Free Republic

Prosecutors last week declined to file criminal charges in the case of San Jose's favoritism toward Cisco Systems in the technology contract for the new City Hall. But a civil suit from the highest-ranking person to lose her job over the scandal that surfaced a year ago now threatens to do what five previous probes did not: force San Jose's top officials to testify under oath about what they knew about the deal. Wandzia Grycz, 53, the city's former chief information officer and self-described ``scapegoat'' in the $8 million contract that favored Cisco phone and network equipment for the new...

Yet another chapter unfolded Thursday in San Jose's months-long technology scandal involving Cisco Systems. The woman at the center of the controversy -- the city's former chief information officer, Wandzia Grycz -- filed a wrongful termination claim against San Jose alleging City Manager Del Borgsdorf and his deputies made Grycz the scapegoat in the botched deal. The controversy has called into question the leadership of the city's highest-ranking officials and threatened the planned June opening of the new City Hall. Grycz resigned her $174,000-a-year post under pressure in August after a city audit found she and others had flouted city...

In their first acknowledgment of the expense of the Cisco Systems contract scandal, San Jose officials said Tuesday that the construction schedule of the new City Hall has been delayed months and the new costs may top $3 million. City Manager Del Borgsdorf delivered his long-awaited report about what went wrong and who was responsible for the scandal to the city council Tuesday. In it, he told city leaders that the need to seek new bids for the building's $8 million computer and phone network will necessitate a complicated and expensive set of fixes. Rather than idle its construction crews,...

A city official who questioned the outcome of a police investigation into alleged eavesdropping during an audit of the city's botched deal for Cisco Systems equipment said Monday that he is now confident about the police department's findings. He also no longer believes his e-mail messages were intercepted. ``I'm convinced, my staff is convinced: It did not happen,'' said City Auditor Gerald Silva, whose suspicions late last month launched a high-tech criminal probe into whether San Jose's former chief technology officer, Wandzia Grycz, had spied on e-mail exchanges between Silva and City Attorney Rick Doyle. The two men had detected...

A second high-ranking San Jose technology official has resigned amid a city investigation into employee misconduct for favoring Cisco Systems equipment in an $8 million contract for the new downtown City Hall. Wendy Walker, the city's deputy chief information officer, resigned Wednesday. Walker's departure follows that of her boss, Wandzia Grycz, who resigned Sunday. Although Grycz was responsible for developing the contract that ultimately favored Cisco, e-mails obtained by the Mercury News show it was Walker who led most of the behind-the-scenes dialogue with Cisco -- beginning early in 2003 and extending through the selection in June of a winning...

San Jose's unfolding technology scandal grew even stickier Tuesday, with news of a criminal probe involving the city's former chief technology officer and the strongest indications yet that the controversy will boost the cost and delay the opening of the new City Hall. City leaders sought to avoid public discussion of those negative developments, focusing their weekly council meeting on reforming city procedures following revelations of collusion and favoritism in the award of an $8 million contract to install Cisco Systems networking equipment in the new building. But a different, more complicated scenario played out behind closed doors, with enormous...