CSUN Removes Quake Repair Firm, Orders Ethics Probe

In a sweeping response to ethical questions surrounding their earthquake recovery effort, Cal State Northridge officials announced Thursday that they are removing the chief engineering firm on the $350-million repair project and bringing in new leadership to oversee the program.

University officials are also asking the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission to determine whether special assistant Jane Chatham and her husband, CSUN Associate Vice President Bill Chatham, broke state ethics laws in accepting free construction work at their home from employees at the Los Angeles engineering firm of Law / Crandall Inc.

Even before that review begins, CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson said she is placing a formal warning in the personnel files of both Chathams stressing the need for rigorous adherence to school policies on conflicts of interest and other issues.

“It is my judgment,” Wilson wrote in a letter to Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz, “that permitting Law / Crandall employees to assist them with repairs at their home was a serious error in judgment by Bill and Jane Chatham, which created an appearance of impropriety.”

Jane Chatham said Thursday that she and her husband did not wish to discuss the issue.

In past interviews, she acknowledged that it was probably a mistake for the couple to accept the patio work because of the appearance of a possible conflict. But she and her husband said the work was done by the Law / Crandall employees solely out of friendship and that it never influenced the couple’s oversight of the firm’s engineering contract.

Law / Crandall officials, who have defended the firm’s work in the past, were attending corporate meetings on the East Coast on Thursday and could not be reached for comment on the decision to remove the firm from the job.

The developments came four days after a Times article detailed the close relationship between the Chathams and Christopher Baylis, the Law / Crandall project manager who supervised the engineering work on a campus that was badly battered by the Jan. 17, 1994, temblor.

In overseeing Law / Crandall’s contract, Jane and Bill Chatham became close friends with Baylis, vacationing with him in British Columbia last fall and entertaining him frequently at their home. The Chathams also allowed Baylis and three other Law / Crandall employees to help rebuild their patio cover last summer at the same time the couple were negotiating what became a $10.5-million escalation in the firm’s CSUN work, records and interviews showed.

The rapid expansion of the Law / Crandall contract came despite repeated concerns from state and federal regulators about the absence of competitive bidding on the job. Records also show that state auditors hired by the university have disallowed $1.6 million in unauthorized work and other questionable billings by Law / Crandall on the project, and CSUN has fined the firm $40,000 as a result.

Company executives said Law / Crandall removed Baylis from his post as earthquake project manager last month in part because they learned he had reported buying thousands of dollars in meals for university officials and others associated with the project.

Records show that Baylis reported spending nearly $10,000 on meals in the second half of 1994, but virtually all of these reimbursements were later rejected by the university as improper. The Chathams and several other university officials listed by Baylis as guests have asserted that they were not present for some of these meals.

In several interviews prior to Thursday’s announcement, President Wilson had downplayed the significance of the Chathams’ relationship with Baylis. The couple developed an innocent friendship that may have “obscured the ethics code,” Wilson said last month, but she did not believe they had done anything wrong.

But Wilson has consulted with Munitz over the last several days, officials said, and she adopted a far sterner posture in her letter Thursday, saying that “maintaining public confidence in the university’s ability to manage public funds is my highest priority.”

She announced several steps:

* Removing Law / Crandall from all future work “except for uncompleted or undelivered items” and inviting bidders to take its place. More than a third of the firm’s $19.6-million contract is still outstanding.

Richard West, Cal State vice chancellor for finance, said in an interview that the firm’s spotty record on the project would probably preclude it from being awarded future work. “I’d be surprised if they get it,” he said.

* Asking the FPPC to investigate the acceptance of the patio work by the Chathams “to determine if an actual conflict of interest occurred.” Wilson also wants the FPPC to review Baylis’ meal and entertainment claims. He could not be reached for comment.

Under state ethics law, public officials are required to report all gifts of $50 or more and to abstain from taking part in decisions affecting those who have given them $280 or more in the last year. Ethics experts say the Chathams’ acceptance of the patio work and their authorization of millions in work for Law / Crandall in the months afterward pose possible violations.

FPPC spokeswoman Jeanette Turvill said she could not comment on the request for a review.

* Bringing the chancellor’s office into a new oversight role in the earthquake project. Under the new plan, West said, a senior planning official in the chancellor’s office will assume the role that Jane Chatham has held.

“The president is being very clear,” West said, “in showing the campus and the public there is a third party coming in that hasn’t been involved in this thing in the first place.”