Payday Mayday

No sooner had Alanis taken up its new post than employee complaints of underpayment resumed. On October 6, 2006, the SBD received a letter from a guard who claimed paychecks were regularly bouncing. "Here is what is going on with Alanis," the guard wrote. "Someone is playing with the money. We, the employees, are suffering." Within days, SBD compliance officer Sheila Hoilett reported in a phone log: "I received a telephone complaint today that ... some [Alanis] employees' checks are not honored at the bank. The caller said the bank does not give any reason, only that they should talk to their employer." The same day, Hoilett received an e-mail from GSA security supervisor Donald Casebolt, saying he had been contacted by yet another Alanis employee whose check had bounced. "Please contact her ASAP," he wrote. "She is desperate."

By September 2007, Alanis appeared to be heading toward a meltdown. "It was confirmed by Alanis ... that checks are bouncing again," an alarmed Casebolt wrote September 11 to GSA chief of security Daniel Payne. "Chief, this is becoming an inexcusable cycle," he continued, "and it is beginning to seriously affect the security of Miami-Dade County.... During the last phase [of check-bouncing], Alanis guards and field supervisors began calling out, refusing to come in to fill vacant shifts."

Despite his company's troubles, in October, while Alanis checks were bouncing left and right, Ajagbe threw a four-day birthday party for himself at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa. The fete was described on TrendyAfrica.com, an online magazine-for-hire offering "international corporate event coverage." The site portrays an event of epic proportions: Feasts were attended by more than 1,000 guests; Ajagbe flew to Europe simply to buy specially tailored clothes for the party. "It could best be described as a marathon weekend of Carnival-like celebration," the site declared.

Meanwhile, the SBD seemed unwilling to punish Alanis for the rubber checks. Between September and December 2007, the company was issued a mere two notices of violation for failure to pay employees, and was fined nothing. Instead Ajagbe was offered "an opportunity," SBE director Penelope Townsley wrote, "to come in and receive training in proper payroll preparation" that September, and in November, yet another "opportunity to come in to receive training for compliance."

Ajagbe blamed the county for his apparent inability to pay employees, complaining the GSA was withholding payments owed him. This was true — but only because Ajagbe had failed to pay a required $204,500 performance bond.

For a moment, it seemed Ajagbe had finally gone too far. On November 21, procurement director Singer sent Ajagbe a notice: "You are hereby notified that your contract will be terminated," she wrote, "upon approval by the Board of County Commissioners." But the contract never went before the commission, and it wasn't terminated.

"We were going to notify the board," Singer says. "That's when the bond appeared."

As for the years of bounced checks, the county seems to have taken the position that as long as Ajagbe eventually pays his employees — too bad if it's after the bills are due — he hasn't underpaid anybody. After county payments to Alanis had resumed, Singer points out, SBD employees conducted interviews to make sure the last paychecks had gone through. Indeed all the employees questioned said they had. But New Times's examination of the interviews revealed that although all workers had been able to cash their most recent paychecks, at least 24 of the 29 employees said they'd had at least one check bounce in the past — seven or eight in some cases.

Although Singer has downplayed Alanis's misdeeds, there is reason to believe she and her department are counting the minutes until the company is ousted from the contract. For one thing, Singer readily admits the emergency contract under which Alanis has been operating for two and a half years was never supposed to have lasted so long. "We never anticipated [it] would last beyond a year," she says. "Basically we've been waiting for a while to award a successor contract.... The only thing I can say is that Alanis is not being recommended."

Indeed, in January 2007, Singer's department issued the results of the search to the county commission. It recommended three companies; among the vendors "not recommended for award" was Alanis.

But when the recommendations were presented to the county commission in June, Commissioners Dorrin Rolle and Barbara Jordan were furious that several of the companies rejected were black-owned businesses. "This ain't nothing but a drive-by shooting," complained Rolle, who mentioned only Alanis by name.

So angry were the two commissioners that Singer, GSA director Wendy Norris, and GSA security chief Dan Payne were called to the podium. "We looked at this process long and hard," Norris said. "In a post-9/11 era, we felt very strongly that quality needed to be considered."

"I don't think there is a member of this community that doesn't put quality first," Jordan snapped. "If there is a question about performance, we need to give that entity an opportunity to take corrective action ... and not throw the baby out with the bath water."