Advertisement
The Division of Criminal Investigation closed the review into the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee project without Van Hollen’s knowledge or approval in October, spokesman Kevin St. John said.
He said the internal case report fails to document what investigators did during the 18-month review, if anything, and why they ultimately decided not to pursue the case.
The case report was approved by Joell Schigur, who was director of the agency’s public integrity unit. The “deficient report” was among the reasons Schigur was removed from her position last month, shortly before her two-year probation period was up, St. John said.
Division of Criminal Investigation Administrator Jim Warren told Van Hollen the investigation was ongoing after he took office in January 2007, St. John said. Warren never told him of the decision to close the case even though Van Hollen was to be briefed on such actions, he said.
Warren resigned in January after Van Hollen tried to reassign him to another position. He did not immediately return a phone message Thursday.
Van Hollen did not learn the case was closed until Warren’s replacement, Mike Myszewski, reviewed the file after he was appointed in March. Myszewski, a 26-year agency veteran, called the report “the poorest documentation of an investigation I’ve ever seen,” St. John said.
“The report, which lacks the most basic details of the investigative activities, should have never been approved,” St. John said. “It fails to document who worked on the matter, who was spoken to and what other actions were taken.”
St. John said he could not comment on whether the investigation has been reopened.
Van Hollen has faced criticism for the shakeup at the Division of Criminal Investigation but he said in a statement that the mismanagement showed why he needed to make changes.
But Schigur’s lawyer, Peter Fox, said Van Hollen’s aides were using the case to justify “an altogether different motivation” for her demotion to special agent.
The demotion came shortly after she spoke out against a plan to use agents to guard Van Hollen during the Republican National Convention in September, Fox noted.
The division started the review into the award of the $68 million contract to redevelop the Kenilworth building on the UW-Milwaukee campus in spring 2006.
A bidder, Ken Nelson, produced documents showing his group was selected for the work by an evaluation committee but lost after Doyle’s administration secretary, Marc Marotta, intervened.
Nelson said he was frustrated he never heard from investigators again until he received a short letter in October in which they told him the case was closed. He “couldn’t agree more” that the case was mismanaged, he said.
“It’s great somebody finally woke up,” Nelson said.
Nelson’s records show Marotta advised the university to ditch negotiations with Nelson’s firm, Prism, and restart the bidding process. Marotta has said the process was flawed because Prism was allowed to revise its bid after the deadline. A losing bidder had complained.
UW-Milwaukee’s top lawyer, Monica Rimai, repeatedly argued that claim was baseless and there was no need to start over, records show.
Nelson claimed Marotta’s actions were politically motivated because the contract ultimately went to a group whose employees had donated heavily to Doyle’s re-election campaign. Marotta, who left his state job in 2005, has denied wrongdoing.
The allegations were fodder during the 2006 election. Republicans used the case to question Doyle’s administration. Van Hollen, a Republican, promised to investigate if elected. Then-Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, a Democrat, said a review was under way.
But Dan Bach, the deputy attorney general under Lautenschlager, said the department decided to focus more attention on other inquiries involving the Doyle administration, such as the controversial sale of a nuclear power plant.
“I don’t understand why that investigation would be singled out as one that was mismanaged,” he said. “That case did not look like one that was going to pan out from an investigative standpoint.”
The case file, obtained by The Associated Press under the open records law, showed no evidence that investigators interviewed a single person. No case activity is documented for more than a year.
“I assume based upon our prior discussion that you do not think there is anything worth investigating,” Department of Justice administrator Kevin Potter wrote to Warren in an e-mail in September.
Warren, agent Dorinda Freymiller and assistant attorney general Eric Wilson reviewed the documents one more time last fall before deciding to close the case, records show. They also conferred with U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, who said he was not investigating.
“Everyone concurred that based on the information provided by Nelson, there was no reason to initiate an investigation at this time,” according to the report approved by Schigur. It does not elaborate.
The department might have a conflict of interest pursuing the case since its civil division was representing the state against Nelson’s lawsuits seeking $5 million in damages, the report added.
Schigur appealed her demotion through the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission on Thursday. Fox said she received a positive performance review in February that did not mention the Kenilworth case. Then in May that was suddenly one reason for her demotion, he said.
“What has to be remembered here, the decision not to investigate Kenilworth was not Joell’s to make,” he said. “This was a process that involved a number of people, several above Joell and some below her.”
