Yeshiva Facility Deals Costly for Montgomery

The contract allowed Yeshiva to bill the full $9.9 million regardless of the renovation costs and to use the leftover taxpayer money as it wished. The school system awarded the contract without competitive bidding and waived rights to inspect the project.

"Our clear intent was to reimburse [Yeshiva] for what they had done" at the first school, said Richard Hawes, the school system's director of facilities management. "If they made money off of it, that's the American way," he said.

The financial records reviewed by The Post indicate that in 2004, Cohen wrote checks for $200,000 to two educational organizations in Israel from an account used for renovation work funded by the construction contract. The records also show that Cohen wrote a $220,000 check on the same account to Brit Limited Partnership, a firm he partially owns that has contributed $12,000 to Duncan.

Cohen declined to answer questions about these checks.

Two Deals for Yeshiva

In the mid-1990s, Yeshiva was searching for a new home for its girls school. The organization had vacated a six-acre campus in the Four Corners area of Silver Spring and was temporarily housing the girls school at a synagogue.

On Oct. 29, 1998, Pasternak wrote to the County Council in support of a Duncan initiative to lease the former Col. Joseph A. Belt Junior High School in Wheaton to Yeshiva. The proposed deal gave Yeshiva the option to buy the 20-acre facility for the amount of the 17-year lease: $1.75 million. The terms were similar to a 1995 lease between the county and a nonprofit group that defaulted in July 1998.

In the letter, Pasternak said Yeshiva had funds available to renovate Belt; the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission had bought the organization's Four Corners property that year for $1.25 million.

The same day the letter was dated, the Duncan campaign received $4,000 from Brit Limited Partnership. The amount is the maximum that a person or corporation can give a candidate in an election cycle under Maryland law.

Community members and the school system opposed Duncan's proposal because they wanted Belt reopened as a public school. But the council twice approved the transaction, and Duncan signed the lease-purchase deal Aug. 26, 1999.

A month earlier, Duncan's campaign had received checks for $20,000 from five Saipan companies linked to then-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and an additional $15,000 from Cohen, Berman and their companies and partners. Abramoff served on Yeshiva's board in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including one term as president.

In November 2000, schools superintendent Weast proposed that the school system reclaim Belt to alleviate overcrowding, vindicating community members who said it was needed for public use. "This plan is a special opportunity presented by the willingness and generosity of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington to modify its plan to occupy the Belt facility as a private school . . . and, in return, gain the use of [a] different former school site," Weast wrote to school board members Nov. 22, 2000.

A day earlier, Duncan's campaign had received $10,000 from five Yeshiva-related donors.