Thursday, March 10, 2011

L.A. COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT FIRES BUILDING PROGRAM CHIEF + Editorial: COMMUNITY CAMPUS FOLLIES

L.A. Community College District fires building program chief: Larry Eisenberg has led the $5.7-billion bond-financed project since 2003. A Times investigation found that poor planning, shoddy workmanship and other factors cost tens of millions of dollars.

By Michael Finnegan and Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/dZuJLI

Eisenberg

Larry Eisenberg in a staff meeting at the Los Angeles Community College District in downtown Los Angeles. (Christina House, For the Los Angeles Times / May 24, 2010)

By Michael Finnegan and Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times | http://lat.ms/dZuJLI

March 10, 2011 - The board of the Los Angeles Community College District voted Wednesday to fire the head of its $5.7-billion construction program after a series of Times articles documented extensive waste in the rebuilding of the district's campuses.

Several dozen spectators burst into applause when board President Georgia Mercer announced that the seven trustees had voted unanimously in closed session to terminate Larry Eisenberg's employment contract, effective at the end of this week.

"It's time to move on in a new direction," Mercer said.

Eisenberg's deputy, Thomas Hall, will replace him on an interim basis as executive director of facilities planning and development for the nine-college district.

The six-part Times series, which concluded Sunday, reported that the district had squandered tens of millions of dollars in construction money, largely through poor planning and shoddy workmanship.

Among other examples, the series described how officials at West Los Angeles College spent $39 million to design and begin construction on four major buildings, only to abandon the projects when they realized there was too little money to finish them.

An additional $10 million was lost to mistakes in the management of a solar power initiative led by Eisenberg, who tried to brand the district as a world leader in environmentally friendly construction.

The wasted funds could have paid for new classrooms, laboratories and other college facilities.

In a brief telephone interview, Eisenberg declined to discuss what led to his firing.

"You guys have done your damage," he said.

The board launched the rebuilding effort in 2001 to replace or renovate aged and neglected buildings at all nine campuses. In a series of bond measures, Los Angeles voters agreed to pay higher property taxes for at least 50 years to finance the $5.7-billion program and repay the debt. With interest, the total cost to taxpayers is likely to reach $11 billion.

Eisenberg, 59, has been in charge of the program since 2003. A San Fernando Valley native with degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Texas, he had overseen public building programs in Wisconsin and Oregon before he was hired by the college district.

The trustees debated Eisenberg's fate behind closed doors at a student center at Harbor College in Wilmington. Eisenberg, for years a fixture at board meetings, was absent.

After the private session, the trustees heard from half a dozen speakers who scolded them for what they described as abysmal oversight of the rebuilding program.

Freddie McClain, 61, who teaches sociology at Trade-Technical College just south of downtown Los Angeles, told the board he was "totally embarrassed by the scandals and reckless behavior."

Eisenberg was "responsible for many of the mistakes and missteps," McClain said afterward in an interview, but the board "really dropped the ball."

"Their complacency helped create a lot of these problems," McClain said.

Several trustees vowed to tighten oversight of the program. Asked to explain their reasons for firing Eisenberg, they declined to comment, apart from saying they wanted to go in a new direction.

Kelly Candaele, a board member since 1999, expressed concern about a system of employing more than 200 construction program staff members by putting them on the payrolls of subcontractors. Those companies collected overhead expenses and profit for serving as employers of record for people whom, in many cases, they did not supervise.

The arrangements inflated staffing costs by at least $15 million, The Times found. Many of the subcontractors were donors to trustee election campaigns.

Candaele requested a review of whether the district had let some of the subcontractors "game the system," and whether it might recoup some of the millions of dollars they collected.

He also suggested curtailing the use of construction funds to pay for photo and video publicity projects.

During a presentation to the board, district Chancellor Daniel LaVista — even while vowing reforms — criticized The Times for what he described as unbalanced reporting that "improperly exaggerated" isolated problems, "serious as some of them may be."

LaVista also suggested that the district deserved credit for creating the position of inspector general last year to investigate allegations of waste, fraud and corruption.

The Times series reported that the inspector general, Christine E. Marez, had no experience as an independent auditor or investigator and had worked from 1998 to 2003 for Gateway Science & Engineering, a major contractor on the construction program.

Miguel Santiago, who was reelected as a trustee Tuesday, welcomed the chancellor's pledge to review ethics codes, contracting rules and other aspects of the program. "Everything's on the table," he said.

Trustee Tina Park also called for closer supervision of the program, saying, "We need to make our staff more accountable."

Editorial

COMMUNITY CAMPUS FOLLIES: After Before the L.A. district repairs the shoddy construction, it should fix its management flaws.

correction:smf

LA Times Editorial | http://lat.ms/dKt8Sj

The construction at Mission College, one of 9 Los Angeles Community College District campuses, was supervised by Karen Hoefel; she funneled several hundred thousands of dollars of work from the program to a construction-related company she owns with her husband. (Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times)

The construction at Mission College, one of 9 Los Angeles Community College District campuses, was supervised by Karen Hoefel; she funneled several hundred thousands of dollars of work from the program to a construction-related company she owns with her husband. (Kirk McKoy/Los Angeles Times)

March 10, 2011 - A crooked clock tower. A science building with defect-riddled labs. A running track that cracked and athletic field turf that wrinkled.

The list of construction errors — from goofy blunders to serious mistakes — across the nine campuses of the Los Angeles Community College District is stunning. A recent series in The Times looked at the district's much-needed construction overhaul, financed by $5.7 billion in voter-approved bond money, and estimated that it has lost tens of millions of dollars due to bad workmanship, repairs of mistakes and poor planning. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office is investigating a possible conflict of interest on the part of a former Mission College official who co-owned a company that worked as a subcontractor on that campus.

Initially, the community college district chancellor and other officials contended that the series was one-sided and sensationalistic, and that the district, which serves 142,000 students, had completed many successful projects and fixed many of the problems. (That clock tower, for instance, was straightened.) In the last few days, however, Chancellor Daniel LaVista has pledged to review ethical standards, contracting practices and oversight procedures.

On Wednesday, the board of trustees voted to dismiss Larry Eisenberg from the job of overseeing the construction project. That's a good start. Not only did construction plans go haywire on his watch, but his own plan to have campuses generate all their own power through wind, solar and geothermal energy cost millions in designs that were impractical and never built.

We have a few other suggestions for how the district can be more vigilant. We'd like to see a strong ethics code. Trustees and other district leaders should not be helping relatives land jobs — as a few did — or overseeing construction on campuses where they have ties to a contractor. Also, most trustees routinely receive campaign money from construction companies, some of which have big contracts in this project. There's nothing illegal about that, but it creates obvious conflicts.

It's a challenge to improve oversight when the trustees who run the district face little political scrutiny and cannot easily be held accountable. Although trustees are elected, the reality is that few voters are directly affected by their decisions and relatively few people turn out to vote for or against them. (Can you name a trustee?)

The district should revamp the anemic citizens oversight committee that it set up to monitor spending. The committee needs the power and resources to evaluate what it is overseeing. And instead of being appointed by the trustees, members should be chosen by county and city officials.

Last year, the district created an office of inspector general to audit the construction program. That office should do so aggressively and issue regular public reports.

There's still $3 billion to spend. Let's see it done in a way that leaves students fulfilled and taxpayers assured.

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