Monroe County’s decades-long relationship with Robutrad Corp. will end effective Aug. 1, County Executive Maggie Brooks announced today.

Robutrad, which provides trades workers to the county, is at the center of a federal and Sheriff’s Office investigation into possible corruption. In December, 14 trades workers, most associated with Robutrad, were arrested on charges they bilked taxpayers by doing non-county jobs while on county time.

Brooks has maintained that the county is the victim of the Robutrad scandal, and said relying on a single county employee for supervision and oversight of Robutrad employees was not enough to prevent fraud.

Robert Morone, a county construction and maintenance manager who served as the liaison with Robutrad, was also arrested this month by federal officials on allegations he coerced Robutrad workers into political chores and non-county jobs.

The county formed the relationship with Robutrad during the administration of Executive Thomas Frey in an effort to cut costs.

This is the report from Jill Terreri and Gary Craig in the Democrat & Chronicle.  Gannett also ran a live video feed covering Brooks’ 2:00 p.m. press conference.  We’ll get a clip up and running soon.  You can find previous coverage from monroerising.com here.

Bottom line, this was a good move by Brooks which I can only imagine is also fine with the Rochester Building Trades Council.  All of the individuals arrested (excluding Bob Morone) were trade union members.  I’m sure they too are happy to see this whole issue/investigation run it’s course for their own purposes and interests.