Just after the spill, British Petroleum gave the State of Alabama $65 million in grant money to protect its shorelines from the impending oil in the state’s low lying coastal areas. In Baldwin County, Alabama, which touches the Flora-Bama, Alabama State Senator Lee “Trip” Pittman, a republican, was charged by then-Governor Bob Riley, also a republican, with the responsibility of overseeing the $15 million in monetary payouts to the Baldwin County cities in distress from the spill. However, Senator Pittman was apparently also plagued by the same compulsive greed that had compelled Louisiana political leaders to deliberately bilk and overbill BP. In early May, 2010, subsequent to the oil spill, Senator Lee “Trip” Pittman of Montrose, Alabama, a small, un-incorporated enclave just north of Fairhope on Highway 98, used his insider knowledge and oversight of the distribution of the BP grant money for affected Alabama cities to win lucrative public contracts placing protective boom along the vulnerable coastline. Pittman’s retail tractor company, known as Pittman Tractor, Inc., received a $639,000 contract granted to him by the City of Fairhope City Council (by a 5-0 vote) from the $1.15 million allotted by BP to purchase, place and retrieve oil boom in nearby Mobile Bay. He also received a similar $98,000 contract from the Perdido Beach, Florida community. As bad is it was that a sitting Alabama state senator would use his public position to garner contracts for work not normally done by his retail tractor company, the situation was made deplorable when it was later revealed by Mobile Press-Register reporter Connie Baggett in an article on November 20, 2010, that the senator was less than forthright in his dealings with the Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency, the City of Fairhope and the Baldwin County Government. Apparently, after Senator Pittman presented to Baldwin County Emergency management officials his own company’s proposal (Pittman Tractor) to purchase and place the necessary boom in Mobile Bay, he was told by Baldwin County Emergency Management Director Leigh Ann Ryals, Baldwin County Attorney Scott Barnett, Baldwin County Chief Administrator Michael Thompson and sitting County Commissioner Skip Gruber that an Alabama Ethics Commission complaint would be filed against him if he proceeded. Mr. Pittman, not wanting to openly upset the County Commission Emergency Management administrative brass, admitted he should not pursue the business, immediately withdrew the proposal and replaced it with a more legitimate one naming Oil Recovery of Alabama, Inc. as the contractor of record. Subsequently, there was no mention of Pittman Tractor, Inc. of Daphne, Alabama by the Senator in relation to the available protective boom grant. County administrative officials thereafter checked online with state records to verify if Pittman was among any of the stated principals of Oil Recovery, Inc. He was not, and the contractor of record was officially established and recorded with State Emergency Management in Bay Minette, Alabama and Clanton, Alabama as Oil Recovery of Alabama. However, through one of the best examples of investigative reporting you will find, Connie Baggett of the Mobile Press-Register discovered that Pittman’s tractor company indeed illegally received the $639,000 granted contract from the City of Fairhope’s City Council, despite the fact that he said he would no longer pursue the contract. Apparently Pittman secretly worked a deal with officials from the City of Fairhope to still get the boom contract, which amounted to seriously low-hanging forbidden fruit for a state senator many theretofore considered a rising star in Alabama state politics. Until this imbroglio, Pittman’s name had been continually mentioned as a promising future gubernatorial candidate. Like clockwork, the compromised Pittman denied any wrongdoing. He further revealed, in the aforementioned Press-Register article, that his company, Pittman Tractor, was already the existing emergency debris removal contractor for the City of Fairhope (it was and is not) and that the situation was “complex,” and that he was operating under an “emergency declaration.” Pittman also claimed that his company received only “ten percent” of the money in the contract, with Oil Recovery of Alabama, Inc. receiving the rest of the aid monies intended to be used for boom to protect the coastline. Pittman later told Lagniappe Mobile News Editor Rob Holbert in an article dated January 25, 2011 that if he would have gladly “wrapped himself in Sham-Wow! Super absorbent towel and thrown himself into Mobile Bay, if that’s what it would have taken to keep the oil from reaching shore.” Further, in a February 2, 2011 follow-up article by Connie Baggett of the Mobile Press-Register, Pittman added to his defense, declaring that “he had not yet had ethics training” when he questionably sought and illegally acquired the boom contract. The most unfortunate result from the senator’s digression was that four members of the previously mentioned Baldwin County administrative staff were allegedly pushed out by Senator Pittman’s business partner, sitting Baldwin County Commissioner Bob James, for trying to stymie the obvious unethical behavior. Each of these capable administrators lost their jobs as a result of doing them on behalf of Baldwin County residents. They were all fired by the Baldwin County Commission, a four-member body, without logical justification. Local Fairhope citizen activists, led by retired resident dissident, Francis Paul Ripp, an England-born, Birmingham, Alabama-raised former Marine Corp Sniper who saw action in the Viet Nam conflict, in early 2011 compiled a formal, 130-page Alabama Ethics Commission complaint and subsequent 20-page addendum containing news articles, related public documents obtained from Freedom of Information Act requests and first-hand testimony from the jettisoned Baldwin County employees detailing the extent of the wrongdoing. This complaint was sent to the Alabama Ethics Commission, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigations Mobile, Alabama office, the Baldwin County District Attorney’s Office and numerous media outlets. On Thursday, September 15, 2011, federal grand jury subpoenas were served on the City