6 events in Passaic County with a date

Gateway tunnel board member had links to firm that got major contract

By: Colleen Wilson
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... A board member of the agency overseeing the $16 billion Hudson River rail tunnel project voted to award a major tunnel contract to a company where she used to work - and in which she still has a substantial financial interest.
..... Just months after that vote, the board member, Jamey Barbas, was rehired by Parsons Corporation, the firm that was part of the firm that was part of a group of three companies to win the tunnel contract.
..... Barbas is one of seven volunteer commissioners who serve on the Gateway Development Commission Board and who unanimously approved the contract with MPA Delivery Partners, considered Gateway's most consequential contract.
..... MPA Delivery Partners is a joint venture of Parsons Corporate, Arcadis of New York Incorporated and Mace North America Ltd.
..... Barbas, who has served as a New York representative on the Gateway board since it was formed in 2019 to oversee the tunnel project, worked for Parsons as a senior project manager in the firm's complex bridges and tunnels department from June 1992 to March 2004, her LinkIn page says.
..... Since leaving Parsons, Barbas has had an employee stock ownership plan that has ranged in annual value between $1 million and $2.35 million between 2021 and 2024, which Barbas disclosed on annual state financial disclosures forms obtained by NorthJersey.com through a public information request.
..... Despite that financial interest and nearly 12 years of previous employment at Parsons, Barbas did not recuse herself from the vote to award the key tunnel contracts to Parsons and its partners.
..... Months after Parsons and its partner companies secured the contract with the Gateway commission in February 2024, barbas informed Gateway's acting genital counsel that she planed to interview for a job at Parsons, said Gateway spokesperson Stephen Sigmund.
..... "Commissioner Barbas has recused from all matters concerning Parsons effective April 2, 2024, prior to her initial inventive with the firm, Sigmund said.
..... After she was rehired by Parsons, the Gateway commission and Parsons also agreed to a "dual-recused" plan, which means she is recused from matters involving Parsons and Gateway at the company and the agency, Sigmund said.
..... Barbas did not respond to requests seeking comment.
..... Sean Butler, a spokesman for New York Governor Kathy Hochul, did not respond to multiple questions, but provided a statement: "We expect all appointees to uphold the highest ethical standards and to follow all rules governing potential conflicts."
..... However, just the appearance of a conflict can be problematic, said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, acting vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan organization that investigates and exposes waste, corruption and abuse of power in the federal government.
..... "Even the appearance of impropriety, even the appearance of conflict of interest, even the appearance of corruption, can have a really corrosive effect on - for example - trust between people in the government," he said.

Rules on disclosing conflicts

..... The Gateway commission's policies on conflicts of interest and code of ethics states that commissioners should recuse themselves from matter before the broad if the person was "previously associated" with the contractor.
..... The policies go into more detail about this saying:
* commissioners have a duty to disclose when they "May personally benefit" from a board decision and "must avoid such conflicts, disclose the existents of any conflicts, or the appearance of a conflict, of a personal, financial, ethical, or professional nature that could inhibit" a member from performing their duties "in good faith and with due diligence and care."
* When it comes to financial interests, commissioners "shall not vote on or participate in any Board or committee discussions or decisions" if they or an immediate family member has a "direct or indirect financial involvement: that could impair their objectivity or independent judgment or "reasonably create the appearance of impropriety."
..... "When commissioner Barbas voted on the Delivery Partner contract in February 2024, she was in compliance with GDC policies and guidance," Sigmund said, using the acronym for the Gateway commission.
..... Barbas' employee stock ownership plan did not rise to the level of being a "financial interest," according to Gateway's policies, Sigmund said. The policy defines an "interest" as owner or controlling at least 10% or more of the stock of a confrontation, serving as a director or officer of the corporation or being an employee of the corporation.
..... Sigmund noted that before 2024, Barbas last worked at Parsons 20 years ago and was not involved in work on Gateway or MPA because neither existed then.

