Former ADVA commissioner on controversial firing: “There will be at least one lawsuit”

APR recently spoke with Rear Admiral Kent Davis, the former commissioner of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs who Gov. Kay Ivey controversially fired after the governor publicly accused Davis of mishandling American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. However, Davis claims that there is much more to the story, and has suggested that the governor’s use of her “supreme executive power” to remove him from his position was not only unsubstantiated, but potentially unlawful.

A spokesperson for the governor responded to a request for comment from APR, simply stating, “At this point, Governor Ivey has spoken at great lengths, and we are confident in the governor’s legal authority to supervise state government.”

Ivey’s stated rationale for ousting Davis was his misappropriation of ARPA grant money which the ADVA intended to use to fund much-needed mental health resources for veterans in the state. However, as Davis explained to APR, he was repeatedly absolved of those charges by both the State Board of Veterans Affairs and the independent State Board of Examiners, the latter of which declined to even investigate the situation given the lack evidence behind the claims. 

Indeed, the ADVA never even spent ARPA funds. The department had signed a memorandum of agreement with the Alabama Department of Mental Health to allow the ADMH to allocate the ARPA grant money to a list of 33 recipients on the ADVA’s behalf. However, the ADMH never allocated those grants, and ultimately backed out of the agreement, forcing the ADVA to abandon the ARPA funds altogether and source the grant money from elsewhere. 

Davis, determined to keep the grant program alive despite the loss of ARPA funds, was approved by the State Board of Veterans Affairs and the state legislature to use $7 million of the departmental operational budget to fund the grants instead. According to Davis, not only was he not accused of any mishandling of funds at the time, he was even congratulated by the state finance director on finding an alternative source of funding for the program.

Months passed and no concerns pertaining to ARPA funding or the grant program were ever brought to Davis’s attention. However, that changed in July when Davis was approached by members of State Board of Veterans Affairs, telling him that they had ethics concerns related to the ADMH’s behavior during that process.

Davis, obligated by state law to report any ethics concerns brought to his attention, did just that and reported the board’s concerns to the Alabama Ethics Commission.

“I even told the board members, ‘I’m not sure this qualifies as an ethics violation,’ but the law says if an agency head is made aware of ethics concerns, they have to report it to the ethics commission, it’s up to them to determine if it’s a violation or not,” Davis told APR.

Despite this obligation, Davis believes that he was ultimately punished for filing that complaint. Soon after it was filed, Davis’s complaint was leaked, with a copy of the complaint reaching the governor’s office. 

“It was not me that leaked that,” Davis said. “It could have only been four sources: the three complainants who came to me… or it was leaked by the ethics commission themselves.”

Davis subsequently learned that the governor’s office was “furious” over the complaint, despite the Ethics Commission ultimately dismissing it. On Sep. 5, Davis received a phone call from his staff while driving to Enterprise, AL to visit the department’s new state veteran’s home. Davis was informed that he had been sent an email from a legal assistant in the governor’s office requesting his immediate resignation — supposedly for mishandling ARPA funds. The letter also announced the removal of one of the SBVA’s board members — one of the same members who had originally approached Davis about the ethics concerns in July.

“OK, first of all, we didn’t spend a penny of those dollars, we turned them back in to [the Alabama Department of Finance] and found an alternative source. And secondly, we weren’t in charge of writing the contracts and distributing those funds,” Davis said. “We had signed an inter-agency agreement with the Department of Mental Health and we were going to pay them $80,000 to do that, so how did I mishandle and misspend funds?”

Davis had never been privately contacted by Gov. Ivey or her office to discuss the matter before receiving that letter. Soon after learning the news, Davis began receiving calls from the media who had learned of the governor’s request for Davis’s resignation at the same time as the commissioner himself. Davis refused to resign.

“She’s not my boss,” Davis told APR. “She’s supposed to take it to the board and have them vote to remove me for cause. So, I didn’t resign.”

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to say, ‘OK, the ethics complaint gets leaked, I get a dismissal letter for the complaint on August 27, which was very pleasant, and then, just a few days later, like a week later, there’s a call for my resignation,'” Davis said. “It’s a little suspicious on the timing, isn’t it?”

“Not a single complaint ever, nothing but praise from the governor’s office… it was always accolades… what changed?” he added.