of Fairhope’s mayor, Timothy Kant and senior staff, including City Administrator Gregg Mims, Purchasing Manager Dan Ames, and Information Technology Director Jason Colee, as part of what was revealed to be an ongoing, nearly year-long federal investigation involving the oil boom contract awarded to the retail tractor company of state Senator Trip Pittman. At that time Senator Pittman offered somewhat conflicting commentary on the matter, while sounding almost certain that nothing would come of it. To Fairhope Courier reporter Mike Odom, in an online article appearing on the BaldwinCountynow website on September 19, 2011, he admitted knowing about the federal investigative file that was opened almost a year earlier by law enforcement agents. To Mobile Press-Register David Ferrara on September 19, 2011 he stated, “I was surprised to find out that there was some investigation going on. I just look forward to working with whoever is looking into this to get all the facts out. I’m confident at the end of the day that they’ll understand that everything was done on the up and up.” In February 2011, the Alabama Ethics Commission, which is funded solely by the Republican-dominated Alabama legislature, dismissed without action Fairhope resident Paul Ripp’s 150-page complaint regarding the alleged impropriety by the Senator and Fairhope elected officials. Further, in April, the Fairhope City Council passed a resolution declaring that staff members had done nothing wrong when they awarded the dubious contract to Senator Pittman, despite the obvious factual and ethical leanings to the contrary. On October 7, 2011, in a Fairhope Courier article titled, “Senator Trip Pittman receives subpoena in federal investigation of BP oil spill contract,” it was revealed that the republican senator from Montrose was subpoenaed by the Feds. The opening story line read, “Federal agents served a subpoena at the Daphne business (Pittman Tractor) of state senator Trip Pittman this week in the investigation of a contract between his company and the City of Fairhope for oil spill response a month after the Deepwater Horizon explosion April 2010.” The loquacious Senator “Trip” Pittman was quick to comment in his own defense. The article read, “They always say in an investigation you don’t want to be the one left out, so I have been served, and I feel better now. I went through the bingo situation in Montgomery with all those subpoenas flying around. I actually was subpoenaed. That was the first federal subpoena I had ever gotten. I was pretty nervous about it. But when you want to worry is when you don’t get a federal subpoena.” The subpoena dropped off by two agents to Pittman Tractor Company was for documents related to the case, a number of records dealing with the contract his tractor company received from the City of Fairhope to conduct the oil boom placement and retrieval work. Pittman, according to his attorney Matt McDonald, of Mobile, had until the end of October to provide the requested documents, which totaled about 10 to 15 items. Pittman further commented, “As I’ve said from the beginning, the facts are the facts. Everything’s on the up and up. Any document they want, I’ll be happy to give to them. I’ll give them (the Feds) everything I have.” To the Mobile Press-Register, in an article dated October 7, 2010 by Robert McClendon, Pittman offered, “I understand people are skeptical, there’s a lot of cynicism out there. You know, I can certainly understand why people would be concerned, but the bottom line is everything was done properly.” The Press-Register article noted, like the Fairhope Courier had previously, that Senator Pittman was relieved that federal agents had contacted him: “You’d rather have a subpoena than not have a subpoena.” In retrospect, it appeared that Senator Pittman was only taking the lead of his boss, Governor Bob Riley. On Thursday, January 20, 2011, Bob Martin, the managing editor of the Montgomery Independent released an article in print and on the web titled, “Riley exits office with a final trick: Aids political donors in $37 million BP recovery.” The rare news item detailed how Alabama Republican Governor Riley, in one of his last acts as head of the State of Alabama, in early December 2010, negotiated a $37.2 million payment to the owners of South Alabama real estate development company Brett-Robinson, who previously gave his 2006 gubernatorial campaign $150,000 in political contributions. The single payment to the lone firm of Brett-Robinson, which represented 57.2 percent of the entire $65 million granted by BP to aid the entire State of Alabama in coping with the spill, was allegedly granted to settle condo investor damage claims for the unfinished, massive Phoenix West II condo project at Orange Beach in Baldwin County, Alabama. On Wednesday, August 10, 2011, in an article written by David White of the Birmingham News, titled, “Former Alabama Governor Bob Riley registers as lobbyist” it was revealed that Riley registered his created firm, Bob Riley and Associates, with the federal government as a paid lobbying entity. Among his listed, paying clients at this juncture was the identical Brett Real Estate, Robinson Development Company, of Saraland, Alabama—the same firm that had bankrolled his 2006 campaign and received a tidy $37.2 million check with his lobbying assistance. This single payment of BP money by then-Governor Riley during the final hours of his tenure to his political allies in Brett-Robinson in Baldwin County resulted in what can only be considered a huge opportunity cost for the coastal residents of Alabama, as much could have been done with the money to truly aid those distressed from the oil spill. In 2002 former Alabama republican Governor Bob Riley, on election eve, appeared to narrowly lose his first gubernatorial attempt to Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former governor, Don Siegelman. However, a demanded eleventh-hour vote recount in Baldwin County, Alabama—a known Republican stronghold—swung the election late in Riley’s favor, by a paltry margin of less than 3,000 votes of the more than 1.2 million total votes cast in the statewide election.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 10:46:01 +0000
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