Alabama has a veterans controversy with national implications

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey last month invoked “supreme executive power,” mentioned nowhere in the state Constitution or laws but in contradiction of specific provisions of state law, to fire the state commissioner of Veterans Affairs, who has earned rave reviews from the veterans community. In doing so, Ivey has enraged, among many others, a state veterans board member who happens to have national clout as the former senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff. That high-ranking retired Marine, Bryan Battaglia, wrote a guest newspaper column whose headline accuses Ivey of waging a “war on veterans.”

Oh, and the fired commissioner had just filed an ethics complaint against state Mental Health Department officials and others for allegedly colluding to divert $7 million of federal funds away from the veterans groups for whom the money had been intended. In essence, Ivey looks to be engaged in a form of whistleblower retaliation.

Almost the entirety of the state’s media, whether right, center-right, or left, is justly pillorying Ivey. The reasons she cites for the firing are flat-out factually inaccurate, while the byzantine state mental health system she (in essence) is protecting consistently ranks among the five or so worst in the nation in quality and quantity of services.

If this sounds like a mess, it is, and it will probably get worse as the fired commissioner, retired Rear Adm. W. Kent Davis, considers legal action on what most people see as at least two possible fronts. Legal “discovery” alone should make both the whole Ivey administration and the state mental health oligopoly profoundly nervous.

If a court case does heat up, it should attract investigative reporting from major national news outlets, as the whole situation comes against the backdrop of consistent and growing national interest in stories about mental healthcare, in general, and about high rates of suicide among veterans.

What really appears to be happening here is the oligopoly’s obvious unwillingness to have service organizations for veterans provide mental health treatment outside of the oligopoly’s control. This is a benighted attitude, ignoring the reality that veterans’ mental health needs tend to be specialized in nature, as they far more often stem from post-traumatic stress disorder than from other causes. Indeed, the high veterans suicide rate almost directly correlates with PTSD occurrences, while veterans tend, on average, to be less likely than the general population to suffer from other mental health ailments. It stands to reason that a general-population system that usually handles serious conditions stemming from biological causes might be less equipped to treat experiential-triggered problems related to combat or combat-like conditions.

It is unclear to this writer whether this unnecessary resistance to specialized veterans treatment is unique to Alabama or a national problem, but it’s a topic worthy of national attention. Here in Alabama, it has become a scandal.

The Alabama case, in a nutshell

Having taken so long just to establish the national import of this story thematically, let’s try to explain the specifics of this extremely convoluted situation as concisely as possible. What happened was that at the last minute, the Alabama Department of Mental Health withdrew from a partnership with the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs to award $7 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds through grants to 33 veterans organizations. Three members of the State Board of Veterans Affairs, the supervisory body to whom Davis answers, then approached Davis with ethics-based allegations against the Mental Health Commissioner and others. Davis, consulting state law, expressed “reluctance” to file a complaint but determined he was “obligated by Ala. Code 36-25-17” to file it upon pain of committing a criminal offense if he did not meet that perceived obligation.

The ethics complaint was leaked to Lagniappe, an excellent weekly paper in Mobile. Davis, angry at the leak, asked to withdraw the complaint, but the state Ethics Commission, itself long accused of being toothless or worse, publicly dismissed the case as (allegedly) meritless. Ivey, whose office is reportedly close to several of the “others” named in Davis’ reluctant complaint, had an absolute fit.

Citing exceedingly vague allegations that Davis had “mishandled” the federal funds, Ivey demanded that the State Board of Veterans Affairs fire Davis and then pressured Davis to resign. To avoid a fight, Davis agreed to do so at year’s end. The SBVA, though, in defiance of Ivey, unanimously voted to ask Davis, who was credited with massively improving the quality of state veterans services, to reconsider his resignation.

Davis publicly said he was not inclined to do so, but Ivey wouldn’t leave well enough alone. She called a special meeting of the SBVA, this time to demand that it fire Davis immediately rather than at year’s end. However, Ivey lost the vote.

An hour later, Ivey’s attorney showed up with a letter announcing the governor had unilaterally fired Davis and then sent state police to his office and home to demand keys and files, as if to make him look like a criminal.

In most states, it would be assumed that the head of a state department is, of course, fireable by the governor. In Alabama, though, Veterans Affairs is quasi-independent, answering to the veterans board described above rather than directly to the governor. State law specifically says the governor may “remove from office” any employee who serves “by virtue of appointment” by the current or former governor. The veterans commissioner, though, is not appointed by the governor. State law says the State Board of Veterans Affairs, not the governor, “shall appoint a commissioner … subject to removal by the board for cause.” (Emphasis added.)

That’s why Ivey went through all the rigmarole of demanding special board meetings and votes to fire Davis rather than doing it directly: because she doesn’t have that power. Nonetheless, once thwarted, she asserted something called – get this – “the supreme executive power of the state.” In claiming this sweeping power superseding any other relevant portion of state law, she cited a state Supreme Court case that seems wholly inapplicable to Davis’s situation.

More bizarrely, Ivey’s vague claim that Davis somehow mishandled the grant money was factually absurd. Davis, battling cancer at the time, had specifically recused himself from the selection process. Instead, a special scoring panel ranked the grant applicants. Neither the Department of Veterans Affairs nor the state veterans board, to which it answers, even controlled the panel: Three of the five-panel members were appointed by the Department of Mental Health. This means that any unexplained “mishandling” of the intended grants, which were never actually given out because ADMH withdrew, would have been the fault of ADMH, not the veterans, and certainly not the recused, cancer-stricken Davis.

Moreover, a key member of the legislative oversight committee already had publicly said no funds were mishandled, the state’s own Director of Finance had said no funds were mishandled, and a review committee of the whole state veterans board reported the same.

All Ivey had to do was just say and do nothing. The Ethics Commission, rightly or wrongly, already was dismissing Davis’s reluctant ethics complaint against the mental health lobby, and Davis obviously was in no mood to continue pursuing it. He just wanted to move on, continuing his otherwise exemplary service.

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As noted by Battaglia, the former assignee to the joint chief of staff, Davis, in five years, has spearheaded the opening of 12 new veterans service offices “without increasing ADVA’s annual budget, due to automation and increased efficiency.” He took concrete steps to combat veteran suicide, and the rate is dropping. Davis “planned and successfully led the building of a new state veterans home,” improved the GI Dependent Scholarship program, expanded the State Veterans Memorial Cemetery, and more.

Ivey should use the occasion of Veterans Day to claim there had been a “series of misunderstandings” but that, having heard “loud and clear” from state veterans groups, she will now reinstate Davis. In doing so, she also might be avoiding a lawsuit that surely would embarrass her administration profoundly and maybe rip it wide apart.