Posted by
Team Turk on Thursday, October 05, 2006 12:24:49 PM
Kansas City Star depicts
corporate, city fraud.
The firm, Gill Construction Inc., contends that the city conspired to keep Gill from collecting a $2 million judgment it won against the city in 2002 for work on the 18th and Vine district. If Gill prevails, the operations of American Jazz Museum Inc., the city-subsidized corporation that runs the American Jazz Museum, the Gem Theater and the 18th and Vine cultural complex, could be seriously jeopardized.
The case has its roots in the late 1990s, when Gill, then one of the city’s biggest minority-owned contractors, helped renovate the historic 18th & Vine district championed by then-Mayor Emanuel Cleaver.
Although Gill won plaudits for its work, relations between Gill and the city soured in 2000 when Gill sued the city and the 18th & Vine Authority, the legal body charged with revitalizing the area, for nonpayment. In June 2002, a Jackson County jury awarded Gill more than $2 million in damages.
That’s when the things took an interesting twist.
The authority’s board was worried that paying the verdict would impair its ability to manage the museum complex. So, shortly after the judgment became final, assistant city attorney Heather Brown drafted a memo outlining the authority’s options.
The memo, which surfaced when an unknown City Hall informant sent it to Gill’s lawyers last year, suggested forming a new corporation, American Jazz Museum Inc., and transferring the authority’s assets to the new corporation.
In another memo about a month later, Brown proclaimed the new corporation’s purpose — to protect the museum’s revenues and the city’s subsidy of the museum complex “from attachment by Gill Construction and Gill’s creditors.”
According to court documents, the city promptly terminated its contract with the 18th & Vine Authority and entered a virtually identical one with American Jazz Museum Inc. The new corporation employed the same employees, and the authority’s executive director at the time, Juanita Moore, became executive director of American Jazz Museum Inc.
It was never clear why Gill wasn’t paid for its work, whose quality neither the city nor the authority questioned. After the verdict was returned, Cleaver, who was no longer mayor but remained chairman of the authority, told The Kansas City Star that the authority simply didn’t have the money to pay it.