State College’s council OKs $74K contract with Glenn O. Hawbaker despite legal trouble. Here’s why
State College’s Borough Council voted Monday to move forward with a $74,000 contract with Glenn O. Hawbaker, despite the construction contractor’s recent legal trouble involving alleged wage theft, after being told that voting against the measure could prove costly for the borough.
Council voted 5-2 Monday to approve the Hawbaker contract to pave the compost facility’s access road and make stormwater management improvements there, with “no” votes from Jesse Barlow and Katherine Yeaple.
“I think, of course, people are innocent until they’re proven guilty and should always be treated that way,” Councilman Evan Myers said.
Hawbaker is facing criminal charges after being accused last month of stealing tens of millions of dollars from its workers through wage theft for more than three decades. Pennsylvania’s top prosecutor called it a “massive, unprecedented fraud,” and the contractor was suspended by PennDOT for at least three months from bidding on or participating in contracts for new state highway projects.
But the borough’s project is not a state highway project. And the borough currently boasts a $79,000 state grant to complete the project by June 11, meaning it can be done right now without essentially costing State College a cent.
The problem? If the borough wants someone other than Hawbaker to complete the work, it would lose the grant because there’s not enough time to schedule another bidding process and have the project completed by the deadline. (The state department that offered the grant will not extend the deadline further.) According to borough manager Tom Fountaine, it’s not legal to simply take the only other qualified bid made during the last process, which was about $20,000 higher than Hawbaker’s ($94,504 compared to $73,837.50).
Barlow, the council president, wondered aloud if there was a connection between the low bids and the wage-theft accusations.
“I wonder if that’s how he’s managing to get the low bids all the time,” Barlow said, “and I seriously wonder if we have to question this.”
Ultimately, however, council was essentially faced with the decision of moving forward with the contract and using the $79,326 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to pay for it — or scheduling another bidding process, choosing another contractor and then likely having the borough pay for the project out of its own pocket.
Council decided on the former.
No Hawbaker executives were charged after the conclusion of the three-year investigation. The company was charged with four felony counts of theft.
A formal arraignment is scheduled for May 12.
