WEIGH SCALES - A member of the Shamokin-Coal Township Joint Sewer Authority is demanding either a refund or work credited from the authority solicitor.
Attorney Jim Zurick, responding to the demand at Wednesday night's authority meeting, asked for and was permitted the opportunity to review his billing for hours submitted for a project labor agreement regarding the estimated $37 million sewer plant project.
Board member Michael Carpenter said that agreement never made its way back to the authority board for approval, let alone for
further discussion on whether it would be included in bid specifications for the project.
That a proposed labor agreement was never included in the bid documents drew the ire of local union workers, he said, and the attorney should not be compensated for what Carpenter called "incomplete work."
"This isn't a witch hunt," he said at Wednesday's meeting. "Something fell through the cracks and we all took a lot of heat because of it." On top of that, "We've been billed for something that wasn't completed," he said.
Zurick billed the authority for 9.2 hours of work at his rate of $100 an hour, for which he has been paid.
Carpenter pointed out Friday that it was Zurick who reviewed and finalized the bid specifications for the project, and those specifications lacked a labor agreement.
Holding up two copies of the agreement during the meeting, Carpenter said the "final" document received from Zurick hours before the meeting had not been amended at all and was, word for word, the same as the rough draft provided to the attorney in August 2010.
'Verbal' recommendation
Zurick, a Shamokin attorney, reiterated on Friday what he had said during Wednesday's meeting - that he verbally recommended to the authority's engineer, Great Valley Consultants, and the director of operations, Dan Weaver, that the agreement be included in the bid specifications.
"I recommended that it be in the bid specs. I specifically recommended that," he said Friday.
Those alleged recommendations, however, were never put in print.
"If I blame myself for anything, it's for not documenting these conversations," he said.
Zurick claimed Great Valley Consultants and Weaver held a meeting, at which he said he was not present, and jointly decided to not include a project labor agreement - which would dictate, among other things, that a certain percentage of those hired would be local union employees - in fear that it would greatly increase project costs.
On Friday, however, Weaver said that meeting never took place, and he never told anyone not to include such an agreement in the bid specifications.
Scott Keefer, project engineer with Great Valley, could not be reached Friday for comment. On Wednesday, however, after being questioned by board member Phil Zalar, Keefer said he'd never been given a copy of a project labor agreement.
He told the board he had asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture - from which the authority is anticipating a low-interest loan totaling $17.8 million - if a project labor agreement could be added to the bid specifications after they were already advertised.
Keefer said the department denied his request and was harsh in its opinion on any such agreement, claiming it would stymie competitive bidding.
If the authority were to seek a written opinion on including an addendum, it would be at least March until the USDA would offer one.
Clerical typo
Zurick defended against accusations that he billed the authority for work he didn't do. He also, since the meeting, asked why Carpenter didn't give him advance warning of the accusation that would have allowed him to research the issue.
He said the time he sought payment for was spent reviewing the proposed agreement and speaking with union representatives, one of whom is George Zalar of the ironworkers union and also a Coal Township commissioner. Zalar confirmed having met with the attorney regarding the agreement.
Zurick doesn't deny that the proposed labor agreement was never amended. That "amend agreement" was typed on an invoice among services rendered on the ill-fated paperwork was a clerical typo, he said. That phrase should have been affixed to a separate invoice for work performed that same day, Aug. 18, 2010, on a unrelated consulting agreement.
The authority entered that agreement with consulting firm Delta Development Group Inc. on Sept. 8, 2010, and ended the relationship on May 23, 2011. Zurick invoiced 3.5 hours work Aug. 18, 2010, on the labor agreement, including meeting with a union president. For the work to which "amend agreement" should have been noted, he billed 2.5 hours for work regarding Delta.
The whole of the 9.2 hours Zurick invoiced for work on the proposed project labor agreement breaks down as such on his invoices, acquired from both Zurick and the authority: 3.2 hours on Aug. 16, 2010, for conference with the union representative and review of the project agreement; 3.5 hours on Aug. 18, 2010 (as noted above) for conference with a union representative and the disputed "amend agreement," and 2.5 hours on Oct. 13, 2011, for a conference with an electrical union representative and to review agreement.
"Unfortunately, Mr. Carpenter made an error," Zurick said Friday. "The portion of that August (18th) 2010 bill he referred to was not at all related to the project labor agreement. It referred to a completely unrelated agreement with a consulting group."
Paperwork access
On Dec. 15, 2011, an e-mail was sent by the authority to Zurick with all board members added as recipients asking that a copy of the project labor agreement be returned, as directed by a board vote, to have the agreement finalized and signed by the board chairman and secretary.
The document has no such lines for signature, and the e-mail, Carpenter said, was never returned.
Neither was another on Jan. 9, he said. When a courier was sent to Zurick's office the next day to retrieve a copy of the agreement, the paperwork wasn't available, Carpenter said.
It wasn't until about 90 minutes before Wednesday's meeting that Zurick dropped off the paperwork at Carpenter's house. Nothing in the document had changed, he said.
"The economy is in the tank, there are guys in the union halls looking for work. ... The board should have had the opportunity to decide whether or not to include the proposed labor agreement in the bid documents," Carpenter said.
Zurick said Wednesday the document didn't need to be signed by the authority; rather, he said, it must be signed by the general contractor who will be awarded the project contract.
Do what's right
Carpenter stands by his inquiry. He said the solicitor's assignment wasn't completed and the board shouldn't have had to pay.
"If I thought he was bilking us, I would have called for him to be fired," Carpenter said. Instead, he's asking for what he believes is right.
Zurick maintains he did not intentionally bill the authority incorrectly, and the time he documented for services is accurate.