandered on consultants by CDOT. A total revamping of how CDOT performs, or
fails to perform, its basic functions needs to be undertaken.
Even more scandalous is the
anti-competitive practices undertaken by CDOT pursuant to a 2013 change in the
law whereby instead of requiring low bid for projects over $50,000 they are awarded
on the so-called “best value” method of Design Build (DB) or Construction
Manager/ General Contractor (CMGC). Since there is no clear public criteria for
determining who wins a contract under this system it has become a cesspool of
potential corruption. Not surprisingly it has led to only two firms controlling
over 80 percent of the market — Kraemer North America (a subsidiary of the
Japanese mega firm Obayashi Corporation) and Kiewit Corporation out of Omaha,
Nebraska. Experts estimate that the CMGC method is costing over 30 percent more
than of what it would cost under low bid competition and in turn costing
Colorado taxpayers billions of dollars every year.
The change in the 2013 law was comically
called the “Keep Jobs In Colorado Act.” Instead the act has resulted in
destroying or badly damaging Colorado firms who previously dominated the
competitive bid process. While the Colorado press has largely ignored the
scandal at CDOT it has not escaped the purview of federal authorities. The
national Engineering News-Record on November 29, 2019, announced that the
United States Department of Justice had “launched a multipronged effort to root
out bid-rigging, price fixing and other forms of collusion in construction and
other sectors on local, state and federal government funded contracts.” There
is now a strike force which is comprised of prosecutors in Washington as well
as 13 U.S. Attorneys offices in addition to FBI investigators and personal from
four inspector general offices.
CDOT Director Shoshana Lew
One of the key U.S. Attorney Offices is
that of Colorado. One of the items that possibly brought Colorado onto the
radar screen was the purported statement by a key member of CDOT. The high
ranked CDOT official allegedly stated that the $20 million contract for repair
of the Highway 36 sinkhole should not be competitively low bid because CDOT
could not guarantee, under such a method, that it be awarded to their friends
at Kraemer.
Federal authorities are apparently aware
that bid rigging has expanded far beyond various contractors illegally getting
together and now may involve state agencies.
In looking at CDOT one of the key areas of
investigation may be “bid suppression” as a form of a collusive bidding scheme.
The “Guide to Combating Corruption & Fraud in Development Projects” notes:
“Corrupt government and procurement
officials can facilitate the bid suppression efforts (e.g. by disqualifying
other legitimate bidders during the bidding process) . . . .”
Many local contracting firms in Colorado
are increasingly upset that they are not allowed to take an actual part in
bidding for CMGC projects. They are falsely urged to apply to make it seem that
the process is legitimate and then excluded by CDOT on criteria that only
applies to massive national or international firms like Kraemer and Kiewit.
According to federal sources one of the red
lights for a corrupt bidding process is lack of transparency. Under the prior
low bid process the exact figures for all parties were available after a
contract was awarded so losing bidders could see where they fell short. When an
in-state contractor asked CDOT for a copy of the winning bid under a recent
CMGC project he was given a document with almost all of the key relevant
information redacted by CDOT as shown at right.
Federal authorities are apparently hoping
to bring a case of bid suppression that would make national news as to ensure
the greatest effect. The indictment of Shoshana Lew or other high CDOT
officials regarding the duopoly that has overtaken state construction projects
would certainly fit the bill. However, there is no present indication of
personal financial benefit by any present CDOT official, which while not
necessary in such cases, is still preferred by some federal authorities.
Regardless of federal efforts to clean up
uncompetitive bidding in Colorado, it is clear that CMGC method of awarding
projects should be suspended in Colorado until a transparent competitive system
that will save Colorado taxpayers billions of dollars is undertaken. That and
tight restrictions on consulting contracts with CDOT are both long overdue and
badly needed.
