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The son of outgoing Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph Lambert works for a company that has been the financial adviser on 70 percent of the new courthouses built between 1998 and 2006. Lambert became chief justice in 1998, and oversees a building program that has constructed 60 new courthouses.
Joseph P. Lambert Jr. works in the Louisville office of Ross, Sinclaire Associates, a full-service securities brokerage and investment banking firm. Reached there on Wednesday, he declined to comment.
According to a list of new justice centers built or approved since 1998, Ross, Sinclaire was the financial adviser on 43 of the 60 projects, helping market municipal bonds to finance them. The facilities arm of the Administrative Office of the Courts, which was overseen by Chief Justice Lambert, runs the construction program for new courthouses.
Joseph Lambert, Jr. made headlines earlier this month because his girlfriend, Joanna Cruz, was hired for a human resources job at the AOC that was not advertised. She and Lambert's son moved from Texas to Kentucky in January 2008.
All the contracts for new courthouses are decided by local Project Development Boards, a group of people from the community that is chaired by the county judge-executive. The board also has an AOC representative and makes many of the decisions involved with courthouse construction. The AOC sets all design and construction standards and oversees financing for the projects.
AOC Director Jason Nemes deferred all questions to Ross, Sinclaire.
Joseph Lambert Jr. started at the Louisville office of Ross, Sinclaire in February, said Murray Sinclaire, co-founder and CEO of the company.
"We get rŽsumŽs all the time, we're always looking to expand, and he was one of many," Sinclaire said. "His dad, whom I don't know, had nothing to do with it."
But Richard Beliles of Common Cause Kentucky says public officials such as Lambert need to be particularly careful about perception problems.
"I think they have an extraordinarily extra duty to avoid any perceived conflict of interest," Beliles said. "With the young woman working in the courts in the job that wasn't advertised, then the son ... I don't know there is a direct connection, but it doesn't look very good."
Rep. Bob Damron, D-Nicholasville, who works for Ross, Sinclaire, mostly in the South Carolina office, says his firm gets most of the courthouse and school bond business because it has done so much work with cities and counties in municipal bonds.
Damron serves on the legislature's Capital Projects and Bond Oversight Committee but recuses himself when Ross, Sinclaire is associated with a project.
"We've built a real client base with a lot of the counties and a relationship with the AOC," he said. "Our company has 70 plus percent of the school business, we probably have a vast majority of this business, too."
Ross, Sinclaire is based in Cincinnati, but has 80 employees in 10 states, including Kentucky. Most of its public bond business in the state comes out of the Frankfort office, where it helps local governments get the best deal on bond sales to finance public projects, Damron said. The firm negotiates a set fee for its services in bond sales.
The final costs on the completed courthouses between 1998 and 2006 is about $800 million.
The elder Lambert announced last week he would retire at the end of June to join the state's senior judge program. He called the new courthouses "his greatest legacy."
