A Republican candidate for governor who once sat in Bob Riley’s cabinet asked Alabama’s attorney general and the district attorney in Montgomery County in December 2009 to open investigations into the governor himself.
Bill Johnson, the former director of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, announced that he had sent a letter to Attorney General Troy King and Montgomery County District Attorney Ellen Brooks requesting inquiries into what he described as possible violations of law by Riley.
Four areas of concern
Johnson’s letter identified four specific matters he said warranted examination:
- Riley’s service as lead negotiator on the Jefferson County sewer debt while the law firm where his son practices was under contract with Jefferson County.
- Riley’s call for a special legislative session to approve a new occupational tax for Jefferson County while the law firms of his son and his son-in-law were employed by the county.
- The payment of millions of taxpayer dollars for other state legal matters to the firm where his son-in-law practices.
- Contributions to Riley’s 2002 gubernatorial campaign from Mississippi Indian casino owners and their agents, and the influence Johnson said those contributions may have had on public policy in Alabama.
Sons and sons-in-law are considered family members under Alabama’s conflict-of-interest law, Johnson noted. That law also requires state cabinet officials to report any matter coming to their attention in an official capacity that constitutes a violation.
A former insider’s case
Johnson framed his letter as a duty rather than a campaign tactic, pointing to the ethics pledge he signed as a member of the administration.
“I signed the Governor’s ‘Code of Ethics’ pledge in November 2005, stating that I pledged ‘my actions to always reflect first and foremost what is in the best interest of the State of Alabama and her taxpayers,’” he said. In January 2009, he added, he reported concerns about potential conflicts of interest relating to the Jefferson County sewer negotiations directly to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Alabama.
Johnson also said he had received threatening letters since announcing his candidacy, and he attributed them to his public and private criticism of the governor.
“No state official is above the law,” he said. “The people deserve to know whether or not their Governor has violated the law. The next Governor should be someone who is committed to telling the truth no matter how uncomfortable that might make people in power.” He added that he refused “to be bullied by the cowards who are anonymously threatening me and my family.”
Turning the administration’s own words back on it, Johnson quoted Riley press secretary Todd Stacy, who had said on Nov. 26 that “we hope law enforcement will investigate this, find out who is responsible and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Why it landed where it did
The request was aimed at two officials with complicated relationships to the governor’s office. Troy King, the attorney general, had by 2009 broken openly with Riley, most visibly over the enforcement of Alabama’s gambling laws, and was himself facing a primary challenge from Luther Strange with backing from much of the party establishment. Ellen Brooks, the Montgomery County district attorney, held jurisdiction over conduct in the capital.
For south Alabama voters, the episode mattered chiefly as a window into the 2010 Republican primary, then shaping up as one of the most crowded and least predictable in memory. Johnson, Bradley Byrne, Tim James and State Treasurer Kay Ivey were all competing for the same conservative electorate, and the Jefferson County sewer crisis — a multibillion-dollar debt debacle that had pushed the state’s largest county to the edge of bankruptcy — had become a byword statewide for what happens when public finance and private interest are allowed to blur.
Johnson’s letter, whatever its legal fate, ensured that the question would be asked out loud in a Republican primary rather than left to the federal courthouse in Birmingham.