The state legislature put two proposals
before the voters this year. The first is Proposition CC which would
permanently end all Colorado Taxpayer Bill of Rights (“TABOR”) refunds and was
strongly backed by Democratic lawmakers. The other, Proposition DD, would
legalize and tax sports betting by telephone to casinos in Colorado if passed.
It has strong support among Republican legislators. It is clear that people at
the State Capitol don’t believe either proposal has sufficient merit on its own
to garner statewide support so they hope to trick you into voting for them by
misleading language and sleight of hand.
Back in 2005 under Proposition C (which
provided for a pause in TABOR refunds for a five-year period) the legislature
promised to use the money for higher education and got gullible people, like
the then University of Colorado President Hank Brown (a former Republican U.S.
Senator), to support the proposition. When it passed they, in fact, used the
money for higher education, but then they cut even more funds for higher
education from the General Fund resulting in less money overall. As Brown
bluntly stated: “They lied to me.”
Now the legislature plans to pull the same
con hoping the voting public will forget what they did last time. This time the
ballot language says it will be used to “better fund public schools, higher
education, and roads, bridges and transit with an annual independent audit to
show how the retained revenues are spent.” The annual audit will, in fact, show
that the funds will be spent for the stated purposes. The fly in the ointment
is that the legislature will then cut the General Fund for those purposes in
excess of the amount raised and spend the money any way they please. This is
exactly what they with did Proposition C almost a decade and a half ago.
The ballot language for Proposition CC also
starts out declaring: “Without raising taxes . . . .” But it does, in fact,
raise taxes but simply not tax rates. We the taxpayers pay more taxes because
you will never again get a TABOR tax refund.
Brown and former Governor Bill Owens, both
of whom supported Proposition C, have come out against Proposition CC because
they at least remembered how they were lied to 14 years ago by the legislature.
The CC Proposition has drawn opposition
editorially across the political spectrum. The Denver Post argued, inter alia,
that the proposition was incredibly unfair in that it allocates any money for
K-12 education be done on a per pupil basis which rewards the richest school
districts, like those in the Cherry Creek School District, while harming the
poorest schools in inner city Denver and Western Slope rural schools.
The more conservative Colorado Springs
Gazette based their opposition on the fact that TABOR has been a bulwark
against overspending since 1992 and is an important element on why Colorado’s
economy is ranked number 1 in the country for the last several years. If the
additional billion dollars the legislature received this year under TABOR is
not enough, the $1.7 billion it would receive over three years under
Proposition CC will also not be enough and the spending spree will just be
starting.
Regarding, Proposition DD it is beyond a
little strange that Republicans in the State House are so enthusiastic about
opening Colorado to taxed sports betting and the inevitable increase in the
state bureaucracy. If you have been watching the advertisements on television,
they are all about state water projects that will be enhanced and the fact that
the casinos will be paying the 10% tax on winnings. What a joke. The casinos
will pass the cost on to sports bettors along with at least another 10%
vigorish to cover their costs and profits. No one in their right mind would
place a bet with the government approved casinos as the amount to be taken out
of winnings will be enormous and, of course, reported right back to your
friendly IRS, but as PT Barnum said: “There is a sucker born every minute.”
The amount going to so-called “water
projects” is incredibly small and for fiscal year 2020-21 it is as follows:
Estimated
Distribution Fiscal Year
2020-21 Percentage
The ads with the clinically obese cattleman
show the support for Proposition DD by various water related entities expected
to get some of the chicken feed doled out under the proposition, but none of
them paid a penny for the ads. The ads were funded solely by in-state casinos
and out-of-state betting consortiums who are the real beneficiaries of the
proposition.
Proposition DD is opposed on the right by
the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University which wonders why we
see the need for the state government to take and run an ever-increasing number
of human vices. On the left, Coloradans for Climate Justice noted how little is
being raised for so-called water projects and it noted the phrase “water
projects” is so vague as to be virtually meaningless.
