Thad Jackson and Steve Tedder are old fraternity buddies, going back to the mid-1990s at Vanderbilt University. They live in Atlanta now and are still close, bantering in emails about college sports, their kids, family vacations, and grabbing beers together.
Both went into real estate, although Jackson eventually became a leasing manager at the State Properties Commission while Tedder stayed in the private sector as a broker. But that didn’t stop them from working together. Jackson recently acted as the state’s point man on a leasing deal worth up to $25 million; Tedder worked for a company trying to win it.
An AJC investigation uncovered dozens of emails between the two that confirmed their personal relationship and revealed that they also traded information about competitors' proposals.
» DOCUMENTS: Read the emails
Tedder, 40, even put together a spreadsheet for his friend that the state used to compare the bids and select finalists. Tedder’s client ultimately won the deal.
The newspaper scrutinized the contract award after one of the bidders filed suit in March, alleging that a Gwinnett County commissioner tried to extort money from him in exchange for getting the lease.
The correspondence, obtained by the AJC through an Open Records Act request for state employee email records, opens an extraordinary window into the behind-the-scenes dealings of the two men and shows how relatively easy it was for a bidder to obtain inside information on a state project. The case also pointed out weaknesses in the property commission’s bidding process. For example, the commission, which oversaw more than $100 million for leased property statewide in 2012, had no written process for awarding bids until last month.
Tedder’s client submitted two bids, both of which were selected among the three eventual finalists.
Neither man has been charged with any offense. The GBI is investigating the bidding process, and the FBI has interviewed at least one key player and been in contact with the properties commission. Jackson, 42, who was fired in March, did not respond to repeated requests for comment, including visits to his home.
After initially telling the AJC that Jackson accidentally gave him the information, Tedder, in a brief written statement last week, acknowledged his personal connection to Jackson and said Jackson enlisted his help in analyzing the proposals — but only after they were all submitted.
“Thad Jackson is a good friend that I’ve known since we attended college together,” he wrote. “To the best of my knowledge, my relationship with Thad did not provide us with any advantage in the bidding process.”
‘Grab a couple beers up the street’
The deal involved a lease for up to 20 years on new offices in Gwinnett County for the state’s Division of Family and Children Services. As the properties commission’s leasing manager, Jackson solicited and reviewed proposals from companies competing to become the state’s new landlord. Tedder worked on behalf of Brand Properties, a prominent developer in Gwinnett County.
The emails show that the two often mixed business with pleasure.
"Have you received any feedback from DFCS?" Tedder wrote to Jackson in a Dec. 19 email. "Otherwise, please let me know if you're going to be around over the holidays. I'm hoping that with some down time we could get out of the house and grab a couple beers up the street."
In a Sept. 28 email, Tedder told Jackson that he planned to drop off some documents for the DFCS project at Jackson's house, and asked if he would be home.
“Great!” Jackson replied. “(My daughter) and I are in town all weekend. We will be in and out to soccer, birthday parties, etc. but if we are not there you can leave them on the porch.”
Brand was awarded the contract in January. But the state withdrew the award, fired Jackson, tossed out the proposals and started from scratch after the lawsuit.
‘Can we add it to the spread?’
The emails show that Tedder repeatedly updated the spreadsheet for Jackson while the bids were under consideration. He also supplied his friend with questions to ask other bidders about their proposals.
“I helped him assemble a consolidated spreadsheet so the state could assess the bids,” Tedder wrote.
On Nov. 9, for example, Margaret Bowen of BSG Development sent Jackson an update to her proposal. Jackson forwarded it to Tedder.
“FYI — can we add it to the spread?” Jackson wrote, meaning the spreadsheet comparing the bids.
“Gladly,” Tedder replied 30 minutes later.
And after the field of proposals was narrowed to three, Tedder pitched in again, writing in an email to Jackson that he had finished an update of the lease analysis “to reflect the current state” of the project, which included “removal of all the other bidders except for the Brand and BSG options.”
