Questions remain in 'driveway-gate' scandal: Sikorsky Memorial Airport (KBDR), Bridgeport, Connecticut

Published 11:22 pm, Saturday, June 29, 2013

Brian Lockhart,  CT Post
 

BRIDGEPORT -- Can one city official on his own get around all the usual checks and balances to give a $400,000 taxpayer-funded driveway to a business partner, then hire that same buddy to build it?

"I would find it pretty much impossible," said John Gomes, who as former head of Mayor Bill Finch's CitiStat agency was charged with making government more efficient.

"The top echelon has to look at it, approve it."

But that "rogue employee" defense is exactly what some worry the mayor's office will use as the administration tries to explain why it built a 1,000-foot-long, no-bid gravel driveway to controversial developer Manuel "Manny" Moutinho's waterfront mansion and hired Moutinho's Mark IV construction to do it.

"I've been in Bridgeport politics long enough to know how it rolls," said Councilman Andre Baker, D-139, one of several council members who say they were never told about the driveway work. "They ain't taking the fall."

The City Council is scheduled to discuss the controversy with the administration at Monday's regular meeting. Members will also begin looking at changes to Bridgeport's purchasing rules.

When Hearst Connecticut Newspapers first reported on the project, completed this month, the mayor's office said the expense was legal and necessary for a long-sought safety upgrade at the city-owned Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Stratford. The administration said the airport work will close a dirt right-of-way used by Moutinho and three neighboring property owners, so Bridgeport owed them a driveway to their land on Stratford's shoreline.

Then the mayor pleaded ignorance when Hearst asked what Finch knew of veteran airport manager John Ricci's decades-long friendship with Moutinho. Finch suspended Ricci with pay pending an internal probe.

"That's nonsense," said Jeff Kohut, a Democrat like Finch and one-time mayoral candidate who served on the city's Ethics Commission from 2005 to 2010. "The mayor's been around way too long. He knows all the players."

Ricci has run the airport, part of the city's public facilities department, since the early 1990s. Ricci could not be reached for this story but had told Hearst the Airport Commission -- whose members include Finch and City Council President Thomas McCarthy, D-133 -- as well as the city's law department knew of his ties to Moutinho.

"I've known John Ricci to tell the truth," said former Mayor John Fabrizi, Finch's immediate predecessor.

Ricci's fate is uncertain. He is a member of a union and would have the opportunity to fight any disciplinary action, from a warning to termination. That could pose more complications for Finch by protracting the scandal.

"I think if John Ricci feels that he's being thrown under the bus. He's not going to go without a fight," Fabrizi said. But Kohut said he believes deals will be cut to give all sides some cover.

"They could get rid of him, but it will cost us a lot of money," Kohut said. "My hunch is they won't even get rid of him. The union will protect his job, people will forget about it and things will be as they are."

Baker and other council members want to launch their own investigation.

"We've got constituents asking questions and the `I don't know' doesn't do it anymore," said Councilman Carlos Silva, D-136.

Much of the skepticism stems from a belief that it was impossible for everyone in Finch's inner circle -- many long-time public servants and political operatives -- to be in the dark over Ricci's affiliation with Moutinho.

And the Ricci-Moutinho relationship seems to have been one of the worst-kept secrets in Bridgeport.

"They were close friends; that's common knowledge," said Fabrizi.

As Hearst has reported, in 1986 Ricci -- then a former mayoral aide -- was selling housing units for Moutinho.

Public land records show several transactions between Ricci and Moutinho, his family and other associates over the years, including in 2012, when the driveway deal was being negotiated by Ricci and Finch's legal staff.

And the pair sometimes eat lunch together at Lancers Cafe on Harral Avenue, according to employees there.

Both Moutinho and Ricci have contributed to Finch's campaigns.

"It's hard to say you were not aware that Ricci knew Mr. Moutinho," said Gomes. "Perhaps they've been in the same environment as the mayor himself or people affiliated with the mayor -- fundraisers and other things."

The driveway deal is not the first opportunity Ricci had to clarify a relationship with Moutinho. The Airport Commission in 2011 was poised to sell Moutinho 5.5 acres for Mark IV Construction's rock crushing operation.

Moutinho submitted what was supposed to be a non-refundable $35,000 deposit, then in December demanded it back, plus other expenses, writing in a letter to the commission there was "substantially less usable property."

On Jan. 3, 2012, commissioners, including Finch and McCarthy, huddled with Ricci behind closed doors over the matter, emerging to vote on returning Moutinho's deposit in exchange for a promise Mark IV would not sue.

Nancy Hadley was director of Bridgeport's economic redevelopment office under Fabrizi in the mid-2000s and is a city resident. Fabrizi's predecessor, former Mayor Joseph P. Ganim, was convicted on federal corruption charges for accepting kickbacks and bribes in exchange for awarding city contracts.

"I was always harping on, `I need to know the relationships first, guys. I need to understand the relationships because I work for a mayor who took over for a guy who wound up going to jail,' " Hadley recalled.

Lennie Grimaldi, a longtime friend of Finch's who ran the mayor's successful 2000 race for state Senate, as recently as 2011 mentioned Ricci's friendship with Moutinho on his local website, Only in Bridgeport.

Moutinho was planning to build the driveway himself for $200,000, obtaining the necessary land use permits from Stratford last summer. So it is unclear whether the city was legally obligated to do it for him.

And if Finch's law department did conclude it owed Moutinho and his neighbors a driveway, did the city need to replace their dirt right-of-way with a gravel one, plus pay for 1,200 feet each of buried electrical, gas, sewer and water lines, plus two fire hydrants? Those bells and whistles were on Moutinho's original plans filed in Stratford.

And why wasn't the driveway work properly bid, since, according to the mayor's office, the City Council approved the $400,000 last September, but Stratford records show the city only took over Moutinho's permits in March.

Then Ricci was allowed over a few days in April to obtain three quotes from city contractors. Moutinho's was the last. It was also the cheapest.

Those quotes only showed up in the city's Purchasing Department two weeks ago.

"I don't know if heads are supposed to roll, here," Hadley said. "I do expect every dollar paid by every single resident of this city for taxes needs to be spent with the highest possible ethical standards."

Source:  http://www.ctpost.com