So, here in the Bay Area (San Francisco), for a very long time, there’s been the pretty clear understanding that envelopes with cash “gifts” and free renovations for inspectors and permit officials were required to get any business done…
Not that everyone liked it; but it suited those in the know just fine and even though the FBI had previously taken several stabs at the problem, they had never been able to get to the heart of it…Until today, when the presence of a clean mayor (Gavin Newsom) seems to have broken the log jam….
Permit official faces bribery charges
District attorney, FBI probe S.F. building department
– Susan Sward and Jaxon Vanderbeken, Chronicle Staff Writers
Friday, August 5, 2005
Federal agents and district attorney’s investigators descended on San Francisco’s controversy-plagued building department Thursday and led away a long-time city employee in handcuffs after arresting him on felony bribery charges.
Augustine Fallay, head of the Department of Building Inspection’s one-stop permit program, faces 10 counts of bribery and three counts of perjury resulting from an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the San Francisco district attorney’s office.
Fallay, 47, had worked for years as an official in the planning department before transferring to Building Inspection in 2001. There he had been manager of the 10-member one-stop permit unit, which put reviews of complex construction projects on a fast track.
He was arrested after FBI agents, dressed in blue raid jackets bearing their agency’s logo, and investigators from District Attorney Kamala Harris’ office arrived mid-morning at the building department’s Mission Street offices to cart off boxes of documents.
The charges filed by the district attorney allege that Fallay took bribes over a 12-year period, including a $50,000 loan, payments of cash “in approximately four separate red-colored envelopes” and services for improvements on a kitchen, a bathroom and an entryway of his private home.
“This is bribery, the worst form of corruption that exists,” Harris told reporters.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/08/05/DBI.TMP
So, how dirty is your local building permit office? And is this the way that things operate all around the country?
Just curious…
NotaClue
Edited 8/5/2005 2:01 am ET by NotaClue
Replies
On the opposite end of the country - Long Island, NY.
In the next Town over, there have been about a dozen arrests and convictions in the last 2-3 years for corruption. at least 3 or 4 IIRC have been building dept. employees. About a month ago, they got one of the higher ups for it. The local District Attorney has been a take no prisoners type of guy on this. Nobody really cares if you are a democrat or republican when this goes down. It's a refreshing change. The building dept there is so bad that people get there at 4 am or earlier, just to get a number, so they can see somebody in the dept. that day. After a certain number of people, they just stop seeing people. In my Town, there were a couple guys caught, but not in the building dept.; they were in Town Security. They ran their own company from the Town offices, with Town employees and cars. It was an efficient system. I've heard, for years, that if you know who to talk to, all kinds of things could happen. I know that some building inspectors seem to always head for the basement or another dark private area to start the inspection.
My opinion - it's b.s. Either it passes or not. But, nobody asked for my opinion!
When my brother lived in New Jersey, he tried to sell his house. No problems when he bought it--everything was to code and so on, but when he tried to sell it, building inspector noticed some water marks in basement (though basement had been dry since bro bought it) and demanded that be fixed. Inspector said garage was not square (!) and wanted him to correct that. I don't know what bro finally did--I told him the inspector obviously wanted a bribe. Anyway, he did get the house sold.
edited spelling
Edited 8/5/2005 8:21 am ET by Danno
check out Buddy Cianci - Providence RI - don't know if any of it is "true" but 3 guys now doing time - one story was the building inspector had something to do with holding up permit for private club until the now jailed mayor was given a membership - new mayor claims to be "legit" but the new chief of police gets part of his salary from a private grant and his staff is getting pay raises while the fire dept hasn't had a contract for over 1500 days (4+yrs) after backing him during the election (came to the union and said he'd get the contract done in 30 days - union figured at least he wants to work with the union - then he got on the news and said something like anyone who thought the contract could be done in 30 days wasn't realistic (wasn't that you? Mr mayor???)
unfortunately, none of this is unique - check out the governor of CT too(disclaimer - yeah, I'm a firefighter w/o a contract)
When my brother lived in New Jersey, he tried to sell his house. No problems when he bought it--everything was to code and so on, but when he tried to sell it, building inspector noticed some water marks in basement (though basement had been dry since bro bought it) and demanded that be fixed. A town/gov official? Inspecting at the time of a resale?Or a private "home inspector?"A private home inspector has no power whatsoever to require fixes; all we do is inspect and report to our client, usually the buyer.FWIW, If you get a bum inspector/inspection (and there are plenty out there):Check with some RE agents as to the reputation of the inspector, (ii) try to find the "big dog" in town, ideally one with a good, rep, a lot of experience (5 years at least) and, ideally, one with a builder's license.Get a second opinion
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Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace
Stuff like that (corrupt zoning & construction departments) makes the Supreme Court's Kelo decision even more ominous.
