Road contractor Michael L. Cone, who was found guilty of bribery and money laundering in 1999 while working on Florida Department of Transportation projects, has negotiated a short stint for himself on a list of convicted vendors with whom the state cannot do business. If things break right for Cone, he would be eligible to bid on new state contracts, including road construction work, by next year.
Cone, 45, of Tampa, is battling creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court over a forced Chapter 7 liquidation by his former road construction company, Cone Constructors Inc. (See "Highway to Hell," Weekly Planet, June 21-27, 2001. Read it on the Web at www.weeklyplanet.com/ 2001-06-21/cover.html.) Cone has blamed FDOT vindictiveness for his company's demise.
The bankruptcy trustee has accused Cone of hiding or transferring corporate assets that could have been sold off by now for the benefit of creditors, who are owed more than $20-million. A trustee's attorney has told a federal judge that Cone may be under criminal investigation anew for alleged fraudulent activity during the bankruptcy proceeding.
In 1999, Cone pleaded no-contest to bribing a state engineer who helped him avoid FDOT sanctions for stiffing subcontractors assisting Cone Constructors with construction of the Suncoast Parkway. Cone was also convicted of laundering money for the payoffs, which included a $140,000 waterfront home in Apollo Beach.
Cone was sentenced to a year of work release. He was discharged from that obligation to society after just five months. Following payment of a $203,500 fine, Cone was not supposed to seek new FDOT contracts until July 2003.
FDOT has since claimed that Cone may be using surrogates to circumvent the ban and attempting to secure new state contracts.
For the better part of two years, Cone apparently was free to bid on state projects funded by agencies other than FDOT. In February 2001, the Florida Department of Management Services, which maintains the convicted vendor list, finally got around to proposing that Cone's name go on it.
Contractors are supposed to be placed on the list when convicted of what the state calls "public entity crimes." Bribing a state employee is one such offense. Contractors who land on the list are supposed to be barred from getting state work of any kind.
Before making the list, contractors can contest their disqualification. Cone exercised his right to an administrative hearing, but it was never held. Cone delayed his disqualification till last August, when he and Management Services Secretary Cynthia A. Henderson cut their deal.
Under the deal, Cone's name has to appear on the convicted vendor list only until Aug. 9 of this year. The terms of his 1999 criminal plea agreement would still apply. Cone promised statewide prosecutors that he would refrain from competing for new state road contracts until July 30, 2003.
Cone can bid on everything, except state roadwork, starting in August, according to the deal with Henderson, a former Tampa zoning lawyer. Then, a year from July, he can begin seeking road contracts too.
In other words, Cone may be eligible for state contracts while still on probation for his criminal case. Cone's probation was not scheduled to expire before 2004.
Kathleen Anders, communications director for Henderson, told the Planet that maintenance of the convicted vendor list is not entirely her boss' responsibility. Administrative law judges, one of whom had to approve the Cone-Henderson settlement, may consider mitigating circumstances that prevent Henderson from placing a public-entity criminal on the list at all, Anders told the Planet.
The Planet could not determine if the leniency shown Cone is the norm. Stephen S. Godwin, an assistant general counsel for Henderson's department, said the agency maintains no records of who has been placed on or been deleted from the convicted vendor list prior to the current lineup of five contractors.
Far from getting preferential treatment, Cone suggested in a brief Planet interview that he was singled out for special punishment. Cone said he cannot understand why so few contractors convicted of felonies end up on the list. "Isn't it kind of strange that there are only three or four people in the entire Southeast on this list?" Cone asked.
Henderson's agency was 19 months filing notice that Cone's name would go on the list after his felony conviction. The department was tardy actually putting Cone's name on the list as well.
Although the Cone-Henderson settlement was approved last August, his name didn't show up on the list until December. The Cone name appeared only after the Planet asked Henderson's office why it was missing.
The name of Stephen Kasper, the alleged bagman who passed along payoffs from Cone to state engineer Robert Riley, was already on the list.
Henderson spokeswoman Anders attributed the delay in getting Cone's name on the list to legal haggling before the administrative law judge. Cone said he couldn't recall any such haggling.
Gov. Jeb Bush eased Henderson out of her last job as secretary of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation in September 2000 after publicity surrounding a series of questionable decisions by his political appointee. The general feeling around Tallahassee was that Henderson could do less political damage if absorbed with the mundane details of purchasing and employee relations at the lower-profile Department of Management Services.
Sheer boredom could explain Hen- derson's inattention to the felon Cone's case. But her handling of it probably doesn't reassure taxpayers that the Bush administration cares much about the integrity of state contracting.
Contact News Editor Francis X. Gilpin at 813-248-8888, ext. 130, or frangilpin @weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in May 8-14, 2002.