Cops called on Portland school construction deal

The kids at the Weed dropped, if not a bombshell, at least a pretty sizeable grenade yesterday with their report that the Oregon Secretary of State, Tobias Read, has referred to the state Justice Department, for criminal investigation, the Portland school board's sketchy contract with a Texas construction supervisor firm.

Read, who's sort of the Wally Cox of Oregon law enforcement, also referred the arrangement with the private company, a Grapvevine, Texas outfit known as Procedeo, to the state government ethics commission for investigation. But that office usually produces wimpy results, if any, whereas a criminal investigation, well, that gets everybody's attention.

According to the Weed report, Read has detected possible violations of two state statutes prohibiting current and former public officials from profiting from their offices. And the referrals are pursuant to a state law governing whistleblower complaints.

Other than that, we're left to guess what crimes may have been committed, and who the targets of the investigation are. For the moment, any speculation on those questions will have to be informed by the recent news stories about the deal, from which quite a stench has been emanating.

Here's a juicy story from May to get you started:

Two former members of the Portland Public Schools board have been hired as consultants by Procedeo, the private firm that won a $61.5 million contract in December to oversee more than $1 billion worth of school construction projects funded by voter-backed bonds....

Former board members Gary Hollands, the owner of a trucking academy, and Herman Greene, the pastor of a North Portland church, both confirmed their roles to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Greene said the contract, which is with a consulting firm started by Hollands, is for $6,000 a month for work to be performed on an as-needed, month-to-month basis...

We then move to another little stinker, on which even I, who have long since given up on the Portland public schools and usually can't bear to think about them, picked up in March:

The daughter of Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong is now working as an office manager for Procedeo... 

Armstrong said her adult daughter, an aspiring fashion designer and online student at Weber State University studying public relations and communications, applied for the Portland-based position on her own and did not tell her anything about the job until she was hired. Armstrong noted that her daughter no longer lives with her.

Uh huh. And of course, last week we learned of a proverbial scathing audit about the PPS-Procedeo deal generally. When your long-time auditors raise hell like this, risking their relationship with you, it often means that they've seen some pretty ugly stuff:

A draft audit of the $1.83 billion property tax bond being used to rebuild three Portland high schools says the bond program is at heightened risk for fraud because Portland Public Schools outsourced its management to a Texas-based construction firm without sufficient oversight.

The draft, exclusively obtained Tuesday by WW, adds fuel to an existing controversy over the district inking a $61.5 million contract with the firm Procedeo to oversee program management services for the 2025 bond. In four findings, auditors determined PPS had failed to establish a sound business case to offload bond management services to Procedeo, and cautioned that the district had become overreliant on the external consultant. Auditors said the district followed Procedeo’s advice to reduce PPS’s own in-house staff, gutting the district’s ability to operate independently while increasing Procedeo’s billings.

The external auditor, Sjoberg Evashenk Consulting, has audited the district for years and recommends that the district renegotiate its bond program contract with Procedeo. And the audit sternly criticizes both the district’s leadership and the School Board for what it describes as a rash decision to outsource bond work that was being performed ably by in-house staff.

Maybe what the state Justice folks will be looking into has to do with some or all the foregoing alarming revelations. Or maybe Read's got something different; at this point, it's not possible to tell. 

Do you think the state attorney general. Dan "What's-His-Name" Rayfield, will actually step in here? He's busy making a name for himself battling the Trumpies on multiple high-publicity fronts; unless Procedeo turns out to be a bunch of MAGA types, I doubt he'll be all that interested. (And speaking of which, who actually owns Procedeo? That would be an interesting fact for everyone to know. Why don't we?)

Part of me wishes that the U.S. attorney would get involved. In the old days, he might have. Even today, you would think that busting some crooks in the ultra-blue local government of Antifa Portland would please his D.C. bosses no end. There's probably federal money sloshing around in the case somewhere. And the town sure could use a fumigation.

Meanwhile, here's an oddity that puzzles me as I ponder all this: On the Procedeo website, they brag about their clients. The Austin School District, the Utah Navajo Health System, the University of North Texas, Georgetown Independent School District, the list goes on and on. But there's not a single mention of the Portland, Oregon public schools, and here they've had an eight-figure contract with us for nine months now. What is up with that?