Firm's controversial past delays new jail

Contract with J.E. Dunn Construction put on hold amid suits with minority workers, abortion stance

In a temporary victory for criminal justice reform activists, plans for a new Santa Clara County jail stalled Tuesday amid concerns about the company that was set to receive a half-billiondollar contract for the construction of the facility.

County Executive Jeff Smith said his office will examine the past practices and contract application of J.E. Dunn Construction. The Kansas City, Missouri-based company has faced a number of labor lawsuits involving minority workers and its owners have spoken out against contraception and abortion. Smith made the decision after activists submitted a letter to supervisors shortly before the vote outlining the company's history.

Opponents of the construction of a new jail said Tuesday that the county's professed progressive values put it at odds with the construction company.

“This (contract) disturbs me in many ways,” said Walter Wilson, a county resident who spoke during public comment. “It is quite the outrage.”

In an interview, Smith said that the county was unaware of J.E. Dunn's past when it was considering it as a contractor.

“We obviously have concerns,” said Smith, who said the county will specifically look into whether J.E. Dunn violated any part of the county's contracting guidelines.

Criminal justice reform activists have soundly rejected the construction of a new jail and claim that it will not increase public safety. Those pushing for the new jail, primarily the executive's office and the Sheriff's Department, point out that conditions of existing Main Jail North are inadequate and a new facility will allow for the county to abide by federal consent decrees.

Though the new jail was approved in a narrow 3-2 vote in January, Tuesday's development will almost certainly push off plans for months. If the county ends up switching contractors, a whole new set of blueprints will have to be submitted, a process that Smith said will cause at minimum a two-year delay.

Plans for a new jail facility have been years in the making and faced further delays in 2020 when supervisors requested that the county reconsider its plans and focus more on mental health and drug recovery in light of nationwide protests after the murder of George Floyd. In November, the county went ahead with the jail plans, which disappointed activists who felt that their reform efforts had been abandoned.

The $523 million contract with J.E. Dunn planned for a 499-bed

facility that would replace Main Jail North, which is set to be razed. The cost of the new facility was projected to be $667 million back in mid-May, almost double the $390 million estimate that was presented in 2020, but the price was readjusted this month and dropped by about $100 million. County officials have blamed project delays and inflation on the overall cost jump.

J.E. Dunn is one of the country's largest construction companies and builds a variety of facilities in addition to jails, like courthouses, corporate offices and hospitals.

In 2014, the company filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case when arts and crafts store Hobby Lobby challenged President Barack Obama's administration's Affordable Care Act's provision that corporations offer employees access to contraception methods that include abortion. Owners of J.E. Dunn claimed that the ACA law violated their Catholic faith.

Individual leaders of the company, like chairman emeritus Bill Dunn Sr., stated in a 2005 speech that abortion and gay marriage are part of the “moral decline of society,” according to an article from the Kansas City Star newspaper.

The company also has been involved in several lawsuits brought by minority workers. For example, in 2016, J.E. Dunn settled with minority subcontractors who alleged that the company fraudulently identified them as the recipients of a $21 million project in Georgia, according to a Savannah Morning News article.

J.E. Dunn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raj Jayadev, founder of the San Jose-based Silicon Valley De-Bug and an opponent of the new jail, said that the county's values were in direct conflict with J.E. Dunn. He brought up the Supreme Court's recent move to strike down Roe v. Wade, which Smith, along with all five county supervisors, condemned in a widely shared news release shortly after the court's decision became public.

“Either the county administration did not do the basic due diligence of looking into a firm that they were asking the county to give hundreds of millions of dollars to,” he said. “That's one possibility. The other possibility is that they saw the same (concerns) we did and they decided that they were going to turn a blind eye.”

On Tuesday, Smith pulled the vote for the contract and rescheduled it to an unassigned future date.