So why are the Colorado House Republicans
supporting a proposal which appears to violate many of its purported
principles. The answer is obvious. The Republican Party in Colorado is
virtually bankrupt. The support by Republicans was undoubtably in return for a
promise of funding future Republican endeavors in Colorado by Colorado casinos
and the out-of-state betting consortiums.
We guess just about everyone is for sale at
some price down at the Capitol. There is no reason we should support such
egregious conduct by voting for either Proposition CC or Proposition DD.
The Denver City Council’s agent of change and de facto
leader Candi CdeBaca is planning to have the City Council pass a bill to change
the City Charter to allow Denver voters to elect the city’s Sheriff as is the
case almost everywhere else in Colorado. Given the disaster the Sheriff’s
Department has become, the voters could not do worse than Hancock’s picks over
the last nine years. Even the union representing the Sheriff deputies believes
that such a reform is long past due.
It is difficult to catalog all of the scandals that have
befallen the office over the last few years, starting with the death of
mentally ill Michael Lee Marshall while in custody. The lawsuits alone have
cost the taxpayers a staggering amount of money, including the most recent $1.55 million
settlement paid to 15 female Sheriff deputies for “severe and unwelcome sexual
harassment by male inmates . . . fostered by the failure of the Sheriff’s Department
to take reasonable steps to prevent it.” The next big hit to the taxpayers will
be from the female inmate forced to give birth to a child alone in a Denver
jail cell.
Patrick Firman
Denver Sheriff Patrick Firman resigned effective October 14
after years of mistrust from deputies and community activists, who said that
was the price of filling the position with a man who was never the right person
for the job. “Nice guy, just wasn’t suited to be Sheriff,” said Lisa Calderón,
chief of staff for Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca.
If he were so ill suited for the job, why in the world was
he appointed by Mayor Hancock in 2015 after a long search process? Because it
was a workie, workie like everything else the Mayor does. If you think anything
is going to change as long as the Mayor gets to appoint the Sheriff, you would
be mistaken. For the interim Sheriff, Hancock has appointed a woman, Fran
Gomez, who is even more unqualified than Firman. She was briefly with the
Sheriff’s Department in the 1980s and then after years doing police work in
Aurora and Commerce City she retired. In August of last year she apparently
unretired and got the “no work” job in the Sheriff’s Department as the
“Director of Professional Standards.”
What caused the sudden hiring and incredible rise through
the ranks to the top in a little over a year? According to the Deputy Sheriff’s
union it is due to the fact she is the wife of one of Hancock’s security
detail. Hancock apparently counted on that fact being obscured by the fact she
is the “first” female Denver Sheriff of any sort and has a Hispanic last name.
Almost everyone expects that under Ms. Gomez things will go from bad to even
worse at the jail. This will be followed by the appointment of another gross
incompetent as the permanent Denver Sheriff.
Denver’s citizens really do not have to put up with this
pathetic hiring carousel for the Sheriff position. We should choose the best
candidate for Sheriff ourselves. Voters are not perfect of course, as evidenced
by the fact we have elected Michael Hancock three times. But candidates for the
office will have to at least try to convince us why they would be well-suited
for the job. We can’t do a whole lot worse than choosing as interim Sheriff a
person whose only qualification is that she is the wife of a man on the Mayor’s
security detail.
Fran Gomez
The positions directly below the Sheriff are also presently
political patronage jobs chosen by the Mayor for all of the wrong reasons. An
elected Sheriff could at least pick individuals he/she believes are best suited
to help do what is a very hard job, rather than simply to people whom a Mayor
owes a favor.
Having an elected Sheriff is only the beginning of the
process to provide some checks and balances in the City Charter over present
and future corrupt and out-of-control Mayors.
Lord Acton famously stated: “Power tends to corrupt, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It is time in Denver for a little less absolute power and a
lot less public corruption.
