The ethics fight at the center of Mobile’s mayoral campaign escalated sharply as attorney Jim Zeigler filed his complaint against City Councilman John Peavy with the Alabama Ethics Commission in Montgomery — and Peavy answered not only with a denial but with a lawsuit of his own.
Zeigler filed the complaint at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday at the commission’s Montgomery office, alleging that Peavy, 51, had committed “multiple violations of state ethics laws.”
“He and his business, Peavy Construction Company, intentionally sought and performed work on a city project on which John Peavy participated as council member,” Zeigler charged.
Peavy Goes to Court
Peavy called the complaint baseless and addressed it at length at a City Hall press conference Wednesday afternoon.
“The complaint is without merit,” he said. “Some of the things in it are clearly fallacious from what I’ve been told is in it. I think it will be dismissed easily just by looking at the documentation. It’s ridiculous really. But this is what politics is about, I guess. It’s starting to kick up, so we must be doing something right.”
He also went on the legal offensive. Peavy was reported to have filed suit against Zeigler seeking damages on three counts: defamation, outrageous conduct and abuse of process. The case was reported to have been assigned to Mobile County Circuit Presiding Judge Bob Kendall, who according to an attorney involved had scheduled a telephone conference among the lawyers for the following Tuesday afternoon. Peavy’s legal team was believed to be preparing to seek a temporary restraining order against Zeigler.
Zeigler: ‘He Is Overreacting’
Zeigler seized on the lawsuit as evidence of poor judgment, arguing that Peavy had converted a narrow complaint into the defining issue of his own campaign.
“I think he is overreacting, especially if he believes he has a strong defense to the complaint,” Zeigler said. “He is going to make this into the biggest issue in the campaign. He may very well take a brief minor issue and turn it into an elongated major issue and that’s not good.”
He added a barbed suggestion that Peavy might have been better advised to hire the legal team that had recently won an acquittal for HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy — a reference every politically attentive Alabamian would have caught in the summer of 2005.
Asked whether he was acting on behalf of one of Peavy’s rivals, Zeigler called the suggestion laughable. “I’ve been filing taxpayer lawsuits and ethics complaints for more than a quarter of a century,” he said. “I’m a taxpayer advocate and I’ve been one for a long, long time.”
The Underlying Allegations
The complaint concerned an emergency repair to the Bolton Branch drainage canal on Azalea Road, damaged by heavy spring rains. On April 5, 2005, the Mobile City Council approved a $424,755 emergency contract with Construction Labor Services. CLS then subcontracted 62 percent of the work — $266,306.25 — to Grady Dortch & Sons.
Zeigler alleged that Peavy and Peavy Construction helped Dortch prepare that bid and that Peavy recommended Dortch to CLS; that the subcontract exceeded the city’s standard requirement that a general contractor perform at least half the work itself; that an inspector, Tim Dixon, considered Peavy Construction the real subcontractor with Dortch serving as a front; that Peavy employees and equipment worked the job; and that the councilman’s brother and business partner, Ken Peavy, supervised on site. He further noted that council minutes recorded Peavy voting “aye” on the CLS contract.
The Statutes
The complaint rested chiefly on Section 36-25-5 of the Code of Alabama, barring use of public office for personal gain by an official, a family member, or a business with which the official is associated. It also cited Section 36-25-99(c), prohibiting votes on matters in which an official has a financial interest, and Section 41-16-6, which bars officers of municipal governing bodies from holding a beneficial interest in public contracts.
Zeigler asked the commission to open an inquiry, investigate, hold a hearing, determine whether probable cause existed, and refer the matter to Attorney General Troy King.
A Campaign Consumed
Peavy’s opponents in the Aug. 23 municipal election were former state Sen. Ann Bedsole, former City Councilwoman Bess Rich and Mobile County Commissioner Sam Jones, all four seeking to succeed Mayor Mike Dow. With less than a month to go before voters went to the polls, an ethics complaint and a defamation suit had become part of the daily texture of the race — a reminder of how quickly a municipal campaign can turn on questions of process, procurement and personal conduct.