EXCLUSIVE: “We Were Told 'Give to the Speaker’” — Mold Cleanup Specialist Alleges Pay-to-Play in RI
GoLocalProv News Team and Kate Nagle
EXCLUSIVE: “We Were Told 'Give to the Speaker’” — Mold Cleanup Specialist Alleges Pay-to-Play in RI
Chris Gagnon with Servpro said that his partner Frank Mattos had been told to “give to Mattiello” — and that Servpro was audited not once, but twice, following a significant contract in 2016 with the state, that he says he believes was brought on by a competitor.
Mattos operates Servpro of Providence, as well as Warwick/East Greenwich and Cranston in Rhode Island; he also operates Servpros in Boston, Weymouth-Hingham and Quincy.
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As GoLocal broke on Monday night, State House records were being dumped, the Rhode Island State Police were alerted — and Single Source — the cleanup company hired to remove the reported mold in the State House by the Joint Committee on Legislative Services (JCLS) has strong ties to Mattiello, JCLS Executive Director Frank Montanaro, and Majority Leader Joseph Shekarchi.
“My partner Frank [Mattos] was at a cigar bar a couple of years ago and was told by a guy, you need to give [political contributions] to the Speaker,” said Gagnon, who said that neither he nor Mattos has ever donated to the Speaker.
“The bid process isn’t fair. It’s based on relationships,” said Gagnon. “I don’t want to sound like sour grapes. This isn’t that our competitor got a job we didn’t get. If it was truly an emergency, it likely didn’t have to go to bid."
Gagnon said Servpro would have been eligible as it is on the state MPA list.
‘What I’m concerned about is why did I have to through so much internal exhaustion in two audits following a job [Servpro did for the state],” said Gagnon. "And one of those audits was three years after the fact."
The selection of Site Source was made by Frank Montanaro's office according to the RI Department of Administration.
"After further discussions with staff, my understanding is that JCLS engaged Single Source some time in early to mid-January and had them onsite inspecting the area. When DCAMM was brought in to inspect what turned out to be a larger and more immediate leak issue toward the end of last week, my Division placed an emergency request for work on behalf of JCLS. DCAMM did not remove any items in the JCLS office. Single Source had already been onsite to conduct preliminary work, so DCAMM proceeded with the same firm," said Carole Cornelison, Associate Director, DCAMM.
"Right now, [the work awarded] is simply based on relationships," said Gagnon. "And that's not right."
Gagnon said he was hit with two audits for work his company did in 2016, that he went through in 2017 — and then from another state agency in 2019 — which he said he believed were executed because a competitor “didn’t like that his firm had received the work.”
Gagnon spoke to being faced with two separate audits following mold remediation work that Servpro did at the Eleanor Slater Hospital in Cranston in 2016.
“In 2016, we had a larger job for emergency services at Slater, probably for around $250,000,” said Gagnon. “Artie Jochmann there is very fair, he spreads the work around [to different companies].”
Jochmann is a Chief of Property Management for the State of Rhode Island, who Gagnon said awarded Servpro the emergency remediation work.
“Then in May 2017, we got hit with an audit from the state’s Office of Internal Audit,” said Gagnon. “They said that of the [entire] project, they only saw about $8,000 [that they believe was in question]. At no time did they say anything about prevailing wage.”
Nearly two years later, in the spring of 2019, Gagnon said that he got another audit letter — this time, from the Department of Labor and Training (DLT).
“If I was a betting man, I’d say a competitor had gotten rubbed the wrong way [we’d gotten the work],” said Gagnon, of believing that someone in the industry alerted the DLT.
“I’d never not pay an employee what they were owed. But in our 'time and materials' pricing we provided the state, we provided the pay scale which showed the labor rates of $43 to $62 an hour, depending on position,” said Gagnon. “After the fact, they said several of the positions were supposed to be prevailing wage — $53 an hour — and that we owed $18,000 in back wages.”
“The contract allowed us to bill for prevailing wages. However, the DLT told us there was a purchase order — which we were never made aware of — that expired in 2017. So that meant when we got hit by the DLT, we couldn’t bill for prevailing wages, as had been allowed by the contract, because the 'purchase order' had already closed,” said Gagnon. “And they slapped an $18,000 fine on us, on top of the back wages.”
“At that time, we had some other work with the state — around $60,000 — that we’d been billing for, but hadn’t gotten paid,” said Gagnon. “For some reason, I got the sense those were sitting in a drawer somewhere.”
Gagnon said that Servpro has done a number of jobs for the University of Rhode Island, and "has never had a problem there."
“They bid out everything, make purchase orders. They do things the right way,” said Gagnon.
“This know-a-guy-culture at the state level — look, I don’t want to see anyone get hauled out in handcuffs,” said Gagnon. “But do things the right way. Establish standard operating procedures.”
“When you’re a vendor and [the project] is supposed to have prevailing wage, why can’t the person who’s holding the bid process say this is prevailing wage — why do you leave it up to the vendor? If I don’t charge for the prevailing wage [in my proposal] and someone else does, I’m naturally going to win,” said Gagnon. “The bid process needs to be black and white.”