A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order against the V.I. Housing Finance Authority this week after environmental engineering and consulting firm Gandee and Associates alleged a pattern of awarding “grossly inflated” contracts, procurement policy violations and conflicts of interest.
Chief Judge Robert Molloy wrote in an order filed late Wednesday that Gandee had demonstrated “that it acquired a property interest in contracts awarded by VIHFA and that VIHFA failed to provide rational justification for depriving G&A of those awards.”
“In addition, evidence strongly suggests that VIHFA intentionally treated similarly situated vendors differently absent a rational basis to do so and failed to follow its own procurement regulations,” he wrote, adding later that a temporary restraining order “will impose relatively little burden on VIHFA while ensuring a lawful and fair procurement process and may also save inexplicably excessive expenditures of public funds awarded for contracts that were competitively bid at lower costs.”
Molloy’s order prohibits VIHFA from awarding or executing seven contracts contained within a request for qualifications issued last year and from awarding any contracts under another solicitation to environmental services firm Tysam Tech, provided Gandee posts a $5,000 bond with the court.
An evidentiary hearing on Gandee’s motion for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for July 8 on St. Thomas.
Gandee filed a civil complaint against VIHFA and two of its top officials in U.S. District Court two weeks ago. The firm claimed that it first responded to a solicitation for environmental review, assessments and testing services in March 2024. According to the complaint, only Gandee and the St. Thomas-based Encom Company responded to the solicitation, referred to as RFQ-003.
“Remarkably, public procurement records reveal that VIHFA subsequently awarded at least five contracts under RFQ-003 to Tysam Tech,” Gandee wrote in the 64-page complaint. “This occurred despite the glaring fact, confirmed by VIHFA’s own published Bid Tabulation, that Tysam Tech did not even submit a qualifications package for RFQ-003 by the mandated deadline.”
Gandee further claimed that VIHFA awarded inflated contracts to Tysam Tech shortly after the government agency’s former senior environmental manager went to work for the company — an alleged violation of the agency’s and the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department’s procurement policies — and that VIHFA rescinded seven contracts it had previously awarded to Gandee after the firm noted discrepancies in the contracts’ scope of work.
