Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

County seeks audit in Expressway flap

The request comes after Gov. Jeb Bush launched an inquiry into the Tampa-Hillsborough authority.

By KEVIN GRAHAM
Published September 8, 2006

TAMPA - Hillsborough County Commissioners on Thursday called for Gov. Jeb Bush to conduct an independent audit of the finances of the Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority. They also plan to ask for the firing or resignation of the authority's executive director.

The moves came after County Commissioner Tom Scott, who sits on the Expressway Authority, said executive director Ralph Mervine acted inappropriately by meeting last month with the representative of a law firm bidding on a contract to offer legal services to the authority, just days before a vote.

Now the integrity of the agency has been called into question, Scott said.

"I am not advocating the abolishment of the Expressway Authority," Scott said during a commission meeting Thursday. "I request the resignation of Ralph Mervine or his termination and a vote of no confidence for his leadership."

Commissioners planned to send a letter to the Expressway Authority board supporting Scott's request, and another to Bush asking for the audit.

"We're very sorry that the Hillsborough County Commission has felt the need to take this action today," Expressway Authority chairman J. Thomas Gibbs said in a statement. "The Expressway Authority has several pressing issues under consideration. As the situation clarifies, our board will consider various alternatives and take appropriate steps at that time."

Mervine could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Last week, at the request of Scott and others, Bush launched an investigation into the authority amid accusations it violated ethics policies and the state's Sunshine Law.

Scott and Mervine sat on a selection committee that recommended the authority rehire its law firm, Ruden McClosky, as legal counsel. The authority's board voted to give the job to the law firm Gray Robinson instead.

David Hendrix, a partner at Gray Robinson, had dinner with Mervine and met with John Beck, an authority lobbyist, two days before the hiring committee voted, which may have violated the state's open government laws, according to the Expressway Authority's legal affairs director Mary Hall.

Mervine said last week he acknowledged that the dinner violated authority policy but said he thought he was acting in good faith.

Scott also wants the Expressway Authority to throw out its vote to award the lucrative contract to Gray Robinson and reopen the bidding process.

Commissioner Ronda Storms said the agency would benefit from an independent audit, though she stressed it had to be thorough.

"I'm unconvinced of most audits to turn up regular infractions," Storms said. "We need a forensic audit."

She pointed to other problems at the Expressway Authority, including the fallen section of the elevated Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway in 2004.

"I think there's too much at stake here for us not to act," Storms said.

The Expressway Authority has a meeting scheduled for Monday, and Scott said he wants it to take up these issues then.

Bush's general counsel, Raquel Rodriguez, is already conducting an investigation into how Gray Robinson won the legal services contract, which was worth about $550,000 last year to Anderson's firm, Ruden McClosky.

Kristy Campbell, a Bush spokeswoman, said it's not known when Rodriguez will complete the investigation, but it should be soon. In an e-mail last week, Rodriguez requested board minutes, contracts, policies and all drafts or written communications detailing the Expressway Authority's legal services contract. Rodriguez also asked Hall to explain why she concluded last week that Mervine and the lobbyist, Beck, violated the board policy and the Sunshine Law.

Beck hired an attorney last week to ask Hall to retract her opinion that a July 26 meeting between Beck and Hendrix violated board policy.

"The truth regarding Mr. Beck is wrongly, inaccurately and intentionally being tarnished by assumption, implication and innuendo by you," wrote the attorney, Brant Hargrove. "It is hereby requested that you issue a statement absolving Mr. Beck of any wrongdoing."

Hargrove wrote that Beck met with four other firms besides Gray Robinson. But according to Beck's invoices, only his July 26 meeting with Gray Robinson is listed.

This isn't the first time Beck and Mervine raised concerns about a conflict of interest before a transportation authority.

In 2003, Beck's company was a subcontractor with the Florida High Speed Rail Authority, which was created after a constitutional amendment to build a bullet train in Florida. Beck's firm was designing the specifications for a project that was being bid on by an international consortium that included two key partners: Mervine and Beck's wife, Katherine. The project, a rail line between Tampa and Orlando, was never built.

"Once the consortium became one of the bidders ... and (Beck's) wife, Kathy, became the general partner in that group, the High Speed Rail Authority staff insisted that the Beck firm no longer be involved in providing any services to ... the Authority," said the Rail Authority's former chairman, C.C. "Doc" Dockery, in an e-mail response to the Times.

Times staff writer Michael Van Sickler contributed to this story. Kevin Graham can be reached at (813) 226-3433 or kgraham@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 8, 2006, 06:10:52]