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Gov. Kay Ivey convened a special meeting of the Alabama Board of Veterans Affairs Tuesday in an attempt to have the board immediately remove Commissioner Kent Davis.
That motion failed, however, with three board members voting against removing Davis, two for and two abstaining.
Citing the vote as a “total failure of leadership,” Ivey called on her “supreme executive power” as the governor to immediately remove Davis anyway despite the outcome of the vote.
“For weeks now, I have laid out the case publicly for why new leadership at the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs is necessary, and it is unfortunate it came to forcefully removing this agency head,” Ivey said in a statement. “After what I would now deem as a total failure of leadership at the Department and lack of cooperation, I had to use the mantle of the Governor’s Office to make the change. While there is more work to do, I am confident that together as one team, our state government can make Alabama an even better place for veterans to call home.”
John Saxon, Davis’ attorney, told multiple outlets Tuesday that they are weighing their options for legal recourse.
“When the governor gets mad, she gets even, and that’s what happened here today,” Saxon told Alabama Daily News. “We are going to take a very serious look at whether the governor actually has the legal authority to fire the commissioner; I’m not sure she does, that will be our first step. Then we will take a serious look at whether we should file a lawsuit under the anti-retaliation provision of the state ethics law, and I think Kent probably has a very good case under that statute.”
At the Oct. 9 meeting of the board, members voted unanimously to ask Davis to reconsider his agreement with Ivey to resign at the end of the year.
Ivey called that vote “orchestrated theatre” and vice chair Scott Gedling later accused Davis of manipulating the board to vote as it did.
The months-long battle between Ivey and Davis can be traced back to Davis filing an ethics complaint against Alabama Department of Mental Health Commissioner Kim Boswell, a member of Ivey’s cabinet.
Davis told board members Tuesday that he simply followed through with his duty to pass on potential ethics violations brought to his attention by board members. Three board members raised concerns about the ADMH colluding with state officials to prevent the ADVA from getting $7 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding.
“For the past few months, I’ve constantly felt I was caught between a rock and a hard place; I had a statuary obligation to report after I was notified as an agency head,” Davis said under questioning from the board. “Someone leaked that ethics complaint, and only the complaint, not the whole file. It comes back to that ethics complaint, which seemed to, perhaps understandably, cause a lot of hurt feelings, but again, that rock and a hard place. You talk about a tough spot.”
Davis rebuffed Ivey’s accusation that he had misrepresented their agreement regarding his delayed resignation, and said he did not respond to Ivey’s most recent letter under the advisement of legal counsel, who he said were in constant contact with Ivey’s counsel.
He also disputed any allegation that he manipulated the board’s vote.
“The new allegation that I see is one that I manipulated the board; well, during the Oct. 10 meeting, I didn’t say anything, not a single word during the deliberations on the entire matter of motions asking me to consider rescinding my resignation,” Davis said.
Ivey appointed Jeffrey Newton to serve as interim commissioner of the department.
