D.A. won't investigate prison deal

Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said today he does not plan to launch an investigation into how the son of former House Speaker Jim Black received contracts to provide pest control at the state's newest three prisons, despite not being the low bidder.

The News & Observer reported Sunday how Black Pest Control had won the business despite other bidders who were willing to do the work for roughly a third of Black's price. Jon Black is the owner of the Charlotte-based company.

Willoughby said he could not launch an investigation because he did not see in the report evidence of a crime, reports Dan Kane.

"At this point, without someone making an accusation that, if true, would be a violation of the law, I'm reluctant to conduct an investigation," he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dennis Duffy, who prosecuted Jim Black on public corruption charges, said he could not comment on the prison contracts. A spokesman for Gov. Mike Easley said he had no comment.

Read more after the jump.

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George Zaborowski, a former project manager for a subcontractor who hired Black Pest Control for two of the prison projects said the company that oversaw prison construction, Centex, demanded that Black Pest Control be hired. He said two Centex officials told him he had to do it to satisfy a state lawmaker whose vote was critical to Centex winning the prison contracts.

Officials for the company that bought Centex, Balfour Beatty of London, England, say Centex officials only recommended Black Pest Control for the two prison projects. Centex hired Black outright for the third prison.

Centex was the construction manager of the prison construction. State law normally requires construction managers on public projects to hire the low bidder, but lawmakers made an exception for Centex.

The company had built the three previous prisons for the state under a lease-purchase agreement with a private nonprofit. That made those prisons private construction projects exempt from public bid laws, and lawmakers extended the same terms for the newest prisons for Greene, Bertie and Columbus counties, even though there was no longer a private nonprofit handling the construction.

"It certainly looks like bad government," Willoughby said, "but those are not violations of the law."

Jim Black, a Mecklenburg County Democrat, is serving a five-year prison sentence for taking $29,000 from chiropractors while pushing legislation they favored. He was also fined $1 million for paying a former lawmaker a $50,000 bribe to support Black for speaker in 2003.