Some guy comes in with a fat envelope of Benjamins for the zoning official & bam he's buldozing your house & building a shopping mall.
Excellant point - that is part the reason I concluded Kelso was wrongly decided - even without outright bribery, at local levels government officials can easily be unduly aligned with particular local interests.
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Sojourners: Christians for Justice and Peace
I'm pretty sure the inspector worked for the city, but don't know how he got involved in sale of a house--I guess buying Realtor sicced him on my bro?
Anytime a house (at least in NJ) changes occupancy (whether via sale or lease agreement), you have to get a new CO.
It is likely that the building inspector came out & failed him on the CO.
I had the same thing happen to me. We bought a house, didn't change a thing on it, but 2 years later when we sold it, we failed the CO inspection because the backyard fence was to low, there was a patched section of drywall in the garage that wasn't taped & he said the gate to the backyard wasn't self closing (turns out there was a rock on the ground, all I did was push it aside & the gate shut).
Everything was exactly the same as when I bought it & they granted the CO then. Apparently the house was safe enough for me to live in, but not the next guy...
Johnny
Apparently the house was safe enough for me to live in, but not the next guy...
That's because the inspector was a former GC!!!
Doug
Had a similar experience when I bought my house. No problem, but when I sold it I had to put in grounded outlets, a new electric feed to the house and this time through the overhang, not alongside, and a new box. Had to remove the cupboard from around the box. Building inspector ran a lawn service and when I was renting the house out, he was across the street working and saw that the fence between my house and the neighbor's was too high. Neighbor owned the fence, but told the guy I owned it. Before I could do anything, the neighbor took a chainsaw and cut off the offending two feet of fence.
Johnny,
I take it your from around the AC area. Up north near Morristown and the great swamp there was a town where the Health inspector weasled her way into every permit process. I want to say Green Villiage but I'm not sure about that.
Anyway, if you pulled a permit for anything, Reroof, taking down a tree, building a deck, you had to have your well and septic inspected before it was issued.
She was overheard ( heard it myself once) telling people that her demands meant that every house in the town had the best (and most likely most expensive) septics in the state.
Lasted about six months before someone had the ##### to call the state and end it.
A little further north of there one township sent out a notice to it's residents that they needed to provide the location of all outside oil tanks and those old agway gas tanks that were big in the 70's. It was im portant the township have this info for emergency planning.
About a two months later everyone who responded was notified that they needed them removed by day X and was provided a list of approved contractors.
BUt on the other hand I can drive around and look at some sites by some of the bigger builders and see stuff with green stickers on the front window that I'm not sure will still be standing at the end of the week.
I see in the paper that San Fransico's neighbor, Oakland, a number of state employees got busted for taking brides to issue licenses to illegals.
we had one last week that was arrested for spending 1.3 millon of the city money at the casino boats. we also have three mayors in prison. and a governor
Hi Bill!
You've been helpful to me at other times and posts; though I believe that you might indeed be able to get the right employee of the fair city of Oakland to do something by offering him a mail-order bride, I think you meant bribe.But yes, it was the DMV.
Stupid, stupid, stupid; now they're going to run afoul of the antiterrorism language rather than the mere corruption language; selling identities to unknown foreign nationals makes everyone anxious....
