Category: default || By jt3y

Yes, it's an unusual Saturday Almanac, but these are unusual times in Mon-Yough country, as we'll see in a minute.

That "thud" you heard in the 11th Ward yesterday was the other shoe --- a G-man's brogan, no doubt --- falling hard on the offices of Capco Contracting. Owner Thomas Cousar, two Capco managers, and a fourth man are charged in what the Post-Gazette's Torsten Ove called "a complex scheme" to overbill the U.S. government for work relating to the reconstruction of the Pentagon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Cousar and the Capco personnel are also charged with ripping off the companies that built PNC Park and the Petersen Events Center.

Federal prosecutor Mary Beth Buchanan says what the Post-Gazette calls "padded bills, falsified documents, tax fraud and kickbacks" cost the contractors and the taxpayers more than $1 million.

She said that the alleged Petersen Center and PNC Park frauds "cost the general contractors on those projects, but not the taxpayers," but that's a lot of hooey, it says here. If true, the extra costs no doubt helped drive up the price of both the Petersen Center and PNC Park, both of which relied in part on tax assistance to one degree or another --- the Petersen being owned by the University of Pittsburgh and PNC Park being owned by the Sports & Exhibition Authority.

(Standard disclaimer: I do not speak for the University of Pittsburgh. They don't speak for me. Some days, I don't even speak for myself. But on other days, I do talk to myself. That's a story for another time.)

The government alleges that sometimes, Capco diverted supplies, including ceiling tiles and drywall, from the Pentagon job site to McKeesport, where they were reused in other projects. Other times, Capco was charging the feds for the cost of workers who were supposed to be at the Pentagon; instead, they were on Walnut Street, helping build, among other things, the (now-closed) Tube City Cafe.

Though the restaurant wasn't open for very long, I ate there several times, and it kind of turns my stomach to think that all of the old pictures and McKeesport memorabilia were hung on walls that were supposed to be replacing the ones taken out in Washington, D.C., when American Airlines Flight 77 hit the building.

Sixty-four people, including the suspected terrorists, died on the plane, and 125 people died on the ground. And if the feds are to be believed, Mr. Cousar diverted money and material that was to be used to help bind up the wounds back to McKeesport to build ... a so-so restaurant.

Tube City Cafe, and Capco's offices next door, were raided by federal agents two years ago. The feds are now trying to seize Cousar's house in Monroeville and the Capco offices.

If I can be pedantic for a moment --- and I can be pedantic for a lot longer than that, believe me --- note that Cousar is from Monroeville these days. And yet all of the newspaper headlines call him a "McKeesport contractor." Let Monroeville take credit for him!

It wasn't that long ago that folks were lauding Cousar as a local success story. The county gave him a $400,000 loan in 2003 to build a new warehouse in the Third Ward, on the site of the old Tube City Brewing Co. Said Cousar at the time: "Having the opportunity to build the new Capco office in the 3rd Ward, one block away from my roots of Harrison Village, is a great endeavor. Walnut Street used to be a culturally diverse and dynamic business community. It has great potential to regain that vibrance and I’m proud that Capco can be involved.”

But construction work at the warehouse stopped when the federales busted in a few months later. The unfinished shell of the building sits there, still, another empty building amid all of the other empty and dilapidated buildings in the neighborhood.

If the indictment is accurate, then it doesn't look good for Cousar or Capco.

On the other hand, if there's any painting work that needs to be done at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary, I think the warden may soon be in luck.

...

By the way, although this is Tube City Online and the Tube City Almanac, I have absolutely no connection to Tube City Cafe. I did bid on a Pentagon contract recently, but was disqualified, on the dubious grounds that I was --- as they put it --- "an incompetent ninny."

...

Nostalgia note: The Capco offices were once the home of Gilbert Lumber, a nice hardware store and lumberyard I had the pleasure of dealing with numerous times when I was a kid. Like most of our local lumberyards, they were run out of business by the big chains --- first, Hechinger and Builder's Square, and now Lowe's and Home Depot. If the federal charges are accurate, then the guys currently running that building are a distinctly different breed from the people who ran Gilbert Lumber.

...

Meanwhile, the news remains weird out of Our Fair City's school district. The Trib and the News are both reporting that two teachers from Cornell Intermediate School have been accused of practicing some sexual education in a classroom there while two other teachers guarded the door.

(How do you get asked to do that favor? "Say, Bert, you don't have a class to teach seventh period, right? Maybe you can help me out ....")

Both of the teachers accused have been placed on paid leave and the district has hired an out-of-town attorney to conduct an investigation (I almost wrote "probe," a-huh-huh-huh-huh). The Picksberg TV news yakkers had a field day with this, naturally: "Teachers having sex in school! We'll have the shocking story, and the reaction, next at 11!" (Followed by a five-minute discussion of partly cloudy skies and a three-minute dissertation on Ben Roethlisberger's thumb.)

Hiring someone without ties to the district seems like the right move. Getting an outsider to conduct the inquiry should help insulate the district against charges that it's trying to sweep this under the rug --- assuming, that is, that the school board releases the findings, and we all know that school boards just love to be completely forthcoming with taxpayers.

Ah, right. I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt and hope they continue to do the right thing. And since one of the alleged lookouts says he wasn't even working for the district when the supposed incident happened, I'll give the teachers the benefit of the doubt, too,

As long as they weren't diverting construction supplies from the site of one of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I might be able to tolerate teachers knocking boots in the cloakroom, but even I have my limits.