Irons touts business background: a look at his record

By July 1996, David Irons was just about fed up with Brigadoon.com, the Internet startup where he was chief operating officer.

He typed a letter to the board of directors, warning of "irregularities" including questionable stock sales and "manipulation of numbers" to boost the company's image for investors.

Unless the company hired a securities expert to correct the problems, Irons feared, he could be held personally liable. Though he wanted to stay, Irons wrote, "my family and my personal integrity must come first." He'd resign if the problems were not fixed.

Now, nearly a decade later, Irons' time at Brigadoon is in the spotlight of his campaign to unseat King County Executive Ron Sims.

Irons, a Republican King County councilman, has been touting his experience as a private businessman — and accusing Sims of mismanagement of county government. In response, Sims has tried to link Irons to Brigadoon's eventual bankruptcy.

In fact, Irons left Brigadoon well before its collapse. He resigned by February 1997, after continuing frustration with the company's business decisions and mounting debt. He was owed about $12,000 in unpaid wages and $110,000 in personal loans. By early 1998, when Brigadoon went bankrupt, it owed millions to employees and investors.

In the collapse, Irons was luckier than most. He sued to recover his debts before the bankruptcy, and forgave one of the loans in exchange for a Brigadoon asset: a contract to provide Internet service to the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. That became a cornerstone of Irons' current business, Convention Communication Provisioners Inc. (CCPI), which operates in six states.

In focusing his campaign largely on screw-ups under Sims — from miscounted ballots to a failed $39 million computer system — Irons contends he'd bring business acumen to county government, hiring competent managers and insisting on a "customer service" mentality.

Sims, a Democrat who has never run a private business, has defended his record and attacked Irons' Brigadoon connection.

Recent Sims radio ads sneered, "when David Irons ran a business ... it went into bankruptcy ... Not exactly a success, was it?"

That characterization is a stretch, since Irons left a year before the bankruptcy. Former employees interviewed recently did not blame Irons for the company's failure. Some, however, questioned his ability to run a county government with 13,000 employees and a $3 billion budget. The job pays $165,305 a year.

On the whole, Irons has proved a moderately successful businessman, though he has never managed an organization anywhere close to the size of the King County government.

His current company, CCPI, has 24 full-time employees and gross revenue of about $3 million, Irons said. He relinquished day-to-day management of the firm in 1999 after being elected to the County Council, but retains the titles of chief executive officer and board chairman and draws an $18,000 salary.

If elected county executive, Irons said, he will step away further from management of the company, but likely retain a seat on its board.

The family business

Prior to his time at Brigadoon, Irons, who attended college but did not graduate, was a construction worker and real-estate agent and then joined his father's small Eastside cable-television company, All Points Associates, in 1982. He worked there for 13 years.

Irons and his father now give very different versions of Irons' role at the company — a dispute that is difficult to unravel, given the bad blood between Irons and his parents. The long-standing rift went public again last week when Irons' mother repeated claims that he'd knocked her down during an argument in the mid-1990s. No police report was filed, and Irons has long denied the accusation.

The family feud dates to Irons' 1999 council campaign against Brian Derdowski, a longtime family friend. One of Irons' sisters, Di Irons, worked in Derdowski's office and later ran as a write-in candidate against her brother. Irons' sister Janet Irons sides with her brother in the family split.

Irons says he was vice president and co-owner of the family cable company, and has written in résumés that he was in charge of designing and maintaining the cable system and all contract billing.

But David Irons Sr., while acknowledging that his son had the title of vice president, said he was a co-owner only in the sense that he held company stock. He said his son's role was limited mostly to construction work and maintaining the company's trucks. "He did a lot of welding," Irons Sr. said.

The small family business employed about a dozen people at its height and eventually provided cable service to about 7,000 homes in Bellevue and unincorporated King County. By 1995, the family had sold out to larger cable companies for "several million dollars," according to Irons Sr.

That same year, Irons Sr. was looking for investment opportunities and discovered Brigadoon, then in its infancy.

