Architecture Firm Bribed Alabama College Officials, Prosecutors Say

Federal prosecutors in Alabama said in a court filing on Tuesday that an Anniston architect gave Roy W. Johnson, a former chancellor of the state’s two-year-college system, more than $85,000 in goods and services as part of an effort to win state contracts, reports The Birmingham News.

Neither the architect nor the former chancellor has been charged with a crime, but the filing outlined a pattern of kickbacks and bribes that appears to be a centerpiece of the continuing federal investigation. The architect named in the filing, Julian W. Jenkins, is a principal in Jenkins Munroe Jenkins.

Prosecutors said he “engaged in a scheme to obtain no-bid state contracts from various college presidents by making payments to Roy W. Johnson, to other members of Johnson’s family on Johnson’s behalf, to or on behalf of college presidents, and/or providing architectural work or other goods and services to Johnson and various college presidents.”

Mr. Johnson was fired in July 2006 by the Alabama State Board of Education (The Chronicle, July 13). In August 2006, the News reported that Jenkins Munroe Jenkins had paid Mr. Johnson’s son, an administrative employee at Lawson State Community College, $3,000 a month to oversee a project the firm had designed at the college.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that during the years in which Mr. Jenkins was bribing officials, Jenkins Munroe Jenkins was hired for 54 projects at 11 two-year colleges.