Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda
City employees sounded the alarm time after time, but the alleged grift went on.
Smoke signals were climbing high and wafting about City Hall as early as 2018 regarding the highly suspicious, possibly unethical — and potentially criminal —actions of Chief Building Officer Raj Ramsingh, recently indicted on multiple felony charges by a Monroe County Grand Jury.
During Ramsingh’s reign of error, several key employees, including FEMA and Flood Plain expert Scott Fraser, brought concerns to then-city manager Patti McLauchlin and Assistant City Manager Todd Stoughton.
“I was trying to figure out if they knew or even cared what was going on in the building department,” Fraser said Thursday. “We [the Building Department] started having problems with Raj when he came from the county as building inspector.”
Fraser said spoke with the FBI as part of its joint investigation into corruption in City Hall, but none of the information has been released in the latest discovery filing.
“That leads me to believe there must be more charges coming,” said Fraser.
When reached for comment, Monroe County State Attorney Dennis Ward responded he was in with the currently empaneled Grand Jury and immediately respond.
During our interview, Fraser said Ramsingh was caught early on performing inspections that were impossible to complete in one day.
“There were several times that he completed more inspections than anybody could in one day, and we reported it,” said Fraser.
The City then tracked his location on his city-issued iPad and found that the iPad never left his home when he was supposed to be in the field performing inspections.
“From that point on, Raj’s iPad never left the office, so they couldn’t track him,” said Fraser. “But then he moved on to vehicles.”
After bringing the behavior to the attention of McLauchlin, the city ordered a new fleet of Toyota Prius vehicles for employees — sans tracking devices.
Fraser said Ramsingh never drove the new city vehicles while conducting city business.
“He didn’t want to be seen out and about in a city vehicle and didn’t want to be tracked,” said Fraser. “Raj didn’t realize that the new cars didn’t have trackers, but still wouldn’t drive them.”
After numerous complaints up the chain from Fraser and others, McLauchlin said the city would retrofit all of the cars with tracking devices and that city workers conducting city business would be required to drive city vehicles.
“I thought to myself, ‘OK,’ now we are getting somewhere,” said Fraser.
Ramsingh’s answer to the new regulations requiring city leaders to track workers' movements?
“He started riding the city scooters because those were the only vehicles that didn’t have tracking.
So Ramsingh’s iPad and city vehicle sat at 1300 White Street while he was allegedly conducting phantom reviews and inspections.
Fraser said that Ramsingh’s penchant for privacy extended to his office.
“It was a Friday afternoon, and I walked by Raj’s office. The door was closed but I could see Jim Young and we made contact,” said Fraser. “I saw him mouth to Raj, ‘Fraser is watching us.’”
Monday morning, Ramsingh’s windows were covered in security frosting so people in the hallway couldn’t see who he was meeting with.
After Ramsingh determined who the whistleblower was, he began altering Fraser’s job description, appointing himself the designated FEMA contact.
After consulting an attorney, Fraser decided to take a different approach, resigned, and is now handling FEMA relations and Flood Plain Management for another agency outside the city.
“This could be a very costly situation for the taxpayers of the City of Key West,” said Fraser. “Currently, the City receives a premium discount on flood insurance. That requires EXTREME diligence to ensure the City remains compliant, and I don’t see that happening.”
If the City lost the discount, it could account for an $8 million increase in flood insurance and risk the CIty and taxpayers being dropped from the National Flood Insurance Program.
“A lot of those decisions and those permits didn’t take that into account,” said Fraser. “The City lost that discount once before, and it took five or six years to get it back.”
After leaving the city, Fraser continued to monitor building permits through eTrakit system — particularly for Ramsingh’s property on Harris Street.
“He wanted to ad a second story that was clearly more than 50% of the existing structure, he was going to have to elevate it.”
Fraser said that Ramsingh was the only person in the building department with access to approve, sign off or alter permits.
On the permits for his property, Fraser said that he saw sign offs from individuals that were added, when he knew they had not done the work described in the permit.
“Unbeknownst to Raj, there is an audit tracking system within the software that will tell you who altered what on the system,” said Fraser. “All of the sudden you start seeing names that would have normally been involved in the process appear on the paperwork in the system.”
But Fraser said many of those people never signed off.
“The audit system showed who added the names and their involvement. The initials RR (Raj Ramsingh) were everywhere.
While the Monroe County Grand Jury continues to meet, more charges are expected, including possible Sunshine Law Violations between the City Attorney, CBO and Director of Code Enforcement along with commissioners Lissette Carey, Mayor DeeDee Henriques, along with former commissioners Jimmy Weekley, Billy Wardlow and Clayton Lopez.
All suspects are believed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.
This is a developing story. Watch this space for updates.