MONTGOMERY, Ala. – One month after Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs Commissioner Kent Davis submitted his resignation at the behest of Gov. Kay Ivey, the ADVA Board voted unanimously Thursday to ask him to reconsider and continue to lead the department.
“We are on the brink of setting us back if we lose this commissioner, so I would ask you all to consider trying to convince him to rescind that statement, even if he don’t want to,” said ADVA Board member Ken Rollins, speaking virtually at the ADVA Board meeting.
“We need Commissioner Davis.”
Davis agreed in early September to resign at the end of the year following a tangled inter-agency dispute with the Alabama Department of Mental Health, a leaked and inaccurate ethics complaint filed by Davis against ADMH leader Kim Boswell, and documentation released by Gov. Kay Ivey showing alleged mishandling of federal funds. Davis had initially refused to resign and then relented following a meeting with Ivey.
While Davis Thursday declined to comment on the board’s actions and call for him to reconsider his resignation, Ivey, in a statement to Alabama Daily News, called the board’s conduct “orchestrated theater,” and said members demonstrated a “lack of leadership.”
Ivey had attended the meeting briefly before departing to chair the State Board of Education meeting one block away. That’s when the discussions about Davis’ resignation began.
“To open today’s State Board of Veterans Affairs meeting, I conveyed a direct message of teamwork and commitment to our state’s wonderful veteran community,” Ivey said. “After I left to chair the State Board of Education meeting, orchestrated theater ensued, showing a lack of leadership and quite the opposite of teamwork. I have accepted Admiral Davis’ resignation, and I expect he will stand by his word. We will move forward in exploring ways to best serve Alabama’s veterans.”

Board member Charles Waugh refreshed members on the actions Wednesday of the ADVA Benefits and Services Committee, during which, members voted to approve a report exonerating Davis of any wrongdoing as it relates to Ivey’s charge of the commissioner mishandling federal funds.
“We found nothing that the Veterans Board had done wrong,” Waugh said.
Board member Deborah Walker soon made a motion that the board ask Davis to rescind his resignation, and for the board to refuse to accept his resignation letter.
Davis is appointed by the Veterans Board. Besides the governor, the board is made up of representatives nominated to the governor from several veterans’ organizations, including the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S.
Scott Gedling, vice chair of the board, pushed back on Walker’s motion, noting that the board was not privy to the private discussions and agreements made between Davis and Ivey.
“Commissioner Davis made that agreement with the governor’s office, I think we’re entitled to ask him before we get into any of this whether he would like to rescind his resignation,” Gedling said.
Walker ultimately asked that her motion be rescinded, with the expectation that the opportunity to introduce a new, similar motion would come during the meeting’s next agenda item.
Davis, who was present at the meeting, was asked to comment on the discussion, to which he said he was grateful of the meeting with Ivey’s staff, that they had come to a “good agreement,” and that he stood by his past public statement.
Visibly emotional, he also spoke about his father’s love for veterans, something he said had resonated with him and led him on the path of serving 31 years in the U.S. Military, and many years thereafter helping veterans.
“There’s nobody, I assure you, that loves military veterans more than I do,” Davis said. “It flows through my blood, and every fiber in my body is dedicated to serving veterans, and for almost six years, I’ve tried to reinforce that love of veterans across this state.”

Rollins, attending the meeting virtually, made the motion to ask Davis to consider rescinding his resignation, which, much like Walker’s motion, received some pushback from Gedling, as well as from board member Mike Davis.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that we all support Commissioner Davis; he has done an exceptional job,” Gedling said. “But this is a personal decision on his part, and I’m not sure that it’s appropriate for him to, on the spot, make a personal decision in front of 40 people.”
After the motion’s language was altered slightly to simply ask Davis to reconsider his resignation, rather than affirmatively urge him to rescind his resignation, board members approved it unanimously.
Following the meeting, Waugh spoke further of the board’s support for Davis, in whatever he decides to do, and told ADN that the adopted motion was another way for members to show their support.
“He’s a great person,” Waugh said. “We were doing some good stuff, and I thought we would do a heck of a lot more, but it is what it is.”

The most recent issue of Inside Alabama Politics lays out a timeline of the conflict that goes back to summer 2022 and the awarding of some American Rescue Plan Act funds for veterans’ services and, more recently, the ADMH’s scuttling of an inter-agency memorandum of agreement for spending $7 million in ARPA funding because of concerns over with the grant administration process and the permissibility of some funding proposals. Among the concerns was a proposed ARPA grant for ADVA board member John Kilpatrick’s Mobile-based Vets Recover clinic, who “requested funding for lobbying” which is against state and federal law.
The tension between the departments of Veterans Affairs and Mental Health spilled out into the public in August when an ethics complaint authored by Davis against Boswell and others was leaked to the news media. The complaint alleged that Boswell and others worked to improperly scuttle the AVDA/ADMH agreement to coordinate ARPA funds because of some comments critical of Mental Health by Kilpatrick. Alabama Daily News later reported that Kilpatrick never made such comments, at least not publicly.
Davis told ADN he was encouraged by some board members to file the complaint.
Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton later dismissed the complaint, saying that even if true, the allegations made against Boswell and others are not ethics violations.
Ivey removed Kilpatrick from the board when she initially asked for Davis’ resignation.
The documents released by Ivey last month included an April 2024 letter from the Alabama Department of Finance to ADVA’s general counsel listing several concerns with the proposed ARPA grants. Comments included “considering the focus, staffing is excessive,” “weak to non-existent nexus to veterans’ mental health,” and “can we buy ammunition with ARPA funds?” The letter reiterated concerns raised by ADMH that a grantee wants to use ARPA funds for lobbying.
Davis has led the ADVA since early 2019, and is a retired U.S. Navy officer who served during the First Gulf War aboard the USS Missouri.
Alabama Daily News’ Mary Sell contributed to this report.