No scoring system for evaluating bids
It’s unclear how much influence Jackson had in awarding the contract.
He was among a group of 11 people who reviewed the proposals and narrowed the field to three finalists. He also wrote a letter to the state Department of Human Services, recommending that Brand Properties get the lease.
The newspaper asked for documents that would show how the various proposals were scored — a system of assigning value to specific elements of the proposals that are important to the state.
There were none.
In fact, the agency had no formal policy for awarding bids until one was instituted last month, according to spokesman Paul Melvin.
The properties commission would not discuss the Gwinnett DFCS project, citing the criminal investigation. But records show that Brand Properties, the Gwinnett developer that hired Tedder and eventually won the bid, also had the ear of high-ranking state property officials, including the man in charge.
Brand Morgan, the CEO of Brand Properties, had a breakfast meeting with State Property Officer Steve Stancil and Frank Smith, the properties commission’s deputy executive director, in April 2012. Stancil, a former state representative, is the top official at the commission.
“My company was interested in working with the state on several of their real estate proposals, including DFCS in Gwinnett, so I wanted to meet with Steve (Stancil) or his staff,” Morgan wrote in an email to the AJC.
Three months later, the properties commission released its request for proposals for the Gwinnett DFCS lease, and the state announced that it was awarding the bid to Brand on Jan. 2.
Morgan denied any wrongdoing connected with the bid but acknowledged that he knew Tedder was friends with the properties commission official handling the lease. He said he hadn’t worked with Tedder before.
The lawsuit was filed two months after Brand won the bid.
‘This is off the charts’
Fred Hand III, president of Hand Properties, alleges that Jackson gave Brand Properties an advantage by slipping inside information to Tedder. The suit also alleges that Gwinnett Commissioner John Heard approached Hand and demanded money to deliver the lease.
In a phone interview, Hand told the AJC that Heard solicited the money in a four-person phone call that included his real estate broker, Bruce Coward, and Heard’s broker, Clint Dixon.
Hand and Coward both told the AJC that Heard solicited the money as a “leasing commission” — $3.6 million over 15 years.
“There’s nothing of the sort like this in the office leasing business,” Hand said. “This is off the charts.”
Heard has repeatedly denied extorting Hand. The commissioner, an architect, said he did seek money in exchange for designing the site and “putting the project together,” but said he couldn’t recall the amount.
Dixon said he too was unable to recall the sum Heard had sought.
Tempestuous tenure with the state
The State Properties Commission fired Thad Jackson on March 18. Smith, the deputy executive director of the commission, sent an email to a GBI agent March 15, saying he would dismiss Jackson three days later. “Termination will occur in my office at 10 a.m.,” the email says. “Mr. Jackson will gather his personal belongings from his office and be escorted to the HR conference room. You can question him there in HR.”
His dismissal capped five sometimes difficult years for Jackson at the properties commission.
In July 2009, the state demoted him and reduced his pay by nearly $15,000 after a supervisor wrote that he was “losing confidence” in Jackson, according to Jackson’s personnel file.
In 2011, Jackson failed to terminate a lease within a specified time frame, an omission that will cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, records show.
As for the Gwinnett DFCS project, the commission put the lease contract out for bid again on May 1. Hand, the developer who filed suit over the first bid, is crying foul again.
In a bid protest filed May 23, Hand alleged that the state continues to give Brand preferential treatment.
The state revised its new solicitation to say that bidders whose sites were not close enough to a public transit stop could instead produce “written support of the county to create a bus stop.” Two weeks before that change became public, Hand’s complaint says, Brand Properties obtained a letter from Gwinnett transportation officials saying they would consider moving a bus stop closer to Brand’s site.
Hand’s attorney, David Flint, contends the state weakened its language “in order for Brand Properties to be awarded the lease.”
“The same type of inappropriate and illegal contact and exchange of information has occurred again and must be halted,” Flint wrote.
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