When Atlanta City Council in April supported a package of Watershed Management contracts worth $5 million, it included a company recently flagged in an alleged coronavirus relief fraud scheme in Stonecrest.
The Department of Watershed Management is hiring several companies for architectural, engineering, design and construction management services, according to the council’s resolution. The council voted 11 - 2 to authorize Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ office to put the contracts into effect going forward.
One of the companies involved, Jacobs Project Management Company, is a subsidiary of Jacobs Engineering, the Dallas-based private company contracted to provide staff in Stonecrest.
City Councilmember Dustin Hillis said he opposed the contracts because it involves Jacobs and the Arcadis engineering firm. Both companies “had very recent issues with fraud and corruption, in addition to multiple documented performance issues with the City of Atlanta,” Hillis said in a statement.
Jerry Jones, a former Arcadis vice president, was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2019. Jones allegedly committed a fake invoice scheme raking in $250,000 in Alabama, where a local water works board was also investigated for corruption.
“Jacobs’ kickback allegations in Stonecrest and the federal conviction of Arcadis’ vice president over Georgia and Alabama operations due to a false invoicing scheme in Birmingham are prime examples of why the two companies should not have been afforded the opportunity to do work for the City of Atlanta,” Hillis said in a statement.
But Atlanta City Councilmember Natalyn Archibong, who chairs the Utilities committee that passed the contracts to the full council, said none of the companies were ever accused of wrongdoing. She also said Jacobs fired the accused wrongdoers from a company division unrelated to Atlanta’s Watershed department.
“We’re going to be tracking what [the companies] are doing,” she said.
The Atlanta mayor’s office and the remaining city councilmembers did not respond to requests for comment.
Eight Jacobs employees were put in charge of a Stonecrest application program to distribute $6.2 million in federal pandemic relief funds to small businesses and charities. However, Stonecrest City Attorney Winston Denmark found ethical violations by the employees overseeing the funds, including improper contracts.
Jacobs fired the employees contracted to Stonecrest after Denmark discovered evidence of a kick-back scheme involving the employees enriching themselves with the relief money.
The Stonecrest City Council in April authorized Denmark’s request to perform an audit of the program’s spending. They also launched efforts to void improper contracts, to recover some funds, and to seek law enforcement’s help for further investigation.
A Jacobs’ spokesperson previously told the AJC in a statement that the company works with a number of municipalities, and the types of services and contract terms vary substantially. According to the statement, the employees accused of wrongdoing “demonstrated complete disregard for the company’s compliance programs and protocols.”
“Jacobs has a long record of operating with integrity and according to the highest ethical standards. The behavior and actions of the City of Stonecrest contractors and employees are abhorrent, not representative of Jacobs’ work and are completely inconsistent with the Company’s Codes of Conduct,” the statement said.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters Tyler Estep and Zachary Hansen contributed to this article.
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