LORAIN — The city was served with a second FBI subpoena Monday that demanded documents relating to Lorain contractor Don E. Buchs and seven companies he operates.

The city already has turned over boxes of documents the FBI asked for in September concerning then-Community Development Director Sandy Prudoff, who has been named as a target in an expansive corruption investigation that became public when federal agents raided the homes and offices of Cuyahoga County officials and several Cuyahoga County businesses more than a year ago.

Buchs’ attorney, Mike Duff, said his client’s offices and home haven’t been searched. Buchs, he said, had no comment on the subpoena but was distressed by it.

“Every contract my client had with the city is above board,” Duff said. “And the subpoena should discover that everything was legitimate.”

The subpoena asked for all contracts, subcontracts, bid packages, invoices, permits and other documents between the city and Buchs and his companies, All American Demolition Corp., Chief Demolition, Chief Wrecking, Chief Trucking, American Trucking and Excavating, D&J Investments and Sandusky Salvage, between 2003 and the present.

It also asked for the city’s policies and procedures for dealing with city contracts and how those contracts were bid out or given without a bid.

Buchs and Prudoff — who retired shortly after being placed on leave after he was named a target in the federal investigation — are friends going back years, and the majority of the work Buchs’ companies did for the city was for the Community Development Department, said Lorain City Auditor Ron Mantini.

“Buchs got a lot of work, but he was usually the low bidder,” Mantini said.

It was an opinion echoed by Lorain Mayor Tony Krasienko, who also agreed that the bulk of the work that Buchs and his companies did for the city was mostly demolition work for Prudoff’s department.

“I’m pretty confident that the contracts issued under our administration were legal,” he said.

When he took office in January 2008, Krasienko said he implemented a policy that required all contracts that came before he and the other members of the city’s Board of Control — which approves city contracts under $25,000 — go out for bid.

That wasn’t necessarily the case under previous administrations, he said.

The Board of Control is comprised of the mayor, Safety Director Phil Dore and Service Director Robert Gilchrist. Under former mayors Craig Foltin and John Romoser, who replaced Foltin in August 2007, the mayor and the safety-service director were the only two members of the board, but the safety-service director had two votes, Mantini said.

Prudoff may have been able to award small contracts worth less than $5,000 to Buchs and other contractors without the board’s approval, but anything beyond that would have required a review by the Board of Control or City Council, Mantini said.

“Buchs doesn’t do anything unless we give him a purchase order,” he said.

But Mantini also said he had concerns about Buchs and his companies a few years ago because Buchs didn’t appear to be paying corporate income taxes to the city and listed no employees for any of the companies he operated.

“I can’t imagine he does all that work alone,” Mantini said.

City Treasurer Tom Urbanik said Buchs has paid his own personal city income taxes.

Mantini wasn’t alone in having concerns about Buchs paying his taxes. The state has suspended the business licenses of several companies affiliated with Buchs for failure to pay corporate taxes or turn in tax reports.

All American Demolition Corp.’s business license was canceled in 2007, according to a letter on the Ohio secretary of state’s Web site. Quarry Road Properties Inc. lost its license in 1999, according to the Web site, and also was affiliated with Buchs.

Buchs, 63, also isn’t a stranger to the courtroom and is listed as a plaintiff or defendant in numerous lawsuits over the years. He’s also been twice convicted in Lorain County Common Please Court.

He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of passing bad checks in 1988 and was given probation. In 1991, he plea bargained a felony falsification charge down to a misdemeanor and again received probation.

Federal officials did not return calls seeking comment Monday.

Prudoff has not been charged with a crime, but the subpoena focusing on him and other court documents filed in the investigation suggest federal officials are reviewing contracting work he did for Alternative Agencies Inc., a Cleveland halfway house that is at the center of the federal investigation.

Documents filed in the case of former Lakewood Mayor Anthony Sinagra, another Alternatives consultant who has already pleaded guilty, accused Sinagra and other contractors of being paid for doing more work than they actually did.

Prudoff’s attorney has said his client did the work he was hired to do — scout locations for a possible halfway house in the Lorain area for Alternatives.

The FBI also requested and received a list of every community development project between 2003 and 2007.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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