INDIAN RIVER COUNTY - The county's hurricane-debris contractor, which is also cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, has been accused of arbitrarily docking its subcontractors' pay there and refusing to address their complaints.

But County Administrator Joe Baird and Public Works Director Jim Davis say they don't expect similar complaints about Omni Pinnacle LLC, which started Saturday on a projected one-month task of removing from residences about 100,000 cubic yards of debris left by Hurricane Wilma.

County commissioners in August awarded a 24-month hurricane-debris cleanup contract to Omni. It had the lowest prices of eight bidders from throughout the southeast.

For instance, records show Omni gave a quote of $8.50 per cubic yard to haul tree limbs and other vegetative debris from roadsides to county staging areas. That's the price the county is paying for the Wilma job.

Davis spent part of Friday briefing several job monitors on the task ahead. The monitors, some of them county employees and others hired through Manpower, will record where crews collect the debris, when and how much, he said.

Monitors also kept track of the cleanup in New Orleans. But subcontractors say Omni ignored the monitors' logs, according to The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

Omni's subcontractors said the company cut the hours on their timesheets to 10 hours per day - even if the monitors signed off on the reported work hours - rather than inform them beforehand of the city's limit to 10 hours a day, the newspaper reported in its Oct. 14 editions.

Subcontractors accused Omni officials of crossing out the hours greater than 10 and refusing to issue a paycheck until the payee signed a waiver declaring the less- than-expected amount was "payment in full," the newspaper reported.

Brian Reine, a managing member of Omni, couldn't be reached for comment. But The Times-Picayune quoted him as dismissing the complaints as "all just a bunch of bull."

Baird and Davis said they could understand if Omni's delay in paying its subcontractors in New Orleans was rooted in waiting for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to first provide the money.

"FEMA would first have to pay the city, then the city pay Omni and then Omni pay the subs," Davis speculated. "The city wouldn't have a billion dollars."

Indian River County is luckier, Baird said. The county can pay Omni, so it can quickly pay subcontractors here, and then apply to FEMA for reimbursement.

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