MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Gov. Kay Ivey removed Kent Davis as the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs Tuesday afternoon.
But this quagmire may not be over.
Citing her office’s “supreme executive power of the state” Ivey informed Davis of her decision less than an hour after the State Board of Veterans Affairs, which she leads, voted against her and in support of Davis who’s been at the center of a months-long scandal and conflict with Ivey and other state leaders. Ivey did not attend Tuesday’s meeting.
“For weeks now, I have laid out the case publicly for why new leadership at the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs is necessary, and it is unfortunate it came to forcefully removing this agency head,” Ivey said in a written statement.
“After what I would now deem as a total failure of leadership at the department and lack of cooperation, I had to use the mantle of the Governor’s Office to make the change. While there is more work to do, I am confident that together as one team, our state government can make Alabama an even better place for veterans to call home.”
John Saxon, Davis’ attorney, told Alabama Daily News he is considering challenging the governor’s decision, as well as filing a lawsuit under the anti-retaliation provision of the state’s ethics law.
“If we do file suit, I very much look forward to taking the governor’s deposition and seeing what she says when she is both under oath and unscripted,” Saxon told ADN. “When the governor gets mad, she gets even, and that’s what happened here today.”
Ivey wanted the board to side with her Tuesday and remove Davis, calling the meeting last week after she said Davis had lost her and others’ trust and confidence.
Davis last week said he wanted to finish out the year as leader of veterans affairs.
Among her cited reasons in the letter are “general lack of cooperation,” mishandling of American Rescue Plan Act grant programs, the filing of a “frivolous” ethics complaint, manipulation of the board, and breach of the original agreement between Ivey and Davis that the resignation he submitted last month would take effect at the end of the year.
That agreement, Ivey said, included Davis’ commitment to publicly and privately explain that all then-outstanding issues concerning the ARPA grant program had been resolved to the mutual benefit of all parties.
“You broke this promise, as evidenced (at a minimum) by your failure to say as much during an Oct. 9 meeting of the State Board of Veterans Affairs,” the letter reads. “You further broke this promise by your failure to clearly put these matters behind us during the Oct. 10 regular meeting of the board.”
It was at that Oct. 10 board meeting, after Ivey left, that remaining members voted unanimously to ask Davis to reconsider his resignation.
‘Unnecessary complications’
At Tuesday’s special-called meeting of the board, vice chair Scott Gedling framed the board’s impending decision as a “very difficult decision.” In a letter to fellow board members last week, Gedling said Davis had manipulated the body to get a vote of support during the Oct. 10 meeting,
“Today, the State Board of Veterans Affairs is tasked with making a very difficult decision, a task that no one wants, will take lightly, a task no one should judge the decisions for,” Gedling said. “How did we get here? A lack of trust, bias, assumption, misunderstandings.”
Attending the meeting was Casey Rogers, director of external affairs for Ivey’s office, representing the governor. Rogers made it clear that the governor was counting on the board to vote for Davis to be removed, saying that the commissioner had created “unnecessary complications.”
“Yesterday, Gov. Ivey said she, quote, ‘trusts this board to do the right thing, to ensure the department acts as a member of her team in the executive branch of government;’ in other words, today is a very big opportunity for this board,” Rogers said.
“Will the board follow Gov. Ivey’s proven leadership, or will it jeopardize the standing and effectiveness in state government?”
Rogers went on to lay out Ivey’s justification for asking for Davis’ immediate removal, in lieu of Davis’ and the governor’s previous agreement that would have allowed him to serve until the end of the year.
First, Rogers said that Davis had misrepresented the aforementioned agreement reached with Ivey’s office by not explaining publicly that then-outstanding issues concerning the ARPA grant program had been resolved to the mutual benefit of all parties.
Second, Rogers said that Ivey had sent Davis a letter following the Oct. 10 meeting asking him to immediately reaffirm his commitment to the agreement, which was never responded to.
“The most immediate reason we are here today is because of the commissioner’s failure to honor his agreement with the governor, and because he failed to respond to her letter,” she said. “If he had done either of these two things, he would have been able to remain as commissioner through the end of the year and enjoy a delayed exit.”
‘Between a rock and a hard place’
Being given five minutes to make a statement, Davis meticulously went over each of the charges made against him.
“For the past few months I’ve repeatedly been put between a rock and a hard place; directions from one direction, and verbal directions from the other, and that is a tough position to be in,” Davis said.
Regarding the accusation that he misrepresented the agreement with Ivey, Davis said that not once had he spoken ill of the agreement. In fact, during the Oct. 10 meeting, Davis said he was grateful for his meeting with the governor, and described it as a “good agreement.”
As to why he did not respond to Ivey’s letter, Davis said that his legal counsel, Saxon, had been in constant contact with Ivey’s legal counsel, and that Saxon had advised him to not make any comments, written or otherwise, regarding the matter.
He also pushed back on allegations that he had manipulated the board to vote for him to reconsider his resignation during the Oct. 10 meeting.
“The new allegation that I see is one that I manipulated the board; well, during the Oct. 10 meeting, I didn’t say anything, not a single word during the deliberations on the entire matter of motions asking me to consider rescinding my resignation,” he said.
Board members were then allowed to ask Davis questions, and over the next hour, fielded him a number of questions regarding his handling of the ARPA grant program, and of the ethics complaint he filed against the Alabama Department of Mental Health commissioner. Unlike Davis, the mental health commissioner is a member of Ivey’s cabinet. That complaint was leaked in August, and preceded Ivey’s initial call for Davis to step down by a matter of weeks.
Davis said that he was compelled to file the complaint under the state’s ethics laws after being approached by three veterans affairs board members with concerns regarding the ADMH ‘colluding’ with state officials to prevent the ADVA from getting around $7 million in ARPA funds.
“For the past few months, I’ve constantly felt I was caught between a rock and a hard place; I had a statuary obligation to report after I was notified as an agency head,” he said.
“Someone leaked that ethics complaint, and only the complaint, not the whole file. It comes back to that ethics complaint, which seemed to, perhaps understandably, cause a lot of hurt feelings, but again, that rock and a hard place. You talk about a tough spot.”
The board ultimately voted against removing Davis, though the decision was short lived, with Ivey’s removal announcement following soon after. Board members that voted to remove Davis were Deputy Vice Chairman Charles Waugh and Rogers, the latter voting on behalf of Ivey. Board members Matt Gaff, Tony Berenotto and Sam Rollason voted against removing Davis, and the remaining board members abstained from the vote.
Saxon, Davis’ attorney who had attended Tuesday’s meeting, said that he was handed a letter by the governor’s staff before even leaving the meeting room, a letter notifying Davis that he was no longer commissioner.
“We are going to take a very serious look at whether the governor actually has the legal authority to fire the commissioner; I’m not sure she does, that will be our first step,” he told ADN. “Then we will take a serious look at whether we should file a lawsuit under the anti-retaliation provision of the state ethics law, and I think Kent probably has a very good case under that statute.”
Alabama Daily News’ Mary Sell contributed to this report.