Mass. charges 2 in alleged snowplow scam

HINGHAM -- Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly charged yesterday that a Cohasset snowplow driver and an employee tried to evade a state tracking system so they could do private plowing on state time and that they used state-purchased salt on private property.

''The point is that he was being paid -- and well paid -- but he wasn't doing what he was being paid to do," Reilly said of Paul V. Gratta, whose company, Hub Construction and Maintenance of Hull, was hired to keep a stretch of Route 3A near Hingham free of snow and ice. ''It was wrong."

Gratta and an employee, Frank J. Eddy, were arraigned yesterday in Quincy District Court, where they pleaded not guilty to larceny, procurement fraud, and filing false claims with the state and were released by Judge Paul Buckley on their personal recognizance.

Although a state Highway Department spokesman said the case appeared to be an ''isolated incident," Assistant Attorney General Kurt N. Schwartz said an investigation into private snowplow operators is ongoing.

''We have reason to believe that this is not the only person who has done this" since MassHighway started using the global positioning system trackers last winter, he said. He would not elaborate.

Gratta, who was paid $105 an hour by the state, is charged with trying to defeat the tracking system starting in November. Acting on a tip, State Police detectives watched Gratta during Tuesday's snowstorm. He had his empty sander filled with salt twice at MassHighway's district facility in Cohasset, authorities say. He then drove to a Hingham rotary, where he dumped the GPS device issued to him by the state into a white paper bag in a snowbank at Grampy's, a convenience store and gas station, according to Reilly's office.

Instead of using the salt on the stretch of Route 3A between the rotary and the Weymouth line as he was hired to do, authorities say, Gratta drove south to the Hingham/Cohasset line, where he plowed out and sanded the parking lot of the Cohasset Knoll nursing home, one of his private clients. The home is a brick building that sits atop a hill at the end of a winding road two-tenths of a mile long.

Gratta later handed off his GPS device to Eddy, who did plow Route 3A, but gave the electronic impression that it was a pair of vehicles operating together, a sander and a plow, when in fact it was just his truck, according to Reilly's office.

According to court records, Gratta gave a tape-recorded confession to State Police detectives Wednesday, admitting to double-dipping on state time this winter and during the 2003-04 plowing season. Gratta and his company have collected $68,653 from MassHighway in the past two winters, records show.

Jon Carlisle, spokesman for the Executive Office of Transportation and Construction, said MassHighway examined Gratta's GPS records after his arrest and discovered that during ''nearly" every storm this season, his tracker turned red, indicating inactivity, for an excessive length of time.

''It should have raised a red flag. . . . It should have been caught by the person keeping an eye" on the GPS tracking system in Cohasset, he said. ''It looks to be, in this case, largely human error on the part of Massachusetts highway employees."

Carlisle said Gratta, who was first hired by the state in 1991, will be fired, and the state will try to collect reimbursements for time lost or materials misused. He said the state hired Gratta's company and four trucks and it was up to Gratta to hire the drivers. Carlisle said Eddy will be banned from driving on state-contracted jobs.

Gratta and Eddy left court without speaking to reporters. They are due back in court April 14. Their lawyer, Robert Jubenville, said Gratta did mix road salt he bought on his own with a small amount of salt provided by the state. Jubenville declined to comment further until he could learn more about the case.

Excluding last night's storm, Carlisle said the state has spent $100 million on snowplowing this winter with $62 million of it being paid to private contractors, who provide 4,400 pieces of equipment.

Carlisle said the Gratta case will spark a review of GPS records. ''This incident merits a look at other areas of the state, but right now it appears to be an isolated incident, but certainly a troublesome one," said Carlisle.

Matthew Frazier, president of the Massachusetts Snow and Ice Contractors Association, said yesterday that the case isn't representative of his group's members or other contractors. Frazier also said it should lead both contractors and the state to investigate the need and cost of changing the current system. ''This clearly proves that the current GPS system is anything but a fraud-prevention tool," Frazier said. ''The only reason he got caught is because he was under surveillance."

While police watched Gratta during near white-out conditions Tuesday, Hingham Deputy Fire Chief Mark J. Duff was out on the streets in his dual role as the emergency management director for the town. Firefighters helped one driver dig out of a snowbank, but Duff said that winds often create snowdrifts even when the road is plowed regularly. He said the highway appeared to be getting proper attention from snowplows that night.

But, he said, the highway is the main route to Quincy City Hospital for ambulances. ''If the street isn't plowed, it is a major safety concern," he said.