NotaClue
corrupt? Is it corrupt when inspectors know a contractor...he's a good guy they talk deer hunting and fishing... knows he does good work and is dead on everytime never argues because he does it right on and there is nothing to argue about... so the inspectors really do little more than just sign off without looking at anything except the the coffee pot... is that corrupt?
vs the guy the inspector doesn't know or worse yet knows and doesn't care for...where every detail is nit picked to death and takes weeks or months to get inspections done? is that corrupt?
around here like anywhere you have good & bad guys... you have connected people that can get anything done TODAY... and you have your off the street smart A$$... people always tend to like to deal with people they like... just makes the world go round a little smoother...
they do rotate the inspectors areas here so you might start with one and end with another... most are good guys... I'm sure when you get to really big projects that have politics involved you will always have "outside forces" that you don't have when it's "Joe off the street" building a shed...
I do find you get different answers for the same question depending who you talk to... 90% are wrong but i never argue i just go back a different day and ask someone else with the code in hand and ask "am i reading/understanding this right"?
you can walk into our code office any time or day and in 30 min talk to someone... and thats without a bribe...
p
Building dept., what's that? Here we have one guy, who maybe will look at something you gave him a month ago, if he feels like it, when he gets home from his regular job!
How about this one. In our town we've got a builder lives on our street, from what I've heard his houses are total garbage. He's also about to start a big job in the town renovating an old furniture store into condos and new shops.Anyway so far on his house he's built a 5 ft retaining wall about 5 ft from the road so he could dump about 10 ft of fill in his back yard to level it, rebuilt his garage into a weight room, rebuilt his rear deck with structural steel trusses and steel columns and replaced the bituminous curbing in front of his house with granite curbing (mind you just in front of his house). he's done all of this without a permit. The fill in the back yard is over his neighbor's sewer line and when she asked what happens if there is any problem his response was I guess you have a problem, The deck is probably 20'x30' and 8-10 ft off the ground (no rails, none no stairs just a ramp going up to it at about 30-45 degrees (How bright is this guy?) So our town is moaning about having no money. I called (anonymously luckily) and suggested the building inspector have a look at this guys place (I only got an answering machine) for violations and charge this guy at least permit fees.I find out the other day when speaking to a neighbor, the inspector recorded the call and gave it to this guy. He in turn has the recording plays it for his neighbor asking her if she recognizes the voice. That building inspector is gone (recently fired). He was legally blind as well (How he got hired in the first place is a mystery). Neighbor however is still there unfortunately.Based on a huge project the ZBA just approved all these guys are either morons or well paid off (guess which one).
"The fill in the back yard is over his neighbor's sewer line ..."
Sounds like she had a problem before he moved in - what is her sewer doing in his back yard?
Somehow he arranged it with the town to put in his new homes (one being his)over existing sewer lines, Supposedly she has an easement but the line is now about 10 feet deeper than it was. How he got permission to build over it in the first place just adds to the rest of the story.
Next time put a sock over the mouthpiece on the phone when you make the call. Any maybe make it to the state attorney general's office.
My situation is like that. My neighbor to the North and I share a sewer line under his driveway. The C/O to snake it is on my side. Both buildings belonged to the same company when they were built (1926), and the sewer was left that way later when the lots were divided and sold.
As for corruption, LADBS since Adelman took over is clean. They did just bust some sanitation dep't guys for running a trash service using the city's equipment and landfill.
-- J.S.
our inspectors are not corrupt, they are just so damn stupid they might as well be crooked. They are relatives of other county employees that cannot get jobs at walmart. The people at HD know more and have corrected the county inspectors mistakes. They have actual told me that they only goal is to raise your property tax. The more they raise, the bigger their budget , the more relative they can hire.
The Building Dept. here is real Good, nice group of people. The Water Dept. is the one thats a pain to deal with. Bunch of simple mines, have to keep your tools in site when the $10. hr guy comes out to set meters. They also think the job site is their own personal lumber/hardware store.
Reported the missing items & tools. After that could not pass a water meter inspection 1st time for 60 days. $30 re inspection fee on 2nd call. Wrote a fair share of them. Called the Mayor & told him if it did not stop would go to the local paper. It seemed to work. The guy we busted with the tools now works for the Parks Dept.
So, how dirty is your local building permit office?
Not anywhere near as greasy as some of the clowns
they have to deal with...
The chief inspector / zoning administrator in our department will.
Allow you to build a 45,000 s.f. addition to a 90,000 s.f. building without a permit and overlook other non permitted offences, if someone were to bring an excavator to his home and dig a pond.
