A former Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority employee and former board chair were awarded $1,080,00 in damages this week by a U.S. District Court judge in their False Claim Act lawsuit alleging the BJCTA received grant funding from the Federal Transit Authority without informing the federal government it awarded the contract without a competitive bidding process.
Starr Culpepper worked at the BJCTA as the executive assistant for board support and later as contract administrator from January 2013 until being fired in April 2018 for alleged misuse of a credit card. Birmingham attorney O. Tameka Wren served as board chair from October 2017 until resigning the following January “for personal reasons,” she said at the time.
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On April 9, 2018, Culpepper and Wren filed a sealed lawsuit against the BJCTA, the engineering firm Strada Professional Services, and CEO Edmund Watters; Wendel Architecture; Skye Connect and CEO Alice Gordon; former BJCTA Executive Director Barbara Murdock and former board chair Patrick Sellers. The pair alleged the defendants violated the False Claims Act by “knowingly perpetuating and participating in, and/or conspiring with others participating in schemes…to defraud the United States Government over a substantial period of time…and involving millions of dollars.”
The suit, in part, involved a $20 million Federal Transit Authority (FTA) Grant awarded to the City of Birmingham in October 2015 to construct the Bus Rapid...
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