Report: Panel unable to prove Bevin retaliation
FRANKFORT, Ky. — A special House committee was unable to substantiate any charges that Gov. Matt Bevin halted a road project as retaliation against a Democratic lawmaker, but it did question the state’s payment of $625,000 in damages to the contractor.
The report, written by the committee's attorney and filed just before the House switched to GOP control, said the panel “was unable to find an objectively valid basis for the payment … as ‘liquidated delay damages.’ ”
And citing a lack of cooperation by witnesses on all sides, the report said that the committee could not prove Bevin had halted the Jessamine County project to get back at Rep. Russ Meyer because he rejected the governor's request to become a Republican.
The report did find that Bevin pressured Democratic Rep. Kevin Sinnette to switch parties — an allegation that Bevin has strongly denied. While such pressure could be construed as “distasteful,” the report said, there was nothing illegal or "overtly improper” in Bevin’s conduct.
The outside counsel to the committee, Nashville attorney Eli Richardson, submitted a final report of the House Investigatory Committee on Executive Actions dated Dec. 30 to then-Speaker Greg Stumbo.
Stumbo, who lost his bid for re-election, released a copy to the Courier-Journal this week saying that because the committee did not have time to reconvene to adopt the report before the year ended, the report should be characterized as the product of its counsel Richardson rather that of the committee.
Perhaps the major point made by Richardson in the 27-page report is that the committee “was unable to examine fully the topics within its purview.” This was mostly because the Bevin administration refused to allow officials of the Transportation Cabinet to testify about the road project and because the committee also failed in getting testimony from Meyer.
Bevin spokeswoman Amanda Stamper did not respond to a phone message and emailed questions seeking comment on the report.
The Courier-Journal first reported last summer that the Bevin administration had indefinitely halted the $11 million project in Jessamine County to extend East Brannon Road and paid the contractor $625,000 in damages because the contractor could not start the project on time last March.
Bevin officials blamed the administration of Gov. Steve Beshear for irresponsibly rushing the project to bid even though there was no chance property could be obtained to start work on time. Beshear said that was not true and that the project could have started on time but that Bevin wanted to stop it.
The plot thickened last summer when Meyer told reporters he believed the project was stopped because he refused Bevin’s attempts in late 2015 to get him to switch parties. Meyer supported his allegation by releasing a voicemail he said Bevin left on his cell phone on Dec. 17, 2015.
In that voicemail Bevin said he was disappointed by what he had been hearing and wanted to make sure Meyer understood how decisions he was about to make would affect “you, your seat, your district.”
Meyer’s allegation followed a story by CNHI News earlier last summer that quoted Sinnette as saying he was bullied and belittled by Bevin during a meeting in the Governor’s Mansion in December 2015 after Sinnette rejected Bevin’s request that he switch parties.
Stumbo appointed the committee to investigate the allegations in October. But it struggled from the start as Bevin’s office said Transportation officials who worked on the project would not be made available to the committee. And on Dec. 8 the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, resigned because Stumbo had rejected his attempt to subpoena Meyer to compel his testimony.
Richardson’s report says that on Dec. 27 Stumbo appointed himself as chairman for the purpose of instructing him to write and submit a final report.
Stumbo left office at the end of the year. And the House convened on Jan 3 with a new Republican supermajority electing Republican Jeff Hoover as speaker.
While the committee did not hear from key witnesses, the report said it did get hundreds of documents related to the road project. From its review of the contract and other documents, the final report questioned the $625,000 payment to the contractor, Allen Co.
“The committee was unable to find any provision in any contractual document that would support the payment to Allen Co. of ‘liquidated damages,’ let alone liquidated damages of $625,000,” the report states.
The reported said “it is possible” that cabinet officials can explain the payment but that those officials would not appear before the committee. “Absent such explanation … the Committee must conclude that the payment to Allen Co. of $625,000 in ‘liquidated delay damages’ currently is unsupported.”
Richardson wrote that the lack of testimony of key players thwarted the committee in seeking answers to most of the questions it hoped to answer.
The report found that the Transportation Cabinet offered a “legitimate" reason in delaying the Jessamine County project because of its inability to acquire the land in a timely fashion.
“On the other hand, the fact that this could have been the reason for the cancellation does not mean that it actually was the reason,” the report said.
And because Meyer did not testify, the committee discarded his charges in news reports.
Meyer’s “version of events as reported by the media has not been accepted by the Committee, leaving the Committee with no cognizable evidence that Gov. Bevin ever pressured Rep. Meyer in the first place – let alone evidence that Rep. Meyer resisted such pressure and as a result was subject to retaliation,” Richardson’s report said.
The report said the voicemail message Bevin left for Meyer “is consistent with a scenario in which Gov. Bevin was applying pressure to switch parties, but it is equally consistent with a scenario wherein he was applying different or more general pressure.”
Sinnette, of Ashland, was the only significant witness to testify before the committee. And the report found that Sinnette was telling the truth when he said he was pressured by Bevin to switch parties.
Sinnette’s testimony was specific, consistent with accounts he gave in news reports, and not contradicted by other evidence, the report said. But the report added, "Some may find distasteful a request to switch political parties, accompanied by what may be considered ‘political’ threats. But that does not make such conduct illegal or even wrongful."
