New York Attorney General Letitia James says her office has recovered $125,000 from the Pike Company in Rochester for skirting diversity requirements in the Rochester School Modernization Program. Pike was a contractor on the huge project to renovate all of Rochester’s school buildings.
The project had an MWBE requirement, meaning a certain percentage of the work had to be subcontracted to minority or women-owned businesses. Pike certified that it had done so, but the AG’s office says the certification was false and the company violated the diversity rules.
The RSMP is a three-phase, billion-dollar project to rehabilitate schools in Rochester and is the largest in the city’s history. The AG started an investigation after it received a whistleblower complaint alleging that contractors were evading MWBE requirements. The investigation found that some contractors, including the Pike Company, engaged in “pass-throughs,” where contractors would hire non-MWBEs to perform work, but then run the money and paperwork through the MWBE to create the appearance that they performed the work.
The other contractors that violated RSMP’s diversity requirements include:
- Bell Mechanical ($200,000);
- Concord Electric Corporation ($350,000);
- Manning Squires Hennig ($200,000);
- Hewitt Young Electric, LLC ($160,000);
- Michael A. Ferrauilo Plumbing & Heating, Inc. ($90,000);
- Mark Cerrone, Inc. ($25,000);
- Kaplan Schmidt Electric Inc. ($100,000);
- Landry Mechanical Contractors, Inc. ($117,000); and
- Nairy Mechanical, LLC ($12,000).