PROVIDENCE — With state and federal authorities investigating possible wrongdoing within the state Department of Transportation, Democratic Party Chairman William Lynch yesterday called on Governor Carcieri to return $4,750 in campaign contributions from owners of companies that have benefited from the DOT contracting practices now under scrutiny.

Also calling on Carcieri to make public “relevant documents” he has reported turning over to the state police, Lynch said: “This is the public’s money, they have a right to know how it’s been mismanaged and squandered.”

But Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal derided Lynch’s comments as “a political stunt,” and said: “The truth is that both these contracts should have ended years before Donald Carcieri ever ran for political office. Unfortunately, none of Governor Carcieri’s predecessors, nor the solidly Democratic General Assembly, ever took action.” Lynch targeted his comments to Carcieri’s own stated concerns a day earlier about two contracts awarded Gordon R. Archibald Inc. in 1982, and the Plexus Corp. in 1997 that began small and morphed into huge contracts worth millions of dollars, and continue today, without ever again going out to bid.

Lynch assailed both as no-bid contracts, which is not how they began. But what began as a relatively small $361,423 Archibald contract for a Quonset Point Improved Access Design was extended 233 times since 1982, and is now worth $20 million. What began as a $1 million, 30-month contract for Plexus to help install a financial management tracking system was also extended year after year, until it became what Carcieri described on Thursday as an $8.5-million source of business for the company.

(In the last two years, Plexus has edged out competitors for two more DOT contracts, including a $9-million contract for construction-schedule monitoring that was awarded in March 2006. The previous August, the DOT’s now suspended chief engineer Edmund Parker voted to recommend the company — co-owned by his “step-nephew” — for the contract.)

Said Lynch: “The revelation that the governor took contributions from companies looking to backdoor the public bidding process is not consistent with his assertion that he only recently learned of the way his DOT was conducting business. … I’m concerned that these contributions to the Carcieri campaign may have lead to undue influence at the DOT and that’s why he must immediately return the money,” Lynch said.

He cited two $1,000 contributions from Plexus president Leslie Giardino in November 2005 and then again in July 2006, and contributions totaling $2,750 between 2004 and 2007 from a Gordon R. Archibald “who lists his employer as Gordon R. Archibald.”

But Neal labeled it “absurd” that Lynch would try to draw a link between an Archibald contribution in 2004 and “a contract that had already been in place for over two decades.”

“Moreover, nobody will believe that Governor Carcieri — who spent several million dollars of his own money to finance his first election — can be swayed by $5,000 in political contributions,” he said.

kgregg@projo.com