After Davis declined to resign, Ivey called a special meeting of the SBVA to call for Davis’s removal for cause. According to Davis, the governor’s office began calling members of the board, pressuring them to vote to remove Davis as commissioner. However, Davis went on to make an agreement with the governor’s office that he would indeed resign effective Dec. 31, causing the governor to call off the special meeting.

Just when the situation appeared to be a closed case, the SBVA called on Davis to explain the entire timeline associated with the ARPA grant funds at a regularly scheduled committee meeting. The board wished to publicly clear Davis of any wrongdoing and exonerate him of the accusations made by the governor’s office. The board unanimously exonerated the commissioner, and at another meeting the following day, a new motion was made asking Davis to rescind his resignation since no apparent wrongdoing had occurred. That vote passed unanimously, leaving Davis in a difficult position: the governor wished for him to resign while the SBVA, his immediate bosses, wished for him to stay.

In response to the board’s vote, Ivey called for another special meeting, again looking to ensure Davis’s immediate removal as commissioner. That meeting was to be held at the Capitol for the governor’s convenience. Interestingly, it was subsequently announced that Gov. Ivey would not be attending her own meeting and that a proxy would vote in her stead. Additionally, it was announced only days before the meeting that no virtual attendance would be permitted. These rules, alongside unfilled vacancies and two abstentions, resulted in only five individuals from the 17-member board being present at the meeting — one of those five being Ivey’s proxy. 

Even so, the board voted 3-2 to retain Davis as ADVA commissioner, with Davis planning to stay on until Dec. 31 as he had previously agreed with the governor. However, mere moments later, the governor announced that she was using her “supreme executive power” to defy the board and remove Davis effective immediately.

“I’ve gotten nothing but 100 percent unanimous support all over the state,” Davis said. “I still get speaking invitations and I get a sense of outrage in the veteran community — ‘this is one example in state government of a guy who has been busting his tail with clear evidence of results in improving statistics for veterans, and you fire him?'”

“It’s so obvious that this was retaliation for the ethics complaint,” Davis continued. Davis told APR that he has had elected officials in the state and members of the U.S. Congress tell him that his firing was an “outrage” and that it was clearly done as punishment for filing the ethics complaint.

Davis tried to explain why Gov. Ivey would retaliate so severely in response to the ethics complaint.

“Some reporters have speculated, and I’ve got to tell you I think it’s reasonable speculation they’ve engaged in… that some of the respondents named in the ethics complaint have close ties to Governor Ivey,” Davis said.

In Davis’s opinion, those “respondents” might include Kimberly Boswell, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Mental Health, as well as lobbyists who had previously been involved in “undermining” a bill that was also aimed at addressing the mental health crisis among Alabama’s veterans.

“There’s a monopolistic system towards mental health in the state where the Department of Mental Health has divided the state into regions, and within that region a contractor basically gets a monopoly on mental health services…” Davis explained. “It seems to be that they don’t want anyone else coming in and providing mental health services in those regions, even if its a niche service like veterans and dealing with PTSD.”

Following his firing, armed law enforcement was sent to Davis’s home to confiscate his cell phone and office keys. In a recent interview, Davis referred to the incident as “a play towards humiliation, or what I would call actual malice in defaming me publicly.”

Davis added that he has also had multiple job prospects “destroyed” by the controversy and the governor’s actions.

When asked about what his plans are moving forward, Davis told APR that “there will be at least one lawsuit.” He mentioned the state ethics code’s anti-retaliation provisions, individual First Amendment concerns, and questions of separation of powers related to Ivey’s use of her “supreme executive power” as all being possible subjects for future legal action.

“Do you really want to, through political action, set a public policy that discourages people coming forward with ethics concerns?” Davis said. “Any other agency head now is going to think more than twice if there’s an ethics concern. They’re going to say, ‘I’m going to do everything I can to avoid this, because look what happened to that guy, they came after him with a vengeance, even when his own board unanimously supported him!'”

Davis’s lawyer has yet to respond to a request for comment regarding any forthcoming lawsuits.

“This ain’t going to go away,” Davis continued. “I don’t know if they understood what they were biting off with this.”

When asked if he would be interested in being reinstated as ADVA commissioner were the opportunity to arise, Davis replied, “Absolutely.”