Evan Vitale Consulting: Newport consulting firm accuses Great Park investigators of unethical conduct

Friday, August 29, 2014

Newport consulting firm accuses Great Park investigators of unethical conduct – Daily Pilot

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A Newport Beach consulting firm accused of non-compliance in the Great Park audit is turning the tables on investigators examining more than $200 million in project expenditures.

Stu Mollrich, principal at Forde & Mollrich, the firm given a contract by the Great Park Corp. to handle public relations work, accused Irvine’s special counsel, Aleshire & Wynder, of “unethical and potentially unlawful conduct” in a letter to City Manager Sean Joyce.

The letter was copied to all members of the Irvine City Council and made public during the regular council meeting Tuesday night.

In the letter, Mollrich disputes the non-compliance allegations made during a special session last week to compel additional documents and testimony. The council voted unanimously to pursue a court order to get the company to reveal overhead costs and payroll information. Mollrich previously declined the request from auditors, saying the additional information is outside the scope of the Great Park contracts.

From fiscal years 2005 through 2012, Forde & Mollrich took in $7.2 million from Great Park contract work, mostly as a public relations subcontractor to the Great Park Design Studio at a fixed rate of $100,000 per month.

In his letter to the city manager, Mollrich asserted that audit attorney Anthony Taylor, appearing with senior partner David Aleshire, made false statements and purposely misled council members by withholding documentation during his presentation at the special session Aug. 20.

In the presentation, Taylor stated that invoices provided by Forde & Mollrich showed only the name of a given employee, the number of hours billed and hourly rate, but that “these records provide no information, for example, of what was actually done during this time. These records are thus extremely vague.”

But accompanying timesheets that Mollrich said he submitted with the invoices to investigators in April, and provided to the Daily Pilot this week, show more thorough documentation that includes detailed task descriptions and time expenditures down to the quarter of an hour.

Mollrich said in an email to the newspaper, “This is especially disturbing because this false and materially misleading information was presented to support their firm’s recommendation to take us to court — an action which will financially benefit their law firm,” referring to Aleshire & Wynder.

“That’s obviously a very serious charge,” said Councilman Larry Agran, who raised the matter of Mollrich’s letter during the meeting. “We need to get to the bottom of it immediately.”

According to Mayor Pro Tem Jeffrey Lalloway, Forde & Mollrich delivered up to 30 additional boxes of documents since the motion to compel was passed last week, although a preliminary examination by the audit staff indicates most are duplicative of or similar to documents that have already been presented.

“We’re asking for them to do what every other vendor has done in the city of Irvine,” said Lalloway, “which is to comply fully with our subpoena and to answer questions under oath with regard to items our attorneys and our auditors find relevant.”

Military banners get OK

In other business Tuesday, the council unanimously passed a motion to add a military component to the existing street light banner program. The program will now rotate banners honoring individual active-duty service personnel from Irvine on 25 light poles along Culver Drive.

The military banner program punctuates news that Assembly Bill 1453, which calls for a veteran’s memorial cemetery in the Great Park, passed the state Legislature this week. The bill is now headed to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown.

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