Shiprock Home contractor: NHA suspension invalid

The contractor for the Shiprock Home for Women and Children says he will sue Navajo Housing Authority CEO Aneva Yazzie and Navajo Nation Assistant Attorney General Luralene Tapahe for defamation and tortuous interference after being suspended from completing the $6 million facility with only 20 percent of the project left undone.

RJN Construction of Mancos, Colo., was suspended from doing business with NHA or any of its subsidiaries using Native American Housing and Self-Determination Act funding for two years Aug. 31 after the company's CEO, Robert J. Nelson, failed to show up for a hearing on allegations that he signed a sole-source contract with the Shiprock Home in violation of Navajo Nation procurement procedures.

Nelson had been trying to get a hearing date set since he wrote a certified letter to the NHA July 14, a little over two weeks after the NHA had threatened him with suspension if he did not clear up with matter within the month.

Nelson said he was informed Aug. 24 - well after his time to respond had expired - that a hearing had been set Aug. 31. On Aug. 30, Nelson faxed a letter to Yazzie (after she refused to accept it by e-mail) stating he couldn't make the Aug. 31 date and asking for a postponement. The NHA responded a day later by suspending him, retroactively effective starting July 28.

"The deficiency is not resolved simply by requesting or the scheduling of an informal meeting," the suspension letter reads. (Actually, Nelson had requested a formal hearing with his attorney present.)

A sole-source contract, which awards the entire design and construction process to one firm, is generally prohibited by NHA policy, but Nelson says the NHA made an exception in the case of the Shiprock Home because it was a design-build project, using an in-house architect.

RJN also took responsibility for the grant-writing, insurance and bonding.

"Sole-source is used when only one entity has the particular skills and ability to do the job," Nelson explained.

Nelson's firm was chosen in a competitive bidding process to do the pre-engineering in 2003. After that, it was only natural to sole-source the engineering and construction phase, he said, since it was all part of the same project.

The NHA, apparently, agreed at the time. In a February 2005 letter to Shiprock Home CEO Gloria Champion, NHA Grants Manager Louis Shepherd writes, "(T)he GMD (Grants Management Department) has accepted the sole source contract between Shiprock and RJN Construction Management, Inc. for its project."

That was before former NHA head Chester Carl stepped down in 2007 after admitting to accepting gifts from a contractor. Yazzie was hired to replace Carl.

"I was thinking maybe she didn't know about this letter," Nelson said. "I was going to bring it to my hearing, and I had requested Louis Shepherd be there as well. I just wanted a chance to explain everything."

Neither Shepherd nor Yazzie returned a phone call Tuesday.

Nelson said he will also name Tapahe in the suit because she issued a statement saying he was suspended before he actually was.

"She used the press to spread lies about my company, lies that people believed because they were in a written statement by an attorney," he said, adding that he will also file a complaint against Tapahe with the Utah, New Mexico and Arizona bar associations for professional misconduct.

The contractor said he has no intention of relinquishing the architectural drawings and other proprietary information about the project to a new contractor after wading through red tape for seven years and letting millions in other potential contracts go by.

Champion and the board of directors for the Shiprock Home said in earlier interviews they support his position, even if it means it will delay the project still further.

"I am not going to drop this," Nelson said. "I am not going to crawl under a rock. I am not going to recognize the suspension. In fact, they are going to be hearing a whole lot more from me."

Unfortunately, Nelson said, if the suit drags on past the mid-2011 deadline for spending a $1.45 million grant from the state of New Mexico, the funding might be lost.

"Either way, Luralene wins," he said. "The project gets stopped. And the women of Shiprock lose."

The home, now housed in a group of mobile units, is a shelter for abused women and their children.

Both Tapahe and Yazzie have said they want to see the project completed, just not necessarily by RJN.

Back to top ^