Official faced pressure on jobs
Saturday, October 22, 2005
faced pressure on jobs Hamm: Adviser told him to comply
By Tom Loftustloftus@courier-journal.comThe Courier-Journal
FRANKFORT, Ky. -- A state personnel official said he told Gov. Ernie Fletcher's advisers last year that he did not want to fill merit jobs on the basis of politics.
But that official, J.P. Hamm, said one of the advisers, Darrell Brock, warned him to do as he was told, according to documents the attorney general's office filed in court yesterday.
"When I give you a name I speak for the governor," Hamm said Brock told him, according to the documents.
At the time, Brock was head of the Governor's Office of Local Development, and he is now chairman of the Kentucky Republican Party.
Brock was indicted on allegations of breaking the merit system law but later pardoned by Fletcher, who then asked him to step down as GOP chairman.
Hamm, executive director of the Office of Personnel Management for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, told investigators he did not believe Brock spoke for Fletcher.
The governor has denied any wrongdoing, saying he never knowingly broke the law, but some in his administration "made mistakes." Most qualified candidates
At a later meeting, Hamm said he pleaded that they had to hire the most qualified applicants in his cabinet because "we're dealing with health and family, we're not dealing with filling pot holes."
But Hamm said an unpaid adviser, Dave Disponett, treasurer of the state Republican Party, told him: "If you only hired the most qualified people, how will our people ever get hired?"
Disponett was indicted Thursday on allegations of breaking the merit law.
He has previously denied wrongdoing.
Hamm declined to comment yesterday through the cabinet spokeswoman.
Disponett and Brock could not be reached.
The transcript of Hamm's interview Aug. 9 with investigators was among more than 200 pages of investigation records that the attorney general's office filed in Franklin Circuit Court late yesterday.
The records were filed in response to an attempt by Fletcher's former chief of staff, Daniel Groves, to have his own indictment dismissed.
A judge has yet to rule on the matter.
Groves was indicted Sept. 30 by a special grand jury on three counts of criminal conspiracy to violate the state merit law that requires hiring of civil service workers to be based on qualifications and forbids political considerations. Battle over pardon's scope
Fletcher issued a pardon order that Groves believes covers him. That order specifies that the only person it does not cover is Fletcher.
Yesterday Fletcher's office released a statement asserting that the order covers anyone caught up in the investigation of allegations that the Fletcher administration broke the merit system law.
"The Governor and his counsel are confident in the constitutional power of amnesty. The Attorney General's unconstitutional actions are in direct violation of a settled legal precedent," the statement said.
Groves and his lawyer did not respond to phone messages.
The filing by the attorney general's office's contends that Fletcher's pardon cannot apply to Groves because he was indicted after the order was issued. Putting Republicans in jobs
Much of the attorney general's filing repeats what prosecutors have already alleged: That as a result of great pressure from GOP supporters to put Republicans in state jobs, the governor's office created the Governor's Personnel Initiative.
Under the initiative, trusted supporters were placed in the cabinets of state government to help see that supporters would get merit jobs, prosecutors allege.
And prosecutors say part of the scheme was to use the governor's network of eight regional outreach offices, known as LINK -- for Local Initiatives for a New Kentucky -- to forward recommendations of political supporters and vet the names of pending hires.
The response filed yesterday cites e-mails and other records previously released showing Groves' involvement in setting up the initiative.
It notes that former Transportation Cabinet official Dan Druen told investigators in August that the initiative was Groves' brainchild. New details from Hamm
Prosecutors also disclosed for the first time a transcript of an interview with Hamm, who had been designated as the Health and Family Services Cabinet's member of the initiative.
Hamm was hired as that cabinet's top personnel official in May 2004.
According to the response filed yesterday, he said that by late summer that year it became almost a full-time job for his assistant to track the status of merit job applicants referred to him by the governor's office.
Hamm said that while in the Capitol on other business last fall he met with Disponett and Brock in Disponett's office, where the two questioned why he hadn't hired a woman they recommended for a secretarial job.
"Hamm stated that the meeting became heated when he told Disponett and Brock that she had not been the most qualified candidate," the response states.
Hamm said it was at this meeting that Brock told him he spoke for the governor.
At a second meeting later last year Hamm said he intended to describe to Brock, Disponett and another unpaid Fletcher adviser, J. Marshall Hughes, how recommendations from political supporters should be handled based on opinions of the Executive Branch Ethics Commission.
Hamm said this meeting became "extremely heated" and Brock told him regarding hiring decisions, "If I give you a name, that's good enough for you."
But Hamm said that earlier this year, the pressure to hire recommended candidates subsided in his cabinet. He said that in a February meeting, John Roach, then Fletcher's general counsel, told a LINK lawyer "to make sure the LINK representatives knew that they were not in the business of passing resumes."
After that, Hamm said his cabinet "never got any pushback." Fletcher e-mail
The filing also says that a series of personnel moves by the governor last fall were intended to help implement the personnel initiative, including the move of Basil Turbyfill from a job in the Finance Cabinet to Fletcher's office to become an adviser on personnel.
The filing states that on Nov. 28, 2004, Fletcher e-mailed his new chief of staff, Stan Cave, and said of Turbyfill, "He said he's willing to do what I ask of him."
The filing also alleges that advisers including Disponett, Turbyfill and Hughes were getting pressure to put political supporters in jobs.
Another e-mail included in the filing was to Hughes from Allen Sturgeon, the Breckinridge County GOP chairman.
In it, Sturgeon said: "I realize that Ernie campaigned on a 'No Politics as usual' policy, but if we don't have input in helping loyal Republicans get a chance at state jobs it will come back to haunt us in upcoming elections."
The filing said Sturgeon was interested in a foreman's job at the state's local highway garage. "I don't know if it is a Merit Position or not, but it is a position that I feel the local party should have some input when it is filled."
Sturgeon said last night he may have written the e-mail, but he did not recall it.
He said all he ever wanted to recommend was that Republican applicants get fair consideration for jobs.
Print this article Go back
No comments:
Post a Comment