From the Chicago Tribune

Construction exec admits lying about bid-rigging
Associated Press
Published March 2, 2004
A construction executive pleaded guilty today to lying about bid-rigging by
an influential lobbying firm that helped his company land a lucrative
contract supervising the $800 million expansion of Chicago's giant lakefront
McCormick Place exposition center.
"I provided untruthful and misleading information about the McCormick Place
expansion," James Nagle admitted at a hearing before U.S. District Judge
Blanche M. Manning.
The 45-year-old executive also agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors
in their six-year-old Operation Safe Road investigation of corruption under
former Gov. George Ryan.
Seventy-one state employees and others have been charged in the
investigation, which began by focusing on bribes paid in return for
commercial drivers licenses but branched into political corruption in state
offices and McCormick Place. Nagle was the 61st person to be convicted or
plead guilty.
Nagle admitted that while he was an employee of Jacobs Engineering, a St.
Louis-based international construction and engineering company, he received
inside information about the bids submitted by rival firms for the contract
to manage the McCormick Place expansion.
Jacobs had submitted an $18.8 million bid for the contract on Aug. 28, 2001,
Nagle said.
But within days, he said, he received a phone call from Julie Starsiak, then
an employee of the Ronan Potts lobbying firm headed by influential
fundraiser and lobbyist Al Ronan.
"I've got the numbers," Nagle quoted Starsiak as saying. He said she told
him that a rival firm had bid $12.9 million. Jacobs then lowered its own bid
to $11.5 million and won the contract.
Nagle acknowledged in court Tuesday that when postal inspectors and agents
from the Department of Labor questioned him along with federal prosecutors
he denied any knowledge of the bid rigging.
Starsiak pleaded guilty last week to lying to federal agents about the
bidding.
Prosecutors say then-McCormick Place chief executive Scott Fawell, Ryan's
former chief of staff and campaign manager who is now serving a 61/2-year
prison sentence on related racketeering charges, told assistant Alexandra
Coutretsis to pass the numbers to Starsiak.
Coutretsis, Fawell and the Ronan Potts firm are also charged in the
bid-rigging case. Al Ronan, a longtime Fawell friend and Ryan campaign
fund-raiser, is not named in the indictment. But a Ronan Potts lawyer, James
Cutrone, has said the powerhouse lobbyist appears to be an unindicted
co-conspirator referred to in the indictment as Fawell Associate 1.
Nagle, who is no longer a Jacobs employee, could face as much as 21 months
in federal prison. But prosecutors are expected to ask much less if he
cooperates fully in the case.
Among other things, he is expected to testify for the prosecution if the
case against the others indicted goes to trial. No sentencing date has been
set.
Ryan, the highest state official charged in the Operation Safe Road
investigation, is awaiting trial next year on racketeering charges involving
steering of contracts to a favored lobbyist. He has pleaded innocent.

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