UNM Sued Over Arena

A lawsuit unsealed this week claims University of New Mexico administrators steered the contract for a $60 million renovation project at The Pit basketball arena to a company with close ties to university president David Schmidly.

The two-year project to upgrade New Mexico’s 44-year-old college basketball arena went to Tulsa, Okla.-based Flintco, despite an Albuquerque contractor, Jaynes Corp., submitting a lower bid.

The plaintiffs, led by the New Mexico Building and Construction Trades Council, said the project would have cost $2.26 million less if the low bid had been accepted.

“This is a situation of right versus wrong,” Ray Baca, the group’s executive director, said Thursday at a news conference. “Our complaint alleges that Flintco, because of relationships, manipulated the bidding process and caused a reputable, low-bidding New Mexico company to not win.”

A UNM spokeswoman said the university planned to issue a response later Thursday.

Ken Easley, vice president for Flintco West, the company’s New Mexico incorporated arm, said Flintco was reviewing the lawsuit. He declined to address the allegations but read a statement that defended the firm’s business ethics.

“Flintco has a longterm established commitment to this region and to this community,” Easley said, alluding to Albuquerque. “Our more than a century in business has been founded on performance excellence and integrity.”

According to the lawsuit, Schmidly developed a “cozy relationship” with Flintco officials during his tenure as president at Oklahoma State University from 2002 to 2007. Schmidly has been president of the New Mexico school since October 2007.

The lawsuit says Jaynes had the highest score on a preliminary evaluation in March 2008, but the scores subsequently were altered in a way that lowered the Jaynes score and raised Flintco’s score. Baca and his Santa Fe attorney, John Wertheim, released documents they claim support their position.

Wertheim said the manipulation was obvious.

“It’s literally people scratching out numbers and writing new ones in,” he said.

He said changes were evident on scoring sheets logged by four of the five members of an evaluation committee, including New Mexico athletics director Paul Krebs, who all report directly to Schmidly. A fifth committee member worked for the project architect.

“The ratings sheets from the four people who work for David Schmidly showed signs of manipulation,” Wertheim said.

The action, a qui tam lawsuit, was filed under the New Mexico Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, which allows plaintiffs to sue on behalf of the state. The plaintiffs aren’t seeking a specified monetary amount but a judge could order a recovery of up to triple the amount lost.

Baca said the group investigated the bidding by filing numerous records requests.

“We simply want to get to the bottom of this, to make sure the taxpayers and the university are able to recover the $2.2 million they’re owed,” Baca said. “We also hope this lawsuit shines a light on the bidding process for large public construction projects in the future.”