Maguire's misrepresentations

The months long audit of the I-84 fiasco is officially progressing with its release on Friday. Reported in Saturday's NHR (by Greg Hladky):

According to the audit, Maguire officials misrepresented Fritz’s qualifications to inspect the project. Shortly after the project began in fall 2002, Maguire officials requested that the DOT pay Fritz at the level of chief inspector, and claimed he had been certified as such by the National Institute for Certification of Engineering Technologies.

But that institution notified Fritz in December 2002 that it was rejecting his application for that certification because he had "violated the NICET Code of Ethics," the auditors found. The violations involved misrepresentations of his work experience, according to the report, which stated that Maguire executives were aware of Fritz’s lack of certification.

"This left a Maguire Group employee in direct control of the inspection (who) did not meet the requirements of the job and was misrepresented as doing so," the auditors found.

The auditors reported that "additional requests for pay increases for Mr. Fritz were approved (by the DOT) in August 2004 and September 2005.

Fritz, whose mother is House Deputy Speaker Mary Fritz, D-Wallingford, could not be reached for comment Friday. A request to Maguire Group officials for comment also went unanswered.

Might there be some relevance to my most recent post "I-84: Fritz family fiasco?"

Why would Maguire executives misrepresent someone's qualifications for such an important job?

Finally, here are the thoughts of another interested party:

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the audit "reveals outrageous and far-reaching failures at every level in the I-84 expansion project.""These project failures were pervasive and purposeful, and anyone responsible should be penalized," Blumenthal said.

(Emphasis mine.)

Tim White