Twenty years have passed since the Aiken Corporation last took on a major project. If the City of Aiken is intent on awarding the Aiken Corporation a no-bid $20 million contract to develop the “mixed-use“ spec building, then City Council should, at the very least, hold discussions on the history of the Aiken Corporation’s Westinghouse/Washington/Amentum project from 1998-2002.

_____________

As documented in the October 2023  “Amentum Model”¹ series, the “boondoggle” moniker has been attached to several Aiken Corporation projects over the past 20 years: the train depot, the Willow Run spec building, and the 2002 Westinghouse/Washington/Amentum building. This afterword, which includes updated information from recent FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, focuses on the 2002 Westinghouse/Washington/Amentum building.

Sticker shock

According to a local newspaper headline in February 2002, the Aiken City Council reacted with “shock”² upon learning that an additional $1.5 million was being requested to complete the Aiken Community Playhouse (Performing Arts Center) side of the building. The $1.5 million request brought this Aiken Corporation project — which had started at a modest $0.5 million in November 1998, then crept to $2.5 million in March 1999, then evolved to $6.0 million by August 2000 — to a new high of $7.7 million in February 2002.

Requests for the independent audit that never took place

In March-April 2002, the local newspaper editorial pages and City Council meetings featured numerous citizen requests for an independent, third-party audit to better understand the enormous escalations and costs to ensure this never happened again. As one citizen wrote, “There should be an independent third-party audit of the project to determine what went wrong and what went right, that would be a public document so that all citizens could have access to the report.”³

Two of the most vocal requests for an independent audit came from City Council members. According to the minutes of a March 25, 2002 second reading and public hearing on an ordinance to loan Aiken Corporation $3.5 million, Councilman Richard Smith said there should be “both a financial audit and a management audit of the relationship between the Aiken Corporation, and the city of Aiken.” He made a motion to amend the ordinance, as a term of the City’s loan to Aiken Corporation, for “an independent management audit,” and said that he “did not feel this could be done objectively in-house.”

Councilman Smith’s motion was seconded by Councilwoman Jane Vaughters. Discussion ensued over the cost of an independent audit. Controversy was added by the concern that an independent audit constituted an “investigation” and that the Council’s critical discussion of the project was “insinuating” things. (See screenshot, below from meeting minutes).

In this same screenshot is a statement that carries sage perspective for the present: “Councilman Smith stated this is not aimed at people, but is talking about the institutions in which we work. He said this is to find out if there’s a better way for these institutions to interact. He said he felt it was worth an audit of how the Aiken Corporation and the city do business.”

Herein, Councilman Smith addressed a dynamic that still exists and has surfaced in recent projects, including Project Pascalis and the SRNL Lab project, where personal insult is perceived, or individual umbrage is taken, over critical discussions on institutions. This should raise a healthy degree of concern over whether the individuals involved have developed such a personal or psychological investment in the project or their relationships with their colleagues that they are blinded to seeing the institutions with objectivity.

At the end of the City Council’s March 25, 2002 discussion on the audit, Mayor Cavanaugh stated that he was “not ready to vote on an amendment on an evaluation at this point.” He wanted counsel to have a chance to review the proposed amendment in writing before making a decision. He stated the matter could be placed on the next work session for discussion, Councilman Smith withdrew his motion for the amendment for an independent, third-party audit, to which Councilwoman Vaughters agreed.

During the subsequent April 8, 2002 work session, an agreement was reached to conduct an in-house management audit. City Manager Roger LeDuc stated that, once the audit was completed, a work session would be scheduled to discuss the audit. In the meantime, a financial audit of the playhouse was to be completed.

This financial audit was not completed. With the independent, third-party audit now off the table, an in-house management audit was to be conducted by City Attorney, Richard Pearce. Integral to the audit was a list of points and questions that Councilman Smith had provided to Council and to all parties in the project. According to a May 1, 2002 newspaper article, “Smith said the questionnaire has the specific questions that he gave to council and wanted to use as the project assignment for an independent management audit.”⁴

According to this same newspaper article, “Pearce stated he will schedule a meeting to discuss the audit after all the questionnaires have been returned to his office.”⁴

The Pearce audit was completed on June 5, 2002. On June 10, City Manager, Roger LeDuc was quoted in the local newspaper stating that the Pearce audit revealed “no irregularities in the construction of the Washington government complex on Newberry Street” and that “communications breakdowns were responsible for much of the confusion in the project’s execution.” Mr. LeDuc said that a discussion on the audit would take place in that evening’s City Council meeting. ⁵

Requests for a discussion that never took place

The Pearce audit was not discussed in the June 10 City Council meeting, nor in the June 24 City Council meeting, despite several prior requests by Councilman Smith to have this discussion. The Pearce audit and a future financial audit were mentioned in brief, however, during a 7:00 a.m. City Council work session on June 18, 2002, as shown in the screenshot of the meeting minutes, below.

