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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Cynthia Curry escapes prosecution charges

Link to this story:

Cynthia Curry not prosecuted for overbilling on airport contract

This article in today's Miami Herald really raised my dander, especially after someone at the Herald deleted all the readers' comments, including mine, under the online version of the story.  

Cynthia Curry was hired by the county in 1978 as a budget analyst and she quickly rose to the assistant county manager level.  She was in the running for the county manager position in the mid-90's but she didn't get the position and allegedly was forced out from the county by the new county manager whose name I can't remember.  Somehow she was given the Senior VP of business and finance position at Florida International University, which is in the political game now too, for a few years and in 1998 she started her own consulting firm, CWC & Associates.  She returned to county employment under county manager George Burgess as an assistant county manager, turning control of her company over to her husband. The company continued to do work at Miami International Airport under the contract with Corgan & Associates.

Earlier this year Miami Beach City Manager Jorge Gonzalez, friends with Curry for the past 20 years, hired her away from the county to be head of Miami Beach's Building Department and she started on the job this week.

The article from the Herald tells of her firm being hired by Corgan Associates, one of the major contractors on the North Terminal Project at Miami International Airport.  From what I've observed, major players winning county bids are forced to hire local minority firms in order to win the bidding process and Cynthia Curry's CWC & Associates was hired as a sub-contractor by Corgan to "oversee compliance with the county's disadvantaged business requirements and to conduct community outreach."  According to the Herald, CWC & Associates was paid approximately $7.1 MILLION from 2000 through 2008.  That is almost a million bucks a year and for what?

Under the terms of the contract, CWC & Associates was directed to bill Corgan twice the amount that they spent on employee wages.  The employee would receive half of the amount and CWC & Associates would get the other half after paying for benefits and the remainder would be profit.  Obviously the less you spend on benefits the more profit you make so I doubt if CWC had 13 paid holidays per year, excellent health care insurance and a matching 401-K plan for their employees.

CWC & Associates allegedly overbilled Corgan (who was reimbursed in full by Miami-Dade County) from March 2000 until October 2001 for three independent contractors who were not employees of CWC & Associates.  The contractors had an agreement with CWC that CWC had no obligation to pay benefits on top of the wages.  The article states that Ms. Curry "falsely certified 33 times that the individuals working for CWC were employees' when they clearly were not.  Ms. Curry and her husband kept and spent the $154,000 obtained through these false certifications" according to a state prosecutor's report.

The state attorney's closeout report states that state prosecutor Scruggs wrote "Curry told prosecutors she knew the contractors were not eligible for the double charge but signed the invoices anyway and 'kept all of the funds obtained from her 'mistake.' " 

However, and unfortunately, senior prosecutors at the State Attorney's Office were unable to agree that they could prove Curry's criminal intent and if they couldn't agree then there was doubt they could convince a jury of her criminal intent.  The investigation was closed out and the SAO will not be prosecuting Curry or CWC & Associates.

My thoughts on this issue:

1.  It is no great wonder that MIA's North Terminal Project is about a BILLION dollars over budget and delayed several years when contractors are forced to hire politically connected minority business firms who will earn great profits from doing little or nothing of value to the actual project.  MIA is deep in debt and bond payments from overpriced projects and it will be a high cost airport for travelers for decades to come.  Think about that the next time your ticket from MIA is $50 to $200 higher than flying out of Ft. Lauderdale's low cost airport.

 2.  "Overseeing the county's disadvantaged business requirements" is really a dubious title and obviously designed to sound important when it really isn't.  Please tell me that a clerk or admin assistant at Corgan couldn't do this job for $10 an hour instead of awarding it to a politically connected black woman and her "consulting firm" at great expense and profits.  

$7.1 MILLION was paid to CWC & Associates - what would a clerk or admin assistant make at $10 an hour for 7 years?  In addition, this contract possibly allowed Curry to suggest minority firms to be sub-contracted, and get kickbacks for the favor, in order for Corgan to be in compliance with the county's disadvantaged business requirements.

3.  "Conduct community outreach" is another dubious title for CWC & Associates' contgract responsibilities.  What community did they outreach to and why would they have to be "outreached" to?  

Maybe I am warped but I can just envision a meeting or two held at the Caleb Center where Curry and/or her husband met with people from that neighborhood to tell them how to form a "disadvantaged business" so they too can bilk the county and the airport by getting a sub-contract on the North Terminal Project.  Was that the "outreach" that was actually accomplished?  Has anyone seen a detailed report of all the "outreach" that CWC & Associates conducted?  If not, why not?  Inquiring minds want to know about all this "outreach!"

4.  Did Curry and CWC Associates reimburse the county for the $154,000 that was overbilled?  The article makes no mention of this issue.  If not, why not?  Is the county just giving money away these days?  Sign me up, I could use some easy money and I'm sure you could too!

5.  If anyone else falsely certifies a legal document 33 or more times and is facing possible prosecution by the state, they should remind the state's prosecutors of this case and suggest to them that it was only a "mistake" and that they could never prove criminal intent.  That should scare them off, har-har.  Obviously the reluctance by State Attorney Rundle to prosecute elected officials and well-known politically connected minority folks is another reason that we have the high level of corruption in this county.  

Since we can't expect much from our state attorney's office based on years of non-performance of their duties, perhaps the federales should look into this case since a lot of federal dollars are contributed to Miami International and any theft from the airport could involve money from federal grants?  I've read of federal prosecutors in other areas of the country filing federal charges against corrupt airport officials for theft, bribery, etc. so why not here? 

6.  And last, but not least, WHY did Mayor Alvarez and County Manager George Burgess (the county) hire Cynthia Curry as a high ranking Assistant County Manager if they knew she falsely claimed employees so that she would get overpaid by $154,000?  

Is this indicative of the level of corruption within the Miami-Dade government?  There are very few counties in this country that would hire someone, especially into a high ranking position, who had over-billed the same county either by mistake or intentionally.  What is the story here?

This whole matter is just one more reason, of many reasons, why the voters of Miami-Dade County should recall Mayor Carlos Alvarez and most of the county commissioners who condone these shenanigans within the county government.



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