TExAS OBSERVER: Miami Vice

Miami Vice
Three former executives of a Florida engineering firm already rocked by accusations of embezzlement and inflated billings have been indicted for allegedly breaking federal campaign finance laws while funneling money to political candidates. The company, PBS&J Corp., has received about $162 million in highway contracts from the Texas Department of Transportation in the past five years, and continues to manage two multimillion-dollar toll road projects for the state.

On March 8, Richard A. Wickett and H. Michael Dye, both former chairs of PBS&J, were charged in federal District Court in Miami with illegally funneling corporate campaign contributions to political candidates in Florida and elsewhere. According to an investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, the two tried to circumvent campaign laws and increase the “likelihood of procuring government contracts for PBS&J.” W. Scott DeLoach, a former chief financial officer, was indicted during an earlier phase of the investigation.

PBS&J has created political action committees in numerous states, including Texas. Since 2000, the Texas PAC has given contributions to scores of local and state candidates, including Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Most of the contributions have been spent on local races for offices such as mayor, county commissioner, and city council, according to records on file at the Texas Ethics Commission.

Karen Rochlin, an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami, said she couldn’t comment on the case. She declined to say whether the investigation is ongoing or closed. A company spokesman, Jorge Martinez, said the firm halted disbursements from the Texas PAC early last summer while the federal probe was under way.

While trying to unravel the embezzlement scheme, PBS&J’s own financial experts discovered that the firm inadvertently had been overcharging some government clients for overhead costs. Since then, the company has been sending refunds. In Texas, clients getting money back include TXDOT, Hays County, the city of Austin, and the Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District, said Keith Jackson, the firm’s state director in Texas. “We are refunding every entity that’s owed money. But every entity we have worked for is not owed money,” Jackson said.

Hays County received a $32,000 settlement last fall. Austin recently recouped $62,000, said city chief financial officer John Stephens. The rail district received almost $26,000, said Alison Schulze, district administrator and planner. TXDOT received $5.4 million, according to PBS&J documents, or about 3 percent of the roughly $162 million that TXDOT shelled out to PBS&J from 2002 through March of this year, according to documents obtained under the open-records law from the state Comptroller’s Office.

Amadeo Saenz, assistant executive director at TXDOT, said in a recent interview that the firm was blacklisted for a month or so last spring while TXDOT and PBS&J tried to work out a settlement on the overcharges. “We never had any problem with the quality of work that PBS&J was doing,” Saenz said. “But we needed to settle the issue.”

Despite PBS&J’s myriad financial and legal woes, the North Texas Tollway Authority and TXDOT have renewed its construction management contract to oversee numerous toll road projects planned for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. PBS&J is also the construction manager for portions of the Central Texas Turnpike Project, a $2.5 billion network of toll roads in north Austin.