BY GREGORY A. HALL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
NEWPORT -- A judge has dismissed Kenton County's claim that Corporex Cos. Chairman Bill Butler used "undue political influence" to win contracts for building projects.
Corporex attorney Mark Hayden called the ruling a significant victory.
"We feel like we have a lot of momentum," he said Thursday. The county is suing Mr. Butler and Corporex to recoup an $850,000 settlement paid to two losing bidders -- Wessels Construction and Development Corp. and Carroll Properties -- in courthouse and garage construction projects.
Wessels and Carroll claimed Corporex had an upper hand in winning the $35.6 million contracts. The county accuses Mr. Butler of manipulating the process in his company's favor.
Corporex denies any wrongdoing.
In other developments Thursday, Kenton County Treasurer Ivan Frye said in a deposition that he was excluded from contract negotiations between the county and Corporex when he questioned a change in Corporex's pricing.
The ruling by Campbell Circuit Judge Leonard Kopowski, the special judge hearing the case, eliminated one of the four counts in the county's lawsuit. The other claims are intentional interference, civil conspiracy and collusion, and intolerable conduct.
"Undue political influence is not a cognizable claim under Kentucky law," the judge wrote.
Case not hurt
Kenton County Attorney Garry Edmondson said not having that argument won't hurt his case.
"It was something that I put in there because when I started piecing it all together I saw that this was a situation that was just reprehensible," he said.
Mr. Edmondson said his argument was an attempt to create law based on a similar case where the contract for the state's highway rest areas was thrown out. Since the influence claim didn't exist prior to that, he said, he understands the judge's ruling.
However, Mr. Edmondson said he will appeal the ruling after the case goes to trial.
"I think we've got it in this case," he said.
Mr. Edmondson said he also is appealing a ruling by Judge Kopowski forcing county officials to reveal their understanding of how the county came up with the settlement amount for the losing bidders.
In Thursday's testimony, Mr. Frye said he had misgivings early on when Mr. Butler suggested that he should build the parking garage and courthouse and lease the courts building back to the county. "I thought we ought to own it," he said. "The county government goes on and on and on. Leases, typically, they generate money for the owner, not for the tenant. And I wasn't sure I wanted one man to tell us what to build, where to build it, how much it would cost." Mr. Frye said the county made mistakes in not following its own procurement code, but called them honest. The county was in a box, he said, because it didn't want to conduct the bidding in secret but needed some privacy so bidders' didn't know what their competition was proposing.
He said the confusion could have led to Mr. Middleton's allowing Mr. Butler to see competitors' proposals before they had a chance to see Corporex's.
Mr. Frye attributed some of the mistakes to Corporex's suggesting the leasing arrangement.
"If the county made mistakes, we had help making them," he said.
Mr. Frye said he expressed his concerns initially to Mr. Middleton, who told him not to worry about benefiting from Mr. Butler's expertise in planning the project.
