Leadership Woes Run Deeper
Greed Just a Symptom at DOT

By BRANDON L. WARD

"It's a funny old world," Maggie Thatcher once remarked. She might have meant "funny" in the sense that it is amusing; more likely, she meant that it is peculiar. In both senses, she was right. What makes the world funny is that it refuses to cooperate; it seldom does what people want or expect it to do.

Brandon L. Ward is president of the New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com.

Take, for instance, Balram "Balu" Chandiramani. After 37 years of service and engineering leadership as the Director of DOT's Movable Bridges, he wanted more than a gold watch for his rumored retirement.

According to the United States Attorney's (Eastern District of New York) Office, Balu and Uday Shah, an Assistant Civil Engineer and subordinate of Balu, were arrested and charged for their participation in a $450,000 bribery scheme involving the reconstruction of the Third Avenue Bridge.

Won't Be Last Time

Unfortunately, this is by no means the first time an engineer was accused of selling influence for personal gain. For those of you too young to remember, in 1986 a former DOT Commissioner, Anthony R. Ameruso, was also forced from his job after authorities uncovered an extortion and bribery scandal at the Parking Violations Bureau (PVB), which at the time was part of the agency. Even though Mr. Ameruso was not tied to the PVB corruption, he was charged with perjury for failing to disclose his financial interest in a New Jersey company, Chief Realty, that did business with a contractor that won a city permit to provide ferry service.

Without peering into my crystal ball, here's a prediction. After the stench of these engineers' actions blows away, it will happen again. Having said that, I readily admit my unwillingness to be pious in my musings about the circumstances that entangled this proud grandfather in the alleged bribery scheme.

However, I will admit that employees taking bribes is a blow to the collective psyche of all civil servants. It is my contention that a definite argument can be made to show that if the pretext for Balu's actions is greed, the sub-text is the failure of the division's leadership chain-of-command.

Google the word greed and you get more than two million hits. Perhaps a lot of people are connecting the dots as to how greed dictates a person's actions. After all, it's not far-fetched to say that greed is an incipient threat to rational decision-making.

Greed As Incentive

Certainly as engineers, we tend to fall under the category, generally speaking, of rational people. However, for some unexplained reason, a rational person like Balu could do rational things and make rational decisions for 37 years, but then perhaps he thought, "How boring retirement would be if I resisted the experience of an irrational decision'' - like taking a bribe.

Technically speaking, greed is defined as "an excessive desire to acquire more than what one needs or deserves." In other words, what greed really means is desire. Certainly, everyone has desires - for wealth, power and prestige. In fact there's no end to the list. After all, according to Gordon Gekko, the fictional character played by Michael Douglas in the movie "Wall Street," "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

Arguably, greed is good in a corporate setting. Certainly from the point of view of corporate shareholders, greed is the psychic fuel that makes the economy grow and motivates corporations to provide better products and services for everyone at the lowest possible prices. Like selling us toxic toys made in China or overpriced designer clothing made by non-union workers outside the U.S.

Furthermore, one can make the case that American consumers are more accepting of corporate bribes, since we are encouraged to believe everyone wins - especially consumers. Why so? Because the only way a company can keep growing its sales and profits is to keep on providing consumers with what they want at the prices they are willing to pay. Also, we are told, corporations are more altruistic. Again, everyone wins.

Circling to the Top

Without stooping to slander, as an Engineer and inside observer of the Division of Bridges' leadership, the uncomfortable truth on top of the bitter truth is, no one said zilch about the ill-advised reorganization implemented by Connie Crawford, an individual with a scant knowledge of the agency, in 1997. (I have said it before, but it seems that the beatitude of government is, blessed are they that move around in circles because they will grow up to be big wheels. Ms. Crawford is currently a Vice President at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority).

Trouble is, for me anyway, the resulting leadership of the reorganization has failed to take the division to the next level. The promise of a more-efficient organizational and leadership chain has not occurred. After all, an individual with no industry experience in bridge design and construction is the division's chief engineer; an individual who retired under a cloud of allegations of conflict of interest and managerial misjudgment was rehired, after a two-year stint with a consultant doing business with the agency, and appointed to a Deputy Chief Engineer position; and an erstwhile Highway Repairer, without a college degree, is appointed the "administrative" manager of an engineering-based and decision-driven unit.

Trickle-Down Blame

I would bet that no agency improver could have conceived that greed and ambition would be links that break the organizational chain of professional trust. But then again, how else does one explain a leadership culture that instinctively seems to point the blame downward? Not surprisingly then, according to a recent ENR article, some outside observers see the agency's culture as failing to "sufficiently" deal with the "issues of bureaucracy, employee recognition" and "low morale."

But it's even more disturbing than that. The truth is, and I have written about this in the past, engineers who are perceived to be heavy-handed in their demands with the contractor are marginalized by the division's leadership for not working in the "best interest of the agency."

Take the case of Bharat Parekh. In January 2004, this competent engineer was removed from the directorship of his unit and experienced a 20-percent cut in his salary for doing the right thing. He gave one of the division's consultants an unsatisfactory overall performance rating. The official reason of the division's leadership for his removal and demotion was, "It's in the best interest of the division." However, the unofficial reason was explicitly and implicitly tied to his issuing an unsatisfactory overall performance evaluation to one of the division's consultants. Suffice it to say, with the proverbial wink and a nod, the division's leaders pandered to the consultant by putting his unsatisfactory rating on hold for an unprecedented six months. Making matters worst, Mr. Parekh's replacement was hired from a consulting company doing business with the agency.

Against this backdrop - an agency unlucky with its leadership - what ought an engineer do? Well, sooner or later, I am inclined to believe that even bad luck runs out. However, until then, like the circus clown, we hold our nose and kiss the pig. After all, the show must go on!