Requests for a financial audit that never took place

A FOIA filed on October 3, 2023 requested four items — the Pearce management audit, the financial audit(s), the list of questions that Councilman Smith submitted to Richard Pearce, and any records of Council discussions on the completed audits. The City responded on October 4 with one result — the PDF⁶ of the Pearce management audit:

Subsequent examination of the Pearce audit revealed a missing expert document, which prompted a second FOIA request on October 5.⁷ A response was received from the City on October 19, 2023:

“The City of Aiken has determined that it does not have a copy of ‘the statement opinion by Phillip H. Porter, Jr. regarding project management systems.’ The City also does not have any documents responsive to this request.”

Follow-up requests⁸ were made to the City on October 20 and November 1, 2023 for the other three items in the October 3 FOIA request. Responses from the City confirmed that the City is not “in possession” of the other three items. Two additional PDFs were provided, however, and were attached to the City’s October 19 Porter response.⁹ These PDFs contained two consolidated financial statements and accompanying information for 2001-2003 for the Aiken Corporation, and its newly-created, for-profit arm, LED of Aiken, Inc. Neither PDF contained a financial audit of the Washington Group (Amentum) project.

Requests for records

Twenty-one years down the road, the Pearce audit should have been posted online in the City of Aiken document repository, so that all citizens could have access to the report, but it was not. The filing of a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request was necessary to access the Pearce audit.

The situation today

Twenty years have passed since the Aiken Corporation last took on a major project. The Aiken Corporation is presently pursuing the $20 million spec building for SRNL. The Aiken Corporation board members have predicted a successful outcome for this project based on their expertise with the “Amentum Model,” as they have dubbed it. 

If the City of Aiken is intent on awarding the Aiken Corporation a no-bid $20 million contract to develop the “mixed-use“ spec building, then City Council should, at the very least, hold discussions on the history of the Washington/Amentum project from 1998-2002 with particular focus on whatever audits were and were not conducted, so that the errors of the past are not repeated on an even grander scale. 

From here — rather than asking the citizens of Aiken to take any individual’s word for it that the Amentum Model has ultimately been a success — show us, in dollars and cents over the past 25 years, how this is so. To paraphrase Councilman Smith’s words from 2002, this is not aimed at people, but at the institutions in which we work. 

Concerning the Aiken Corporation, local citizens have a right to a clear understanding of how, or even why, the Aiken Corporation and the City do business together. It’s 2023, and the members of both of these institutions are still struggling decades later to explain the relationship. Officials on the Monday-night City Council dais are confusing colleagues and business partners with family. We, of course, expect family members to side with one another through thick and thin, but is this a way to run a city?

___________________

FOOTNOTES

1. The Aiken Corporation’s Amentum Model: From Corporate Coup to Loosey Goosey
   Part One: The Playhouse Considers a Move
   Part Two: A Corporate Coup
   Part Three: Loosey Goosey
2. Daily, Karen, “Council has stage fright – Community Playhouse seeks $1.5 million to finish theater,” Aiken Standard, February 9, 2002.
3. Wessinger, Tommy B., “Playhouse project needs independent audit,” Aiken Standard, April 5, 2002.
4. Daily, Karen, “”Construction process at Washington Complex under review,” Aiken Standard, May 1, 2002.
5. “City Council to Discuss Audit on Downtown Complex,” Aiken Standard, June 10, 2002.

CLICK TO EXPAND FOOTNOTES

Show More

FOR MORE READING:

The Agenda-Setting Aiken Corporation

Aiken’s Cousin Problem – The Aiken Corporation Targets Newberry Street for SRNL Spec Project

The Aiken Corporation’s Amentum Model: From Corporate Coup to Loosey Goosey