Caltrans Wants Prosecution For Forged Tests
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The acting director of the California Department of Transportation has asked local and federal prosecutors to reconsider filing criminal charges against a former technician accused of falsifying safety tests on federally funded transportation projects.
In letters to Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully and U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner, Caltrans Acting Director Malcolm Dougherty says the fired employee, Duane Wiles, falsified data on three construction projects — a bridge in Riverside County, a highway sign in Alameda County and a retaining wall of an underpass in Los Angeles County.
"Wiles knowingly and willfully submitted false data to Caltrans," in violation of federal highway laws, says an accompanying report by the federal Office of Inspector General submitted by Dougherty.
It says the U.S. Attorney's Office Eastern District of California and Sacramento district attorney previously declined to prosecute because of a lack of federal interest or deterrent value, but Dougherty is asking them to take a fresh look at the case in light of new information.
A person who answered the phone at a listing for Duane Wiles in Sacramento hung up Monday on a reporter from The Associated Press.
The department on Monday released thousands of pages of documents about its investigation into Wiles ahead of a Tuesday meeting of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee to investigate California bridge safety.
In a letter to committee chairman Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, Dougherty called the actions of the employee and his supervisor, who was also fired, "unacceptable and reprehensible."
"Better controls should have been in place at that time to prevent such activities," he wrote. "Documentation should have been more thorough and timely, and remedial action should have been swifter."
Some of the information in the documents contradicts information officials previously reported in a conference call with reporters last week. Officials then identified one of the structures as being in San Bernardino rather than Riverside, and said that faulty testing on an underpass below Interstate 405 in Los Angeles County was caught during construction and contractors replaced the piling.
The documents indicate that no pilings were replaced as a result of the investigation, but all have been tested.
Caltrans fired Wiles earlier this month, more than three years after officials were first alerted to faulty gamma gamma tests, in which Wiles is accused of duplicating data from other tests. The allegations against Wiles were first reported by The Sacramento Bee, which said Wiles was also among the technicians who performed tests on the piles for the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
The agency has sought to reassure the public that no tests were falsified about the Bay Bridge, and that separate tests have concluded the bridge pilings are safe. The Federal Highway Administration reviewed all the department's gamma gamma testing dating to 2004 and found only the same three instances of false data, Dougherty said Monday.
Sen. Anthony Canella, a civil engineer who is not a member of the committee, submitted a letter to Dougherty on Monday asking questions about the agency's procedures. He noted that the Bureau of State Audits and the Legislative Analyst's Office have both criticized Caltrans' management and procedures, and questioned why Wiles was not fired sooner.
"I'm concerned that the egregious lack of oversight and accountability shown in this situation puts Californians at risk," wrote Cannella, R-Ceres. "Taxpayers deserve answers to these questions and — even more importantly — they deserve to know that the infrastructure they pay for and travel on every day is safe and structurally sound."
Caltrans officials first learned of possible falsified tests in September 2008, when another department employee spotted inconsistent figures while evaluating Wiles' data for a report. Another employee found other suspicious figures and urged his superiors to do a thorough investigation, which uncovered two separate instances of inaccurate tests.
A supervisor issued a written reprimand to Wiles in April 2009, accusing him of a "critical and inexcusable breech of ethics," the Bee reported. Dougherty said Monday that within days of the initial discovery, Wiles was ordered not to perform any gamma gamma tests.
He said Caltrans waited to fire Wiles until all the reviews had been completed, including the OIG review that finished in October.
"Will somebody question me why I didn't fire him earlier?" Dougherty said in an interview Monday. "That's a fair question."
Dougherty said additional checks and balances have since been added to the department's policies to avoid a repeat incident.
Caltrans also fired Wiles' supervisor, Brian Liebich. The newspaper reported that he directed technicians on state time and using state equipment to build, transport and install a steel gate and to build an A-frame structure on his property near Susanville.
A phone message left at a listing for Brian Liebich in Gold River, near Sacramento was not immediately returned.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