Increased costs, deadlines pushed

..... Barbas resigned in August 2024 from her most recent job, as a project director at the New York Thruway Authority, said an email obtained through a public information request.
..... In that role, she oversaw constriction of the Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, which replaced the old Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River - a $4 billion project still mired in a legal battle over $1 billion in disputed costs, nine years after construction ended.
..... Barbas' first day back at Parsons' complex bridges and tunnels department was September 17, 2024. she is now a senior project manager focused on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway project in New York City, said reports from Politico and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
..... Barbas has avoided participation in four Gateway board votes since recusing herself on MPA matters starting April 2024. One of those votes, on August 1, 2024, pushed back MPA's deadlines on six tasks and more than doubled the initial contract amount to $61,289,000, up from $34,465,222.
..... Another recusal was in December 2024, on a vote to expand the scope and cost of MPA's Phase A contract, increasing it to $157,454,389, from $96,165,389.
..... In the less than two years since MPA won the award to be Gateway's project delivery partner, -a contract currently valued at $823 million - 27 task order amendments and change orders were approved that pushed back deadlines and increased the venture's contract by tens of millions of dollars, according to hundreds of documents obtained and reviewed by NorthJersey.com after a public information request.

Why does this matter?

..... Policies on conflict of interest, like the one at the Gateway commission, exist to prevent corruption and increase the public's confidence in public officials and projects funded with taxpayers dollars, as well as to ensure there are independent eyes watching how public money is spent.
..... There are multiple concerns that arise from Barbas' decision to vote for the Gateway contract for Parsons and its partners, said Archon Fung, who has studied and published reports on conflict of interest and trust in government through his work as a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School.
..... One of the concerns is that she previously worked for Parsons, one of the firms involved in the MPA contract that she voted on. Another is that she had a finical interest in Parsons, and months after MPA secured the Gateway contract, she got a new job with Parsons.
..... "What's we can say is there was a conflict," Fung said. "We can't say whether it influenced her judgment."

Creating a 'strong wall'

..... That leads to larger questions about whether Barbas can be a strong, independent member of a seven-person board charged with overseeing managing and approving billion sf dollars of contracts held by the Gateway commission.
..... "Whether she can be effective as a commissioner would depend on how much of the job of the commission implicates Parsons, or involves Parsons, either directly or indirectly," Fung said.
..... If Parsons is a "large part of the commission;s business, then I would question her ability to be effective," he added.
..... In other words, should Barbas continue serving on the Gateway board if she is now recused from participating in debate about one of the most important contracts it oversees?
..... No contract under Gateway's purview is arguably as significant as MPA's.
..... The Gateway commission is a six-year-old, 60-person agency overseeing a $16 billion, 15-year constructions program to build a new two-track rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between North Jersey and Manhattan, and then make extensive repairs to the existing 116-year-old tunnel.
..... The project is designed to improve service for NJ Transit and Amtrak riders between North Jersey and Manhattan's Penn Station.
..... Because of the size and scope of the work that will take place, the Gateway commission hired MPA, including Parson, to be a delivery partner that would employ hundreds of people across a wide spectrum of roles - engineers, accountants, project managers and public relations teams - to aid the commission's senior staff in carrying out the project.
..... More simply, MPA is now the "arms and legs" of the project, said Balpreet Grewal-Virk and Alicia Glen, who together co-chair the Gateway commission board.
..... The strategy of using a delivery partner like this has succeeded before, as in the preparation for the London Olympics in 2012, a massive construction program that was delivered within budget and ahead of schedule.
..... But it has also gone disastrously wrong when the delivery partner was not properly managed by the agency and board and oversight was minimal. That's what happened i Boston when the Big Dig project - which took a six-lane elevated section of Route 93 and put it underground - ended up 10 years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
..... Hedtler-Gaudette, of the Project on Government Oversight, said the key to being a good steward of taxpayer dollars is having a "strong wall" between the agency and everyone outside of it.
..... "The bigger the project, the bigger the scale, the larger the dollar value, the more prospect you have of things going sideways," he said.
..... "The only way you can get your arms aorta that at the state and federal level is by having a strong, rules-based framework in place - and adhering to those rules," Hedtler-Gaudette said.

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