An Ohio-based environmental engineering and consulting firm sued the V.I. Housing Finance Authority and two of its top officials last week, alleging a pattern of awarding federally funded contracts to a competitor at “grossly inflated” prices, despite an apparent conflict of interest.
Gandee and Associates claimed in a civil complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of the Virgin Islands that the firm responded to a request for qualifications to perform environmental review, assessments and testing services in March 2024. According to a bid tabulation Gandee attached to their complaint, the firm was one of two to respond to the RFQ. The second respondent was the St. Thomas-based Encom Company. Gandee claims the firm was not awarded any of the contracts because it did not yet have a U.S. Virgin Islands professional engineer license for one of its principals or an engineering firm license from the Licensing and Consumer Affairs Department, both of which the firm had applied for. Gandee received a non-award letter in June 2024.
“Remarkably, public procurement records reveal that VIHFA subsequently awarded at least five contracts under RFQ-003 to Tysam Tech,” according to the complaint. “This occurred despite the glaring fact, confirmed by VIHFA’s own published Bid Tabulation, that Tysam Tech did not even submit a qualifications package for RFQ-003 by the mandated deadline.”
Gandee further claimed that VIHFA’s “preferential treatment of Tysam Tech appears even more suspect” because the agency’s former senior environmental manager, Kyora Veira, began working for the rival firm three days after leaving her post at VIHFA. A screenshot of a social media profile attached to the complaint appears to show Veira’s last day at VIHFA was May 17, 2024, and her first day at Tysam Tech was listed as May 20, 2024.
“The timing of this transition is highly suspicious, given Tysam Tech’s subsequent receipt of RFQ-003 contracts for which it did not properly bid,” Gandee argued.
According to Gandee, the awards were improper because VIHFA’s own procurement policy prohibits “covered persons” — employees, officers, board members, or agents of the grantee — from participating in the selection, award or administration of a federally-supported contract if any real or apparent conflict of interest is involved.
“Such a conflict would arise when any of the following parties has a financial interest or other interest in the firm selected for award: covered persons as defined in this policy; a covered person’s immediate family; a covered person’s partner; an organization which employs or is about to employ any of the above.”
The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, which provides the Community Development Block Grant funds administered locally by VIHFA, has additional conflict of interest requirements, which apply to covered persons during their tenure or for one year thereafter who “exercise(d) any functions or responsibilities for CDBG-assisted activities or who have decision-making responsibilities or can gain inside information from such activities.”
The alleged shenanigans continued when Gandee responded to a second request for qualifications — RFQ-004 — in June, and VIHFA sent an unsigned email 34 minutes before the publicly announced deadline, extending the submission window by one hour without justification.
“VIHFA’s own records clarify the effect of this irregular and poorly communicated extension,” according to the complaint. “These records confirm that only Tysam Tech submitted its qualifications for RFQ-004 during this one-hour extension period. Consequently, Tysam Tech’s submission, which otherwise would have been untimely, was accepted due to VIHFA’s unexplained, last-minute extension of the bid deadline.”
Gandee was subsequently selected to submit bids for eight projects under the RFQ, of which it was awarded seven in December 2024. Gandee claims they refused to sign contracts after identifying discrepancies in the contracts’ scope of work. In March, the firm said defendant Jeanine Blyden, VIHFA’s director of procurement and contracts, abruptly informed the firm that all seven projects had been rescinded. Gandee said at least one of those was later awarded to Tysam Tech at nearly 500% of Gandee’s bid, or $28,232 more.
The eighth project on which Gandee bid, but which was not initially awarded, also went to Tysam Tech. According to a non-award letter Blyden sent to Gandee in December, the firm was not selected for a project at Sejah Farm because it was not “the lowest Responsive Bidder.” According to a copy of the contract attached to the complaint, Tysam Tech’s bid came in at $35,255. Gandee bid $11,000.
“This inexplicable decision to spend over 300 percent more public money for the same services on the Sejah Farm project, awarding the contract to a consistently favored vendor, is not an isolated incident of arbitrary and capricious government action,” Gandee alleged.
Gandee’s federal lawsuit comes nearly six weeks after the firm petitioned the V.I. Superior Court to compel VIHFA to release documents related to the agency’s procurement practices under local and federal public records laws. That petition included a number of allegations about VIHFA’s procurement practices, which the recent civil suit describes in greater detail.
The complaints raised in the civil suit also dovetail with claims made by the agency’s former chief operating officer, Stephanie Berry, who filed a whistleblower suit in December, claiming that VIHFA “will stand to lose millions of dollars through recapturing of federal funds due to noncompliance with policies and procedures.”
Berry’s complaint included allegations that members of VIHFA’s planning and construction staff also participated in procurement evaluation committee panels — “that is, they wrote the specifications for the work to be done, including pricing, and were then allowed to participate in the evaluation of bids for the job and influence who was recommended to be awarded the job.”
“This created a potential conflict of interest in knowing what the bid numbers should be, being able to disclose those numbers to a contractor, and then being on the committee to help influence that the job would go to that contractor,” she argued.
VIHFA subsequently filed a blistering response to Berry’s complaint, characterizing her as a “cantankerous and disruptive employee who was terminated because she was not a good fit for the organization.”
St. Croix Source
Local news
