By Bill Britt, Lee Hedgepeth, and Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Republican Alabama House Representative Greg Wren has resigned his office, and has been arrested and convicted of using his office for public gain.
Wren appeared this morning at the Montgomery County Courthouse to plead guilty to the charge.
According to court documents, (page1, page2, page3, page4, page5, page6, page7, page8) Representative Wren illegally provided copies of private Medicaid information to a pharmaceutical company.
The pharmaceutical company, RxAlly, was paying the Representative and his consulting firm $8,000 a month for their services.
Wren was a good lawmaker, who did good deeds in his many years of service to the State. But, the law punishes us for the bad things we do. It is not good for government when wicked deeds are allowed to go unpunished. Today is the day of judgment for some and will long be remembered by those who might be similarly tempted in the future.
Justice must be done on all who strayed from the path of honest government and use state government to enrich their own coffers.
Wren’s guilty plea may also be tied to his effort to place 23 words into the State’s 2013 General Fund Budget that would have granted a monopoly for the American Pharmacy Cooperative Inc. (APCI), a Bessemer based company.
The scheme is believed (by our sources) to have originated with Alabama Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard (R) from Auburn. APCI would have become the sole provider of pharmaceuticals for the State’s million dollar Medicaid program a contract worth over a hundred million dollars.
It is our understanding that Hubbard and Wren both had lucrative contracts with APCI at the time the 23 words were placed into the budget.
SB143 was originally drafted by Sen. Arthur Orr, Republican chairman of the Senate Finance and Taxation General Fund Committee. The bill was introduced in February of 2013 and finally passed out of the Senate with three amendments on March 12th. When state Senators sent the budget to the House, there was no language benefiting APCI.
But, by February 23rd, the House had re-crafted the budget adding a section that would have forced the state into using a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) to administer the Medicaid prescription drug purchased.
Other guilty pleas are believed to be coming in the next hours, days, and weeks.
The Alabama Political Reporter has visited the Speaker’s Office and has asked for comment. The Speaker’s office has not yet responded to our request for official comment.
Wren reportedly said on Sunday, “People will no longer trust their government.”
After the two year college scandal, the Seigelman/Scrushy convictions, and the bingo corruption trial, most of us long ago stopped trusting government in any form, run by any political party.
For years, the Alabama Political Reporter has reported about loose ethics standards in the legislature, we were the first to report about investigative grand juries looking into ethics violations by legislators and we were the only media source to report on the APCI deal.
Representative Wren’s resignation takes effect today. His resignation letter, written to the Governor, reads as follows:
“This letter is to inform you of my resignation from my District 75 seat effective on this date.
I have enjoyed the many years of service together and appreciate your leadership and more importantly, your friendship throughout the years.
I shall look forward to the future and pray God will continue to protect you and your family as you serve the people of Alabama as our Governor.”