For the last eight-plus years the Denver City Council served
no earthly purpose whatsoever. Thirteen individual council members drew six
figure salaries, had gold plated health insurance and pension plans, along with
expensive office space and assistants, but did absolutely nothing in return
other than rubber stamp everything that a figure head Mayor and the high
density developers who controlled him, put before them.
Councilmember Candi CdeBaca: New Sheriff In Town
Citizens by the scores appeared before the City Council to
beg them for relief from the depravations of the merciless business cartels
such as the CEO driven and Orwellian named “Colorado Concern” and the rapacious
“Downtown Denver Partnership” but to no avail. The City Council even decided,
with the Mayor’s support, to essentially legalize (subject to state approval)
heroin sales to all, including children, under the rubric of caring “safe
injection sites.”
On the night of the second City Council meeting since the
2019 Spring municipal election there was nothing on the agenda which would
cause the Mayor and his staff to expect anything but the normal supine behavior
from the City Council that they had so long enjoyed. But on that night,
however, newly-elected City Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca arose to object to
utterly mundane contracts to two outside contractors who run halfway houses for
approximately 500 convicts in the city. The money for the contracts was not
even from Denver, but rather the State. CdeBaca objected to the contracts on
the grounds that the contracts were with companies whose parent entities
provided detention facilities for ICE, and the fact that she did not like
for-profit companies making money off doing services which are normally
performed by government.
She stated she did not expect support from a single other
councilperson. To the shock of one and all, a majority of the Council supported
her, and the contracts were canceled. The cancellations shook the political
insider world of Denver. If a run-of-the-mill, non-controversial contract could
be cancelled at the whim of a single councilperson, how safe are the literally
hundreds of workie-workie contracts of the Mayor’s friends and city lobbyists?
Is anybody’s piece of the municipal corporate gravy train safe?
After that meeting came the equally shocking proposal by
Council President Jolon Clark of a $43 million carbon tax on businesses to
fund, inter alia, a city climate change office. Clark and his six Council
co-sponsors are a majority on the 13-person Council. The Mayor and his lackies
at the bought-off Denver Post, howled. How dare Clark act as if the City
Council was a democratically elected legislative body. Notwithstanding the
protestations, the Finance and Governance Committee approved passing on the
proposals to the full Council by a 4 to 3 margin with CdeBaca, Hines, Gilmore
and Clark voting in favor and holdovers, Ortega, Kniech and Black voting
against.
As a practical matter we don’t support either the
cancellations of the halfway house contracts or the carbon tax on businesses,
the latter of which has to be approved by the voters even if passed at the
Council level. But far more important to us than the actual merits of these
actions is the fact that a majority of the City Council are no longer willing
to act as a doormat for a corrupt Mayor and his backers. We are hoping that the
new majority will also oppose the rape of Park Hill Golf Course by Westside
Investments, LLC., and the destruction of the Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods
by the ill-conceived and unbelievably corrupt I-70 expansion, along with
hundreds of other projects designed to destroy what was once a truly beautiful
city and its neighborhoods.
Is it possible that representative democracy is returning to
the Mile-High City at long last? We certainly hope so.
There he defiantly stood on the veranda of the public Park
Hill Golf Course, the three-time former mayor of Denver, Wellington Webb, who
is still very much a political powerhouse in the city. He had called an
emergency press conference to give out a clarion call to all citizens to save
155-acre Park Hill Golf Course as open space against the ravages of one more
rapacious high-density developer, this time Westside Investment Partners, Inc.
and its unctuous CEO and snake oil salesman Andrew Klein.
Former Mayor Wellington Webb
Webb was eloquent and passionate about a subject near and
dear to his heart. After all, as he pointed out, as mayor he had done more than
any other recent mayor for parks and open space in the City and County of
Denver. Moreover, his critique of what is happening in Denver as a result of
the Hancock administration was absolutely spot on. He accurately noted the
destruction the Hancock administration had brought and was continuing to bring
to the Queen City of the Plains. He declared:
“As our city has transformed drastically in the last few
years, we cannot allow precious open space to become another casualty of
development.
