Hill’s contractor under indictment
By Joey Berlin
Originally published 02:28 p.m., June 19, 2008
Updated 02:28 p.m., June 19, 2008
The contractor on the Hill’s Pet Nutrition plant outside Emporia still remains on the project after a federal indictment of the contractor’s chief executive officer and other officials in March.
Facility Program Management, the contractor for the Hill’s plant, is a division of the Facility Group, an engineering, construction management and architecture firm based in Smyrna, Ga.
Robert Moultrie, chief executive officer of the Facility Group, and two other company executives were indicted by a federal grand jury in late March on 16 counts stemming from an alleged “conspiracy to corruptly influence and reward a public official.” The company itself and several of its subsidiaries were also indicted. Their trial date is now set for Aug. 25.
Paul Felbaum, the general superintendent for Facility Program Management at the Emporia site, said at the construction site that nothing he knew of had changed for the Emporia project since the indictments were handed down.
“Out here, we’re just hired in to get the work done,” he said. “We have nothing to do with any of the big decisions. All we do is make all of the little decisions.”
The Facility Group is accused of making illegal campaign contributions to the unnamed public official in exchange for his help in securing a state contract for a beef processing plant in Mississippi, according to the Marietta Daily Journal. Former Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, who held a fundraiser at Moultrie’s house in 2003, has denied being part of any wrongdoing. The beef plant closed down in 2004 after only being in operation for a short time.
A Facility Group employee in Smyrna told The Gazette that the company was still the contractor on the Hill’s plant in Emporia and had no plans for that relationship to be discontinued. Facility Program Management’s Emporia project manager, Lucas Rice, couldn’t be reached.
The Hill’s plant contractor’s trouble is one of several recent issues tied to new Emporia-area plants, joining the suspension of construction of the Renewable Energy Group biodiesel plant and the revelation that unauthorized foreign workers had been employed at the new Emporia Energy Center.
“There are always challenges that come up, and usually they get ’em resolved somehow,” said Kent Heermann, president of the Regional Development Association of East Central Kansas. “But I’m not worried about the Hill’s project. That will be built, and it’ll be fun to watch that rise out of the ground.
“It may not be rising out of the ground till maybe late July or August, but nonetheless it will someday. They’ve got some plans they need to get the city before they can start pouring footings, I know that. So that takes awhile for plan review before they go ahead to start construction.”
Felbaum said excavation work was all that was being done on the site at this point. He said as far as he knew, the work was on schedule, especially with the recent stormy weather. He said he hadn’t really been in contact lately with anyone from Hill’s.
“We’re just going about our business and doing day-to-day work,” he said.
Phone messages left Wednesday with the office of Hill’s CEO Robert Wheeler and communications specialist Amy Thompson were not returned.