Fwd: I-69-Indy Star Watch: Troy Woodruff ordered bridge rebuilt to benefit his family, records suggest
Greg Buck
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Clearinghouse for Actions Against Interstate 69 in Indiana
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From: Thomas & Sandra Tokarski <ca...@bluemarble.net>
Date: Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 11:18 AM
Subject: I-69-Indy Star Watch: Troy Woodruff ordered bridge rebuilt to benefit his family, records suggest
To: Susan Sammis <sam...@bluemarble.net>
Star Watch: Troy Woodruff ordered bridge rebuilt to benefit his family, records suggest
Feb 23, 2013 |
ODON, IND. — To help out his family, a state highway official last year ordered construction supervisors to redo the approaches to a bridge over Interstate 69, despite objections from the project supervisor — at a cost to Indiana taxpayers of $770,444.
That’s how project supervisor Tom Brummett, in daily construction reports obtained by The Star, described the Indiana Department of Transportation’s decision to rebuild the County Road 1200 North bridge in Daviess County.
Brummett’s daily reports make it clear just who he believed was behind the order: Troy Woodruff, a former state legislator and now INDOT’s chief of staff.
“Mr. Woodruff has requested that the new road sections be removed and the grades raised because of concerns by the farmers (Woodruff and Cornelius) who adjoin the new CRd 1200 N,” Brummett wrote in his report. It’s not certain who Brummett was referring to when he listed those names but the land that adjoins the bridge is owned by Troy Woodruff’s uncle, Richard Woodruff, and his cousin, Michael Cornelius.
Brummett, who opposed the plan to rebuild the Daviess County overpass, went so far as to call the project the “Troy Woodruff Re-Do.” Brummett also wrote that there was no reason, other than to appease the Woodruff family, to spend the additional $770,444.
Woodruff currently is under investigation by the Indiana Inspector General, the state’s top ethics officer. That probe was opened last month after The Star raised questions about whether Woodruff’s influence was at work in the more than $1.8 million the state paid to his family for farmland along I-69. The Inspector General would not tell The Star if he also is looking into Woodruff’s role on the bridge project.
In December, Woodruff told The Star there was a “strict firewall” between him and the I-69 project. He was adamant at the time that he never used his influence to help his family in their dealings with the state.
Ethical lines
Government ethics experts, however, said, if true, the events described in Brummett’s reports show Woodruff was involved in the project in ways that clearly cross ethical lines.
Some said the bridge incident is particularly troubling given other recent revelations about Woodruff’s actions — including the fact that his mother was hired in the INDOT office he oversaw in 2010, and that he did not disclose his and his family’s sale of land to INDOT that same year, which is generally required under laws prohibiting conflicts of interest.
“Mr. Woodruff should certainly be immediately suspended pending an ethics investigation,” Aaron Smith of Watchdog Indiana said in an e-mail.
Others called for a tightening of Indiana’s civil ethics statutes and criminal laws. One expert said the statutes pertaining to public corruption are so lax, it’s unclear whether the situation Brummett described in his reports would even cross a legal line.
“The state ethics code, at least what I've looked at, is terrible,” said Robert Wechsler, director of research for City Ethics, a government ethics consulting firm. “It is full of holes, poor language, and limitations. If state law allows this highway official to do what he did, it is clearly wrong and needs substantial reform, not just fixing one or two provisions.”
“It’s not a sex scandal; it’s not gambling, or a lot of things that people tend to think of when they think of corruption and government malfeasance or problems,” she said. “But it’s actually more important in some ways. These are the day-to-day things that happen. Every day, a road is being paved. Every day, a bridge is getting upgraded.”
"A screwed-up bridge"
When the bridge opened on May 4, Daviess County farmer Michael Cornelius was angry.
Although the approaches to the bridge were built to the accepted standards for a small rural road with little traffic — and inspectors had given the work a “perfect” rating that very day — Cornelius thought the bridge was too steep to safely cross with his farm equipment.
Others apparently agreed. Almost three months earlier, the Daviess County Commissioners sent a letter to INDOT saying the grade on the approaches was too steep, presenting a hazard. The bridge was designed for traffic traveling at 30 mph, but they feared that traffic traveling at 45 mph might collide with large farm machinery, such as combines, as they crossed the bridge.
“Somebody was going to get killed,” Cornelius said in an interview with The Star. “I was going to visit a neighbor or a neighbor’s kid at a funeral parlor because of a screwed-up bridge.”
Flattening the grade would help drivers see across the bridge to avoid such accidents.
Brummett seemed to suggest the issue was overblown. “The farmers stated that they do not have lead trucks to help them with traffic when crossing the bridge only six times a year (the other times they do),” he wrote in his May 10 report.
“I have been against this from the beginning because I have met all the design criteria and built it according to the Released For Construction Plans which were approved by everyone before the project was started,” Brummett wrote.
Smith, of Watchdog Indiana, strongly doubted the added public expense was justified.
“I find it difficult to believe that INDOT built a bridge and put it in use without thoroughly considering sight-distance concerns during the engineering phase,” he said in an e-mail. “All kinds of traffic hazards are created when posted speed limits are exceeded. Taxpayers cannot afford to spend many millions of dollars to try and engineer out all hazards created by speeding vehicles on rural roads.”