“Once developers chip away at this open space, there will be
no excuses to go after more, including our parks.
“I think open space and park space is one of our most
important commodities. If we allow this park space to be sold and redeveloped
into a concrete jungle, I believe no park in Denver is safe.
“Because what do we get in its place? Housing like that
across the street, where you walk out the door and you’re on the sidewalk with
no greenspace.”
Park Hill Golf Course
“Once this is gone, it’s gone for good. It’s gone forever —
gone for our children, our children’s children. Gone for what?
“That’s not the Denver I remember. But when I came here from
Chicago, I didn’t want Denver to be Chicago. I wanted Denver to be Denver.”
We could not have said it better ourselves. Westside’s
Founder and Managing Principal Klein tried to con Webb and the public by
asserting that he would build “affordable housing” and maybe if the neighbors
begged pathetically enough, a grocery store with a nice large parking lot. Webb
correctly understood that such claims by Klein were little more than “a trick
to garner support.” Klein will brutally rape Park Hill for every penny he can
get out of it, while buying off whatever neighborhood quislings he can to mimic
lines that he feeds them.
But there is one big problem with what Webb did, and it
shows that he doesn’t really care about what is happening to Park Hill Golf
Course or Denver as a whole. Michael Hancock and his merry band of destructive
high-density developers would not be in power today if it were not for
Wellington Webb. If Webb had given the same Park Hill speech and call to action
just a few weeks before the June mayoral runoff between Michael Hancock and
Jamie Giellis, then Jamie Giellis would be mayor and Park Hill Golf Course
would have been saved.
What is, in fact, important to Webb is that all of his
friends and acquaintances got their concessions at DIA renewed resulting in
millions in profits for them. His daughter Stephanie O’Malley was appointed
early on by Hancock to be Manager of Safety, an all-powerful position that
oversees the police, fire and sheriff departments. This post was one that she
was totally unqualified for. When her ineptitude became too embarrassing, he
gave her the odd title of simply “Mayoral Appointee” with no responsibilities
or job requirements for which she brings down a six-figure salary. She has the
ultimate no work job all thanks to his Honor and his administration.
Webb lives in Park Hill and his neighbors have been begging
him to speak out and oppose the sale for months. He has come out now when it
simply doesn’t matter anymore. The sale to Westside took place a little over a
week later for $24 million. Westside’s only problem is that in 1994 under the
Webb administration, the Clayton Trust took $2 million in return for a
conservation easement keeping the open space for perpetuity. Westside and Klein
must get the easement cancelled and the property rezoned by the City Council.
Predatory Developer Andrew Klein
Webb has urged citizens to petition, protest and pressure
the mayor and the City Council not to lift the easement and/or grant the
rezoning. He notes that incumbent council members including two of the mayor’s
strongest allies lost re-election bids largely in reaction to the excessive
development scheme in their districts.
But Webb knows the three new council members will make no
difference whatsoever in a 13-member City Council filled with corrupt lackeys
of the mayor. Going to City Council meetings in Denver is a joke. The elected
officials couldn’t care less what the public thinks. Klein and Westside would
not have paid $24 million for the property if the fix was not already in with
the mayor’s office and the City Council and Webb knows it.
Webb’s entire charade concerning Park Hill Golf Course was
done so he can tell his neighbors and friends that he did “all he could do” to
prevent the destruction of the neighborhood when, in fact, he did nothing when
it really mattered. If you live in Park Hill and see the old mayor wandering
around you may want to note to him the saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln,
that: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all
the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” He has been caught
this time in his sham defense of Park Hill Golf Course and at least some of his
neighbors now know it.
Even Wellington Webb should be ashamed of himself.