The Brigadoon era

Named after the Broadway musical and film about a mysterious Scottish town that appears once a century, Brigadoon was a harbinger of sorts for many dot-com booms and busts.

It was founded in Bellevue in 1995 with an innovative business plan: connect schools to the Internet for free, then split profits with the schools for every Internet hookup sold to the surrounding community. At its height, the company employed more than 100 people.

Irons was hired after his father became a major investor. Irons started as a vice president, and was made chief operating officer within several months.

But the Irons family quickly soured on management practices at Brigadoon. Irons Sr. resigned from the board in April 1996 and wrote letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Attorney General's Office outlining problems at the company.

"They were ... not being truthful with stockholders," Irons Sr. said. "I couldn't be a party to that." He cashed out his stock and left, suing the company to recover an overdue loan.

His son stayed for several more months. Irons says he wanted badly to turn the company around.

But Brigadoon spent freely and tried to keep expanding, even as investor money dried up and employee paychecks started bouncing.

Shortly before Christmas 1996, company President John Hansen approached Irons and said the company would not be able to make payroll. Irons loaned the company $50,000 so employees could receive their holiday paychecks.

Foreseeing nothing but trouble ahead, Irons left the company a couple months later.

"It turns out I was right, wasn't I? ... after I left, they went under," Irons said.

The company's eventual collapse left behind a mass of debt, unpaid employees and angry investors, according to interviews, court documents and press accounts.

Hansen said Irons was not responsible in any way for the bankruptcy, which occurred after a major investor called in loans.

"There is no connection between the Brigadoon bankruptcy and David Irons," said Hansen, who praised Irons' work as "outstanding."

Some other former Brigadoon employees described Irons as a competent manager who tried to do the right thing in a chaotic company.

"He was a great guy to work for. He had his act together," said Meri Fagan, who organized convention displays for the company and reported directly to Irons.

Alex Popoff, another former Brigadoon manager who now works for Microsoft, described Irons as "fair and ethical in the business world" and said he tried to correct problems he saw.

But Brian Nelson, former general counsel for Brigadoon, said he was convinced Irons had split loyalties, acting as "a mole" for his family's investments and "not very loyal to the cause" of the company.

"I don't think he has the bandwidth in the technical sense" to run a major business, much less King County, Nelson added.

Randy Fink, a former vice president at Brigadoon, said Irons "wasn't involved in the shenanigans, he did try to resolve them and get out."

But Fink said he "chafed" when Irons took the contract for the convention center with him to CCPI.

"He took advantage of a situation there and obviously feathered his bed at the expense of the Brigadoon shareholders," Fink said. "It was one of the last major assets that was available and he ended up with it.

"I guess I'm jealous. He got out of there with some skin," Fink said. "As for running a county the size of King County, I just don't see him there."

Irons bought the convention-center contract for $20,000 cash and the forgiveness of a $50,000 loan, several months before the company's bankruptcy.

A former manager at the convention center said Irons' deal was fair to both sides.

"I thought it was an honorable thing to do. He could have just as easily gone to court and made it ugly," said Eddie Tadlock, event manager at the convention center at the time.

Tadlock, who now manages Lynnwood's convention center, said Brigadoon had problems providing the Internet service, generating vendor complaints. When CCPI took over, Tadlock said, the difference was "night and day."

The contract grants CCPI exclusive rights to offer Internet and telecommunications for vendors at the convention center. It brought in more than $800,000 for CCPI last year, out of which the company paid the convention center a $215,000 commission, said John Christison, general manager of the center.

Christison said CCPI's service has been excellent and the company's contract has been renewed through 2007.

As for Irons, the candidate said the lessons of Brigadoon have stuck with him.

CCPI, unlike Brigadoon, avoids debt, expanding slowly to stay within its means.

The company recently borrowed $100,000 to help wire a convention center and fairgrounds in Kentucky, but that will be paid off in six or nine months, Irons said.

It may not be a sexy dot-com startup, Irons said, but it will last.

Jim Brunner: 206-515-5628 or jbrunner@seattletimes.com