"He's got to recuse himself"
Cornelius acknowledged in an interview with The Star that he took his concerns to his cousin, Troy Woodruff, after he failed to get any satisfaction at the county level. Whether Richard Woodruff, who owned the adjacent property, also went to Troy Woodruff is unknown. Richard Woodruff did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Cornelius, however, said Troy Woodruff didn’t have anything to do with the decision to re-do the bridge.
“The only thing Troy Woodruff had to do with that,” Cornelius said, “was to put me in touch with the people that I needed to talk to to do something.”
Brummett wrote that Woodruff was intimately involved.
“Troy Woodruff informed our I-69 district office that we would be redoing the road sections and building them to a grade sufficient for them to be able to see over the bridge,” he wrote on May 10.
“I think if there’s a request to make this kind of modification and it comes into Troy’s office he’s got to recuse himself,” said David Orentlicher, a former Democratic state lawmaker who now teaches at Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law. “He can’t be involved in this. It’s probably got to go up channels. We don’t want to deny his family members their rights as citizens, but if you’re going to entertain a request for this kind of a modification, then Troy can’t be involved.”
Staying on message
It’s unclear how much top INDOT officials knew about what Brummett described as the “Troy Woodruff Re-Do” or the actions he describes in his reports. But it’s clear they were advised the completed bridge was being redone.
On May 7, Elliott Sturgeon, the I-69 operations director, sent an email about the re-do work to a number of INDOT officials, including Troy Woodruff; Sam Sarvis, the deputy commissioner overseeing the I-69 project; and Commissioner Michael Cline, INDOT’s top executive who reports directly to the governor.
Cline and Sarvis didn’t respond to a request to comment on this story. Gov. Mike Pence also declined to comment.
“The governor’s office has been assured that an investigation is under way,” said Pence spokeswoman Christy Denault, referring to the new Inspector General probe. “We do not comment on ongoing investigations.”
Sturgeon’s email to INDOT executives described how Columbus-based contractor Force Construction Co. had agreed to a $750,000 price for the re-do work and that Daviess County officials had waived bonding requirements that would have mandated Force have the work insured in case the crews hauling materials did any damage to the county’s roadways.
The Daviess County official who signed off on the additional bridge work on County Road 1200 N was Phil Cornelius, a distant relative of Michael Cornelius. He also declined to comment.
No federal funding was used for the redone bridge, so Indiana taxpayers footed the entirety of what ended up being a new $770,444 bill. The additional expenses ended up being nearly a 45 percent overrun on the completed bridge’s initial $1.72 million price tag.
On May 10, three days after Sturgeon’s email alerting INDOT offiicials about the re-do — and the same day Brummett complained in his construction report that the work was unneccesary and driven by the complaints of two farmers — another email was sent to INDOT officials.
This one was from Janelle Lemon, an INDOT employee in the Vincennes office. In it, she instructs INDOT officials to tell the public the bridge was being redone because “local traffic is traveling faster than speed limits. INDOT decided to adjust the sight distance to accommodate local traffic habits.”
The email made no reference to the farmers who made the request or Brummett’s objections to the project. It did, however, let the officials know that a project manager in Indianapolis had recommended the wording and contained this bit of advice: “Let’s do our best to be consistent in our message.”
Smith, the taxpayer advocate, is skeptical: “The INDOT explanation for redesigning this particular bridge is not credible and gives every appearance of a cover-up.”
Issue in Inspector General's hands
Sen. John Waterman, R-Shelburn, also is concerned. He told The Star that in 2010 he was the whistleblower who first contacted Inspector General David Thomas about his concerns with Woodruff.
Those concerns included Woodruff’s sale of three acres to the state for the CR 1200 North bridge. The IG investigated and cleared Woodruff of wrongdoing in the hiring of his mother, and in his sale of land to the state. But the IG didn’t look into whether Woodruff had any role in the $1.8 million paid to his uncle and cousins, a price that was 43 percent above the average paid for cropland in the county.
Last month an array of legal and government ethics experts who reviewed the IG’s report clearing Woodruff questioned Thomas’ legal justifications and the vigor of his investigation.
And now that Waterman has heard from tipsters inside INDOT about Woodruff’s involvement in the change order of the bridge, the former Sullivan County sheriff is asking for someone besides the IG to look into it.
While legal and ethics experts say the totality of The Star’s findings should warrant an investigation, including a possible criminal inquiry, it’s unclear just who — besides the IG — might conduct one, or if one has been started already.
Daviess County prosecutor Dan Murrie declined to say last week if he was looking into the Woodruff matter. Peg McLeish, a spokeswoman for the Marion County Prosecutor's Office, said that her office also spoke with the Daviess County prosecutor.
“Otherwise,” she said, “we have no comment.”
Waterman and Carla Miller, a former federal prosecutor who runs a government ethics consulting firm, say it’s possible federal authorities might be interested in taking up an investigation, given that I-69 is a federally funded highway project. INDOT documents show the overpass was under federal oversight. U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett declined to comment.
So, for now, the matter remains in the hands of Inspector General Thomas. When contacted by The Star, Thomas said he couldn’t discuss Woodruff because his investigation is continuing.