A Native American-owned company says it was shortchanged hundreds of thousands of dollars for its work on RTD’s $10 million MyRide smart-card fare collection system.
Colorado-based Blackfeet Lighting and Electrical Technologies filed a civil rights lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Denver seeking class-action status for itself and “all others similarly situated.”
Regional Transportation District spokesman Scott Reed on Tuesday said the agency had not yet been served with the lawsuit, adding that the MyFare system launched its pilot program last month and “is now open to everyone and is fully functioning as designed.”
The claim, filed on behalf of Blackfeet by Denver attorney Steven Woodrow, seeks unspecified compensation from RTD.
“On one level, this case is a story about rampant waste and abuse regarding ACS/Xerox Transport Solutions Inc.’s administration of the Smart Media System Project and the RTD’s abysmal failure to police it,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also says that “this is a tale about what happens when people who are entrusted to protect the historically disadvantaged skirt the rules in an effort to kowtow to large corporate interests.”
ACS/Xerox, headquartered in France, in 2010 contacted Blackfeet about doing subcontract work on the smart card project. Blackfeet is registered as a “disadvantaged business enterprise.”
The project floundered from the beginning, according to the lawsuit. ACS/Xerox asked for more than $428,000 in change orders, but refused to pay Blackfeet for them, it says. Instead of holding Xerox responsible, RTD encouraged ACS/Xerox to fire the company, the lawsuit says.
Even though Blackfeet had been awarded a $636,417 contract through ACS/Xerox, the company was fired and was not given an opportunity to be heard, despite documentation by RTD officials that the problems were caused by the French company.
“Almost from the get-go, ACS/Xerox started unilaterally changing the terms of the project contract — offering to use different equipment, failing to send complete parts, failing to perform pre-assembly testing, changing the IP addresses to be used — and causing a host of other problems,” the lawsuit says.
John Stark, who managed the smart card project for RTD, in emails sent to ACS/Xerox, documented a long list of problems including the company repeatedly citing French holidays for delays.
ACS/Xerox also sent equipment that violated U.S. electrical code, sent non-working electronic equipment to Blackfeet, switched the type of modem used to one that didn’t work with RTD devices and tasked only two employees to the project.
