Fort Bend Independent School District administrators and outside legal counsel appear to have countermanded a Board of Trustees vote by refusing to renew a multimillion-dollar contract with minority-owned RHJ-JOC Inc., Trustee Stan Magee said Thursday.
Magee leveled the accusation a day after black community leaders called for a protest against the school district – prompted in large part by what they called discriminatory practices against RHJ and its owner, Eva Jackson of Houston.
At a March 6 meeting, the board narrowly voted down an agenda item to renew the district’s job-order contract. But instead of renewing the contract with RHJ, which had been doing the work, the agenda proposal would have given the contract to Jamail.
Within days, the district received legal advice that the contract with RHJ had expired, and so the district could use other contractors to perform the work, even without a board vote.
“We hear from the superintendent by way of a memo that they have pretty much discounted that vote,” Magee said. “There is an item they have brought to us that involves more than $25,000, and now they are telling us that they didn’t need our votes.”
Two months later, however, the FBISD Board voted 4-1-1 to approve a motion Trustee Ken Bryant crafted, directing the district to “engage in negotiations with RHJ to renew their contract and/or establish a business relationship with RHJ on or before May 30.”
But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Magee said, “they’re starting to give work to Jamail.” He referred to Jamail Construction of Houston.
A list of district maintenance jobs on the FBISD web site includes 10 completed by RHJ. It appears that 11 other maintenance jobs that had originally been assigned to RHJ, plus an additional 16 jobs, now are being handled by Jamail. Under “status,” each job is labeled “Summer06-Jamail.”
Intent vs. Interpretation
Magee said the intent of the motion approved by the board on May 8 “was to have the district – not the district’s legal council – get back into negotiations and renew the contract” with RHJ. “In other words, the vote said…give them the work back.”
Bryant agreed. “The board…said that the contract was to be renewed.”
Lee Petros, associate superintendent of facilities and planning, ordinarily conducts negotiations with construction vendors, Magee said, and then in-house counsel Bernadette Gonzalez reviews any contracts.
Magee said he was puzzled why outside counsel Jeffrey Horner, of Houston law firm Bracewell & Giuliani LLP, is handling the RHJ negotiations.
“I’m not sure how the administration, with Jeffrey Horner, got off track with the will of the board,” Bryant said. “I’m hoping we’re not facing a situation where the will of the board is being ignored.”
Horner said he can’t comment on the matter because the district, his client, hasn’t authorized him to talk about it.
The district administration issued the following statement in response to questions about the status of the RHJ contract:
“The FBISD Board of Trustees passed a motion at a May, 2006, meeting to engage in negotiations with RHJ to possibly reestablish a business relationship. These negotiations have commenced and are ongoing. The Board will consider the possible reestablishment of a business relationship with RHJ in the near future. Any final decision on this issue is left to the discretion of the Board and RHJ.”
Former board president Lisa Rickert wasn’t available for comment Thursday afternoon. Current Board President Steve Smelley was in Mexico on business and also could not be reached.
Bryant said he’s spoken with Acting Superintendent Manuela Pedraza about the situation “and she’s advised me that she intends on working with” RHJ.
Meanwhile, though, a June 7 meeting originally scheduled between RHJ and the district’s attorneys was canceled, and it doesn’t appear the two sides have met since then.
“The problems are mounting,” Magee said. “And from a fiscally conservative viewpoint, I can’t see throwing good money after bad by debating what the word ‘negotiation’ means.”
Magee said some people have criticized him for his support of RHJ in its attempt to regain the FBISD contract, saying it’s because the company helped him in his campaign for school board. But the company didn’t do that, he added.
“They came in later as individuals to help settle campaign debt,” he said. It hasn’t had an influence on his decisions as a board member, he said, adding “I put it all in the reports.” (Campaign finance reports show Eva Jackson gave Magee $1,500 in contributions in 2005, several months after he was elected to the board.)
Legal vs. Moral Grounds
Magee said the district’s intent in folding a series of relatively small maintenance and renovation jobs into one contract was to find a way that “you could bring in minority contractors” whose companies might not be big enough or specialized enough to obtain major single-job contracts.
“Look at the population of our school district. Seventy percent of our school district is minority – 70%. So why can’t we give minorities work?” Magee asked.
That question was brought to the forefront at a town hall meeting Wednesday night in Missouri City, presided over by community activist Quanell X and local NAACP Chapter President Ronald Reynolds. RHJ’s Eva Jackson and her husband and mother were among about 60 people who attended.
Jackson’s company is “potentially losing millions of dollars,” and renewing the contract with the company would allow the district to “get out of all this and not cost the taxpayers a dime” in legal expenses should RHJ decide to pursue legal action, Magee said.
Bryant, who’s an attorney, said he’s not sure a vendor could recoup anything from the district through a lawsuit, but “it does open the door to viewing us as unfair.”
“We may not be exposed on legal grounds,” he added, “but we are tremendously exposed on moral grounds.”
Magee leveled the accusation a day after black community leaders called for a protest against the school district – prompted in large part by what they called discriminatory practices against RHJ and its owner, Eva Jackson of Houston.
At a March 6 meeting, a motion failed that would have substituted other contractors for RHJ in a maintenance job-order contract said to be worth about $5 million. Within days, the district received legal advice that by failing to renew the contract with RHJ, it could use other contractors to perform the work, even without a board vote.
“We hear from the superintendent by way of a memo that they have pretty much discounted that vote,” Magee said. “There is an item they have brought to us that involves more than $25,000, and now they are telling us that they didn’t need our votes.”
Two months later, however, the FBISD Board voted 4-1-1 to approve a motion Trustee Ken Bryant crafted, directing the district to “engage in negotiations with RHJ to renew their contract and/or establish a business relationship with RHJ on or before May 30.”
But that hasn’t happened. Instead, Magee said, “they’re starting to give work to Jamail.” He referred to Jamail Construction of Houston.