Ignore existing zoning and code violations in the town if he doesn't want to enforce them.
When he was married, he had an affair with the zoning board attorney. He made a decision about an allowed use of a property adjacent to the attorney's property that almost killed the deal for the transfer of a summer camp that has been in continuous operation since 1955. The zoning board attorney did not want the camp next to her new house. Inspectors interpretation was, camp was not an allowed use anymore. The town board reinterpreted his decision so the camp could be sold, but not before the seller spent 100k on legal fees.
When the inspectors wife threw him out of their house , a local builder developer gave him an apartment to live in RENT FREE. That lasted until the camp seller found out about the arrangement. He told the town supervisor to correct this or he would turn them all in.
Inspector was picked up for DWI in May, when the local paper interviewed the town supervisor the supervisor said" it is a victimless crime ". I believe because of the publicity he did get the standard dwi penalty,
Other contractors, developers, and architects have told me other stories that are similar to these . If you publicly speak out you will never get a variance or permit in this town. It helps when the town hall is named after the inspectors father.
>>Allow you to build a 45,000 s.f. addition to a 90,000 s.f. building without a permit and .....
A 90 K addition? what are you building, airplane hangers? I'm gonna assume thats a typo. 90 thousand square feet is the size of a friggin shopping mall
Big industrial metal building around 650'x200' +/-
May have to do with that astronomical Bay Area "median price."
Get a "pass" on a job that will later sell for a half-mill no sweat--that could be some real dollars just 70/30 split with the BI.
The locals tend to be straightforward, the people actually doing the work in Review & in Development Services. The visible evidence of some of their superiors more questions whether or not said superiors have pointy-hair more than anything else . .
In the '70's & '80's I used to rock houses in S.F. and a lot of times we would be sitting around waiting for an inspection. It was very common to see a bottle of premium whiskey that was always gone after the inspecter left.
I live in Alameda now and the building department is very professional and on the up and up.
Mike
Trust in God, but row awayfrom the rocks
This has been an interesting thread to read; some people took offense at the idea of "corrupt" meaning "friendly" and perhaps, playing mild favorites (passing an inspection without actually inspecting); but what has happened and been revealed in San Francisco was an order of magnitude worse, IMHO: envelopes full of cash, $50,000 forgiven loans, free work on your house; these sorts of things are the tip of the iceberg on 12 year civil service career for this guy...
What's more interesting is that the FBI made the bust and not the local cops; there has been no political will on the part of the police to investigate another branch of city goverment, so it's fallen to the Feds (this was their third pass at the Department).I believe that the system should be at least free of the requirement that outright large bribes need to be paid to get permits. Friendly waves on the actual inspection? You'll never get rid of that---and that's not what I'm pointing out...This story will be more interesting as they squeeze the guy to talk; wonder how far it goes?
NotaClue
http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=37099.9
A person with no sense of humor about themselves is fullashid
Getting the FBI involved in stuff isn't all that easy. In the wonderful town named by me above, the Genral Manager of the bus authority had embezzled about half a million dollars. He made the mistake of hiring what he thought was a washed up, alcoholic, former federal gov't auditor as Finance Manager. Guy found out that the books were cooked and called a friend in FBI. Took him several calls, but one fine day agents showed up, carted away lots of files and made everyone entering or leaving the building sign in and out. Charged the GM with 17 counts of mail fraud and so forth. GM pled nolo contendere' to 3 and got 2 years in fed pen. Was out in a half way house in six months. That'll teach him.
As much as I love San Francisco, they are having some real problems. Witha pop. of about 800k (?) it really is a small city, but lately the tales of coruption seem on par with those of much larger cities. It seems to span all depts. and it is a shame.
Maybe it can be blamed on the city council, who seem more interested in personal atention and trendy laws, rather than keeping the city healthy.
I thought Newsome might get things in shape, but it doesn't seem to be happening. (I acually met the mayor, I was shocked how young he seemed. First it was Playmates and atheletes,now even politicians are younger than me. ;^)
My personal experience with inspectors in the city lately has been chalenging. We did a few residential highrises south of market and I had to walk the floors with them. Believe me, I wish someone would ave bribed ours, he was pretty damn strict, and we were building way too fast. Bottom line- he was doing his job right.