The June municipal election runoff is over and the Denver voters in their inestimable wisdom have decided they want four more years of Mayor Michael Hancock and the crony capitalists that control him. Political newbie Jamie Giellis ran a spirited campaign and the mayor had to strongly rely on the race card to besmirch her for his victory. He was greatly aided in his race baiting by The Denver Post, Colorado Springs Gazette, Channel 9, Channel 7 and Channel 4. Giellis had no money to counter the endless ads and mainstream stories calling her a bigot.
Park Hill Golf Course
Somewhat contradictorily the voters threw out Hancock’s
closest allies on the City Council, Albus Brooks and Mary Beth Susman, along
with Wayne New. The mayor’s people also tried to save Brooks by sending out a
flyer with Candi CdeBaca’s logo on it urging Latinos to vote, and that it is
“Time for this monkey to go!” [African American]. The trouble with that tactic
was that CdeBaca is both Hispanic and African American and the racist flyer was
clearly the work of the Hancock/Brooks slander machine that worked so
successfully to smear Giellis. This time it didn’t work. CdeBaca, for that and
many other reasons, probably will not be a lackey for the Hancock
administration.
There will be five new faces on the 13-member City Council
and the question is whether the new council will have any more of a backbone
than the old one to stand up to the high-density developers that run the
mayor’s office. That question will be quickly answered as it has just been
announced that the 200-acre Park Hill Golf Course will be sold to the worst of
the worst high-density developers, Westside Investments LLC, a firm that is
also planning the destruction of the Loretta Heights campus.
The seller of the property is the Clayton Trust which runs
the Clayton Early Learning Center. The Clayton Trust was set up after the death
of real estate mogul George Washington Clayton in 1899. He left his entire
estate to help orphan boys between the ages of 6 and 10 but has been a tempting
target of municipal and corporate corruption ever since. The Clayton Trust was
originally administered by the City and County of Denver but was turned over to
an independent board after city officials were caught selling various parcels
of land to their friends at far below market value. No, Michael Hancock did not
invent municipal corruption in the City and County of Denver, but his
administration has only helped to bring it to new heights.
Candi CdeBaca
Of course, the trustees could not be trusted not to loot the
Trust so in 1997 the city gave the trust $2 million to mandate the remaining
land to be open space. The money and other funds of the Trust have been
utilized to run the Clayton Early Learning Center on the grounds. There appears
to be no reason to have the Center other than to enrich the rapacious women who
run the Center, exploiting poor minorities with very young children who are
grateful for whatever handouts and care the Early Learning Center can provide, and
who are in no position to protest their contemptible treatment.
The new City Council will have to approve the sale, negate
the open space constriction and approve high density development with a
fraudulent claim of improving “affordable housing.” It will be interesting to
watch how District 10’s newest councilman Chris Hinds responds. Hinds was able
to overthrow incumbent Wayne New by pointing out how New failed to criticize
the Hancock Administration and let development go on unabated in Cherry Creek North.
Hinds was greatly aided in his victory by various unions and the far-left
Working Families Party which got its start in New York City and was
instrumental in getting Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez elected to Congress. Hinds
pounded New for being the only city council person who was not a registered
Democrat (New is registered as an independent.)
Less emphasized by Hinds was a position that he was a great
proponent of high-density development with the standard caveat that he would be
for it as long as it would assist “affordable housing.” It is assumed he would
be the poster boy for the destruction of one of the largest open spaces in
Denver so long as he could fraudulently claim it assisted “affordable housing.”
Chris Hinds
Candi CdeBaca was also greatly assisted in her victory by
the Working Families Party and is a professed Marxist. It is a sign of the
times that we endorsed CdeBaca. As a practical matter we are willing to take an
honest Marxist like CdeBaca who actually cares about Denver over an absolute
crooked crony capitalist like Albus Brooks. Our fear is that Hinds will combine
his far-left politics with the sleazy, crooked, crony capitalism of Albus
Brooks to become just one more Hancock lackey. His actions regarding the sale
of the Park Hill Golf Course will indicate early on whether our fears are well
placed or not.
