News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The Oregon State Police investigation that led to the arrest of Bend contractor T.M. Pete earlier this month may be the last of its kind conducted by the agency.
The OSP Construction Contractor Fraud Unit was disbanded during the last legislative session and its duties moved to the Department of Justice Construction Contractors Fraud Evaluation Unit.
The OSP unit followed up a 1998 complaint about Pete from Sisters area resident Michael Hooey. The unit's investigation led to a grand jury indictment of Pete on five counts of aggravated theft, three counts of forgery and one count of first degree theft, stemming from six cases, including Hooey's.
The Pete investigation was clearly effective.
However, according to Redmond contractor Mike Daly, who serves on the board of directors of the state Construction Contractors Board, the OSP fraud unit was just too costly.
"I've always been a critic of the OSP fraud unit," said Daly, who is a former State Trooper himself.
The unit cost $900,000 dollars in the past three years and "I think the money could be better spent elsewhere," Daly said.
"I'm in favor of using the investigators on board (on contract with the CCB) who are private investigators," Daly said. "We can get a lot more bang for the dollar, so to speak."
CCB investigators include former FBI agents and other former law enforcement personnel, who have the skills and temperament to wade through the paper trails on construction fraud investigations.
They are also trained to investigate claims that don't amount to a criminal problem.
Most claims brought to the CCB are not fraud and investigators trained strictly for criminal investigation were a poor fit, Daly contends.
Most claims boil down to differences of opinion and perception between homeowner and contractors or subcontractors and general contractors, Daly said.
"The state police have never learned our claims procedure," Daly said. "The state police are not conducive to what the CCB does."
Representative Ben Westlund, who participated in the legislature's decision to disband the OSP unit, said that there was a high rate of turnover among troopers assigned to the unit.
The unit was not especially productive, Westlund noted.
"They did not make that many arrests," the representative said.
Part of the paucity of arrests is due to the difficulty of making charges stick, Westlund said. Criminal cases on contractor fraud are a burden on underfunded District Attorneys' offices, especially since proving intent to defraud is not easy.
"They're tough cases to make," Westlund said.
Daly estimated that each state trooper cost $100,000 per year, paid out of contractors' registration fees to the CCB. The unit spent approximately $18,000 for each arrest that stemmed from OSP investigations, according to Westlund's figures.
"It was questionable whether it (the fraud unit) was worth the money," Daly said.
The interim Construction Contractors Fraud Evaluation Unit, operated by the state attorney general's office, reviews reports from CCB investigators and possible crimes are still investigated.
The interim unit is also supposed to evaluate how construction fraud should best be handled in the future, and report back to the legislature
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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