Going back in the city thie winter, another condo job right downtown.Not too sure if I'll run it, or another foreman Mike
Trust in God, but row awayfrom the rocks
Alameda.... you know Mark Irons?
I know the name and I have seen his nice truck, but I don't know him.
I am primarily involved with commercial projects.
He has a good reputation around town. Mike
Trust in God, but row awayfrom the rocks
There's a political set of reasons that nothing got done for a while; and now, things have shifted...
Having been around Federal officials as friends and colleagues, I have to say that my impression is that they appear to be slowing moving and not all that smart----that it, until they decide to focus on YOU; then, what one usually learns is that there are plenty of smart people in the Federal government, they just are interested in working more than 9-4:30 (Washington hours); but once they decide to focus on YOU for those hours, well, then it's a different story...
NotACluePS
I'm glad they're cleaning it up; it wasn't fair to the contractors who played by the rules; it got projects that were below code through inspection, posing a threat to the people who live in them; and it's not right when the Civil Service becomes deliberately and perversely choked in order to ENCOURAGE the payment of bribes.
I was a planner on a HUD project in lovely Bay City and was complaining to the job foreman about some of the general contractor's stunts. He looked at me and said, "We send a case of whiskey to Xxxxxx at HUD Detroit every Christmas." The implication being that if I followed up by telling the man responsible for project oversight, I'd be wasting my time; he wouldn't do anything because he had been bought.
I saw the thread title and thought, "the only time I've been hit up for a bribe was in SF" so I'm glad they are cracking down.
In my town, building my own house, detached garage, and cabin? Things have been great. The lone building inspector in an ex plumber, knows his stuff, and the one time something was a problem, we figured out a solution. With the cabin, I was subbing things out and we both had similar reactions to the plumber's lousy work.
Plan check on the house was done the next day. Based on hand-drawn sketches on 8-1/2x11 graph paper. At least mine were to scale, many are not. Inspections could usually be scheduled in a few hours (summers a bit busier through). Permit fee (inc inspections) on the house was about $350.
It helps to find out the inspector's vacation schedule. Asked the filling-in city engineer about a DWV venting Q and got the wrong answer. Had to change it. Should have known better. When one engineer has to ask another engineer, it is time to ask a real plumber.
Well, the stuff that is public knowlegde is:
Housing Inspectors in City of Portland failing houses for code violations. Then turning around and helping these people by purchasing these homes at far below market about 2-5 people here
County inspectors and higher ups busted for trips, side work done on thier homes, I can't remember if there was cash involved there. about 3-5 people here
The situation in SF is clearly criminal and should be treated as such.
But many of the complaints I hear in my area about inspectors is a result of builders and subs not being up to speed on current codes, so when they fail an inspection, oftentimes, it's because they did something "the way they've always done it" and they go ballistic when their method doesn't measure up. They often end up with egg on their face.
That's not to say that some of the newer code items may be "stupid" or "overkill" but a consciencious inspector is bound to abide by current code.
That being said, some code requirements are subject to interpretation and may lead to a conflict between builder and inspector and, if the ultimate interpretation may impact the project economically or structurally or from the aspect of safety, there is usually, in most jurisdictions, a process for challenge, which may be as simple as a phone call up the food chain, or, in worst case, a drawn-out paper/hearing challenge.
EVERY professional builder or subcontractor should have in his possession a copy of the current code for his specialty and be familiar with it.
In my state (Oregon), most of the inspectors are people who were retrained as inspectors after having suffered a disabling injury while working in the trades. Our current structural inspector was a wall erector in a mfd home plant and suffered a back injury. His predecessor built pole barns.
But both have become pretty decent and consciencious building officials (although the new guy had to temper his enthusiasm some when he tried to play "the new sheriff in town": he actually had a few death threats).
For me, the inspectors are sometimes a required nuisance, but I prepare for them and pick my battles when they decide to get pissy.
But, the situation in SF is totally different and I'm glad the hammer is coming down!
Not corrupt, but some bonehead moves.
Recently had 2 of 7 inspectors let go because of surfing porn sites, and downloading stuff to their office computers, during work hours.
Bowz