Why do we do business with criminals?
By
Will Collette
They
will fight to the death to block projects, at minimum by using the clock to
frustrate owners by making the process go ever so slow. They will also nitpick
projects ad nauseam, demanding design changes for things such as the color of
electrical outlet covers, the number of gables in a roof, shrubbery, etc. But
they are also prepared to spend tons of town money going to court.
Some
projects killed in this fashion deserve to be killed. Others, not so much. But
it has surprised me that the CCA has not availed itself of one tool that could
be more useful than all the others: a comprehensive Bad Actor ordinance and
policy.
Charlestown
does a lot of business with a lot of people and companies. In my opinion, the
town should have a bad actor policy
that applies to the issuance of permits and licenses, construction and
consultant contracts, and the purchase of goods and services.
Blocking
“bad actors” requires you to first identify what warrants that title. The town
has considerable latitude to decide a bad actor is any owner or business that
has a history of such offenses as:
Corporate crime: fraud,
bid-rigging, bribery, racketeering, money laundering, extortion, tax evasion,
campaign finance violations, etc.
Environmental
crime:
EPA, state or municipal violations, Superfund sites; abandoned mines;
unremediated RCRA sites, clean air or water violations, illegal dumping, etc.
Worker
violations:
violations of OSHA, MSHA and state labor health and safety laws; wage theft;
wage and hour violations; unfair labor practices, etc.
Performance
issues:
failure to meet schedules, stay on budget, poor quality work, excessive change
orders, use of substandard materials, mechanics’ liens, license revocations and
suspensions or failure to carry proper licenses, etc.
Financial
responsibility:
does the business or individual have the financial stability to meet its
obligations and comply with town rules? Evidence that it doesn’t includes
federal, state and local tax delinquency; a history of bankruptcies; tax liens;
excessive debt; inability to bond their work or the use of a fraudulent bond
issuer, etc.
False statements. Making false
statements or declarations when applying for any permit, license or contract.
The
town has a lot of latitude to pick, choose or add characteristics of what to
include in a Charlestown policy. The courts generally defer to local judgment
so long as decisions are made consistently and fairly, not arbitrarily and
capriciously, and there is no corrupt purpose.
Typically,
a town would have individuals and businesses who are covered under the bad
actor policy fill out a form responding to each question and category that
applies to them under pain and penalty of perjury. Self-reporting is fine,
provided there is a provision that allows Charlestown to act when any false
statements are discovered.
Verifying
(or refuting) a bad actor form used to be a difficult, time-consuming task, but
not so much anymore. Lots of state and federal agencies have public databases.
The states of Connecticut and Massachusetts both have searchable databases
on construction contractors that list companies that have cleared their
screening process and are eligible to do public construction work. Sometimes a
simple Google search is all you need.
Outside
sources can also be helpful. There are a number of databases maintained by
non-profits to track corporate crime. My favorite is the one run by Good Jobs
First (CLICK HERE). Whistleblowers and competitors
can also be good sources, though you then have to verify what they tell you.
A
Connecticut contractor was almost
given a construction contract at Chariho, but lost the contract after I
notified the school board that this contractor was barred from doing public school
construction in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Bad
actors like the Copar Quarries that plagued
Westerly and Charlestown residents could have been blocked if there had been a
bad actor policy in place. The level of detail that Dale Faulkner wrote for the
Sun and that I published in Progressive Charlestown screamed out for action
against them. The first bullet point was the federal jail
time their owner did for racketeering.
But
not only were Charlestown’s elected officials completely ineffective against
Copar:
In
2014, they allowed Copar to take over the Morrone sand pit on Route 91. Even
though they had the large amount of research on Copar AND Copar was months late
even applying for a permit, Town Administrator
Mark Stankiewicz was too timid to stop them and
ordered the permit be issued.
The
CCA-controlled Town Council refused to take any enforcement action, and against
the advice of the Town Solicitor, refused to exercise the town’s police power,
instead asking the General Assembly to grant permission to enforce town rules
on quarries. CCA lover boy Rep. Blake “Flip” Filippi tried repeatedly to get
that through the General Assembly. He failed each time.
Guess
what? Contrary to the rule that doing the same thing over and over, expecting a
different result is the definition of
insanity,
the CCA once again
had the Flipper introduce that same legislation this year.
And there’s more! Copar abandoned its local quarries when the shady executives ran the company into bankruptcy. A new company owned by Thomas Miozzi bought the site, pretending it remained continually operational – though MSHA records show otherwise. The town is now in litigation with Miozzi.
All of this could have been avoided if Town poohbah
Mark Stankiewicz had listened in 2014 when I provided material to him showing that Miozzi was not a
responsible contractor. Stankiewicz disregarded that warning and awarded
Miozzi with a construction contract. And now we seem stuck with him.
The
town spent a lot of time and money trying to keep the Dollar Store from opening
up on Old Post Road. The only reason they could find was the dubious claim that
the Dollar Store is a "department store." Charlestown got laughed out of court.
On July 31, 2017, RI Superior Court Judge Bennett Gallo ruled against the town and the ZBR, calling the town decision to classify the
Dollar store as a “department store” as “clearly erroneous” and that it
“amounted to an abuse of discretion.”
We were headed
back to court
except Dollar Store decided Charlestown was not worth the trouble and expense.
But this could have ended a lot cheaper, cleaner and quicker if we had a bad
actor policy that included workplace violations. In earlier articles, I noted
that Dollar Store owner Dollar General as a huge rap sheet already. CLICK HERE. The Connecticut
AFL-CIO just exposed new unfair labor practices by them.
The
main point of a Bad Actor law is to protect taxpayers from corporate criminals
and corrupt business owners. Charlestown has never been bashful about imposing
restrictions on businesses by regulating lighting, shrubbery, driveway
material, roof gambles, electrical fixture covers, parking lot bumpers, trees,
and more.
Why would anyone think it’s unreasonable to say that if you want to do business with or in the town of Charlestown, you should not have a history of breaking the law?
