Carlisle aide sanctioned

The city prosecutor suspends
his assistant after a report
by the Ethics Commission

An executive assistant to city Prosecutor Peter Carlisle used her position to give $343,000 in city contracts to relatives or to reward political campaign volunteers, the city Ethics Commission said in an advisory opinion released yesterday.

Carlisle, acting on a commission recommendation, said he suspended Jean Patterson on Tuesday for two weeks without pay. He also said the steps under which the no-bid contracts for city process servers are awarded have been broadened to include screening applicants.

From July 1997 to June 2004, Patterson was charged with selecting the recipients of 48 process server contracts.

During the seven-year period, 16 contracts went as rewards to volunteers with Carlisle's 1996 and 2000 campaigns, the commission said. One of the campaign workers is the brother of Patterson's daughter-in-law.

Another seven contracts, worth more than $100,000, went to Patterson's family members.

"Ms. Patterson breached the public trust each time she selected a family member or a campaign co-worker for a contract," the commission said. "This was exacerbated by the fact that she knew other possible contractors were interested in providing their services ... but did not attempt to open the selection process to the general public."

The ethics violation was uncovered in late 2003, the commission said, during an unrelated investigation into Craig Whang, Patterson's son and an investigator at the city prosecutor's office. Whang has been under investigation since December 2003 for allegedly storing $16,000 worth of ammunition, guns, bulletproof vests and other equipment owned by the prosecutor's office in his garage.

Whang said in a May lawsuit that he was "specifically asked" seven years earlier to store the equipment at his home.

Patterson, who could not be reached for comment yesterday, is not believed to have personally benefited from the contracts she awarded, the commission said. She told the commission in two separate interviews that she believed that the contracts awarded to relatives and campaign workers were appropriate.

She also "rationalized her preferential treatment toward her relatives and campaign workers by referring to questionable past practices," and was unaware of any prohibition against nepotism or rewarding campaign volunteers with city contracts, the commission said.

Patterson was taken off the job of choosing recipients for process server contracts in June 2004, the commission said. Three months earlier a contract with her sister was terminated.

Other contracts with campaign workers were allowed to run out, Carlisle said.

"There wasn't any questions whether they could do the job," he said. "The process of them getting the job was what was in question."

Carlisle said he takes responsibility for not catching the ethics violations earlier. The commission also recommended that the prosecutor's office be careful to avoid "contracting practices based upon similar family or political relationships."