Governor Kay Ivey’s unilateral firing of former Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs (ADVA) commissioner Kent Davis “smacks of classic retaliation” for an ethics complaint he filed in July at the request of members of the State Board of Veterans Affairs (SBVA), according to Davis.
The SBVA rejected Ivey's request to terminate Davis last week. Ivey then unilaterally fired him after the one-and-a-half-hour SBVA meeting. Ivey told reporters on Tuesday, "I spelled out in great detail to the board in writing, I think it was seven or eight different charges, and they couldn't do what I had to do, so he needed to go."
Davis told 1819 News in an interview on Friday, “I intend to press forward with every legal right that I have whether it be in state and/or federal court.”
“If it takes a long time, don’t care at this point," he continued. "I’m going to press forward and it’s not only for me, it’s for the reputation of the great men and women that I worked with in the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs because I think they’ve been defamed as well in all of this. It’s also for the veterans of Alabama. I do take umbrage at these claims that we haven’t been serving veterans or there’s been a lack of leadership with veterans.”
“Let’s look at this. So, in six years there have been articles published by neutral authors who looked at our track record over the last six years," Davis continued. "I’m quoting out of some of those articles. Six years ago we had the longest waiting list in the country to get into our state veterans homes. The state had closed 17 veterans service offices leaving whole sections of the state without the services for veterans. The G.I. Dependent Scholarship had been slashed. One of the worst veteran suicide rates in the country. No one was doing anything about that and in the last 5.5 to 6 years, turned all of that around. Built a new state veterans home from scratch, major project. Opened twelve new veterans service offices. Opened an office of outreach and engagement to partner with other agencies, the federal VA, the federal Department of Health and Human Services, more importantly private sector nonprofit organizations, (and) faith-based organizations. Whole staff that does that. We never had any of those partnerships before. On the other hand, Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs has 70 facilities across the state. Do you know how many the governor has visited? Zero. Is that telling about the priorities? To accuse me of not having leadership and not doing things for veterans, pretty insulting and I would say defamatory. It’s interesting the only interest I’ve seen in the Department of Veterans Affairs and veterans is over all of this after the ethics filing.”
Ivey has maintained that ADVA mishandled American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. Davis resigned on September 9, effective December 31, after previously declining to resign. An SBVA committee approved a report at a meeting on October 9 stating Davis and ADVA did nothing wrong with the funds.
Ivey originally asked for Davis' resignation effective September 30 and removed John Kilpatrick from the Alabama State Board of Veterans Affairs. In August, at the request of board members, Davis filed an ethics complaint against Alabama Department of Mental Health commissioner Kim Boswell for allegedly preventing ADVA from obtaining $7 million in ARPA funds. The Alabama Ethics Commission later dismissed the complaint.
An Ivey spokesperson said last week Ivey used the "supreme executive power of this state" to immediately remove Davis without a successful board vote.
“State law says that the commissioner of Veterans Affairs is appointed by the State Board of Veterans Affairs and is subject to removal for cause by the board only so that came as a total surprise,” Davis said.
Davis said his firing by Ivey last week after the SBVA meeting was a “bit of a shock.” Davis’ attorney was handed a letter of termination signed by Ivey by Ivey’s general counsel after the meeting.
“Some things that happened immediately afterward led me to believe that that whole board meeting was kind of a sham because obviously that letter was already prepared. Secondly, when I eventually went back to my office to gather my personal effects from my office, they cut off my I.T. access while we were in that meeting. This was all planned out obviously. It was still a shock,” Davis said.
Davis said Ivey’s termination letter and previous correspondence requesting his resignation or removal by the board contain “no specifics” just “general allegations.”
“I have a hunch where some of it is coming from. I think some of the politicians, you know this having dealt with me, I’ve been pretty vocal about some issues with veterans especially veteran suicides and the fact that I thought the state needed to do more to step up to help with that crisis in the state. That’s probably ruffled some feathers and maybe some politicians took that as criticism. It was not intended, it was intended as a suggestion that there is a state role and you need to do more. We do have a real problem with this. In the state code of Alabama there is a specific mandate for me to advocate for veterans in this state as the commissioner when I was the commissioner,” Davis said. “So, I don’t apologize for that. I’ll be honest with you. At times I felt like there was not a lot of interest in helping veterans with some of these issues. I got the impression that some elected officials were interested in window dressing and showing up for photo-ops but it was really tough to get substantive help with veterans issues at times. Not always. Let me give some of the positives: State Rep. Neil Rafferty (D-Birmingham), State Sen. Greg Albritton (R-Atmore), (and) several others I can think of along the way who have expressed an interest. I’ll even give credit to State Sen. Andrew Jones (R-Centre) and State Rep. Chip Brown (R-Hollinger’s Island) who really tried at the beginning with the Veterans Access to Care bill but they just got overtaken by other interests and that bill got watered way, way down. What could’ve been a great thing to help veterans with a real crisis is much less than what it could’ve been, but I give them credit for trying.”
When asked if he thinks his firing is really about the ethics complaint he filed, Davis responded, “It’s obvious to everybody. Everybody is telling me that. Just look at the timeline. This smacks of classic retaliation.”
“How many ethics complaints does the Ethics Commission get that they dismiss? I’m sure it’s quite a bit. Do we really want a public policy that discourages people from filing ethics complaints? It is the job of the Ethics Commission to look at suspected ethics violations,” he added. “They make the determination. If they decide yes and I’ve filed ethics complaints in the past that they determined were valid. One got prosecuted and an elected official was prosecuted in court in Birmingham. I said to the Ethics Commission, ‘Look I have reluctance in doing this.’ Basically, I’m not sure there’s anything here but I’m leaving it up to you to investigate. This was brought to my attention by my bosses and I’m obligated under the code of Alabama to report it to you. It’s up to you. Now, somebody despicably leaked that. I think that’s horrible. After that happened, I went back to the Ethics Commission and asked them, ‘Look, I think this has compromised the whole investigation. Can we just withdraw it?’ I cleared it with the original board members that approached me and they agreed. I said, ‘I’m just going to ask them to withdraw the whole complaint because of this leak. I think it has compromised the whole complaint process.’ The bottom line is I don’t think as a public policy you want to do things in retaliation that discourage people from coming forward with ethics concerns and letting the Ethics Commission do their job, look at it and if there’s nothing there, there’s nothing there and we move on. If there’s something there, great that’s why the whole ethics code exists.”
Davis continued, “This will have a chilling effect in the future because any other person and especially an official is going to say, ‘Well, I’m not making an ethics complaint even if I’m pretty certain there is something here because somebody will come after me.’”
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email caleb.taylor@1819News.com.
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