KyKurmudgeon

Every scandal deserves its own name, a la the FBI’s Operation BOPTROT investigation that snared legislators and lobbyists in the early 1990s or former Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s BlackBerry Jam hiring mess.

Frankfort’s current scandal also stems from the Fletcher administration. An FBI investigation of Transportation Cabinet activity during Fletcher’s one term in office has led to the indictment of former cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert, road contractor Leonard Lawson and Brian Billings, one of Lawson’s employees.

According to the indictments, former cabinet official James Rummage obtained confidential cost estimates for proposed road projects and provided them to Lawson either directly or through Nighbert. The indictments allege that Lawson gave Rummage a total of $20,000 in cash and funneled money to Nighbert through an Eastern Kentucky utility management company.

So, what to name this scandal? Well, a phrase Herald-Leader contributing columnist Larry Webster used in a recent column about the investigation seems to have caught on with some folks in Frankfort. Webster opened that column by saying, “The phrase ‘rummage sale’ takes on new meaning.” Now, I’m hearing Capitol hallway references to the scandal being a “Rummage Sale.”

Sounds highly appropriate to me. Anyone have any better ideas?

Sunday’s column:

This and that as the roars of the convention crowds fade:

For months, the rumors persisted: A federal grand jury investigating Transportation Cabinet activity during former Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s administration would issue indictments soon.

But the rumored date of jury action kept getting pushed back. From June to early July. From early July to the first week of August. From the first week of August to early September.

Wednesday, the rumor became reality when the grand jury issued a 22-page indictment accusing former Transportation Cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert, highway contractor Leonard Lawson and Brian Billings, one of Lawson’s employees, of conspiring with “others, known and unknown” to commit a variety of crimes related to an alleged bid-rigging scheme.

Other than adding Billings’ name to the discussion and providing several excerpts from taped phone conversations between Lawson and former cabinet official James Rummage, who is cooperating with the investigation, the indictment didn’t advance public knowledge about the case beyond what was contained in an affidavit the FBI filed in federal court last month to obtain a search warrant.

The gist of the case is relatively simple. Nighbert allegedly had Rummage obtain the cabinet’s confidential estimates of proposed road projects’ cost and give the estimates either to Lawson directly or to Nighbert, who then gave them to Lawson.

In return, Lawson allegedly gave Rummage a total of $20,000 in cash and funneled a total of more than $67,000 to Nighbert through an Eastern Kentucky utilities management company.

According to the indictment, the obstruction of justice charges stemmed from alleged efforts by Lawson, Billings and Nighbert to influence what information Rummage provided to investigators.

Attorneys for the three men professed their clients’ innocence. And Howard Mann, Nighbert’s attorney, indicated that one line of defense will be to attack the credibility of Rummage, who “admitted lying on multiple occasions.”

According to the indictment and the earlier affidavit, Rummage acknowledged lying to representatives from the cabinet’s inspector general’s office and initially to FBI investigators. Later, he retracted those statements and agreed to cooperate. So, jurors may not find him to be the most credible of witnesses.

Prosecutors obviously have tapes of a number of Rummage’s telephone conversations. And the wording of the indictment suggests meetings that Rummage had with Billings were conducted under surveillance.

Still, with Rummage’s credibility subject to attack, it seems to these lay eyes that the prosecution’s case could be helped greatly if some of those other “known” conspirators agree to testify.

                                                             * * *

Two months ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s approval ratings in a SurveyUSA poll of Kentuckians stood at 57 percent.

In the SurveyUSA poll released last week, his approval rating had dropped to 44 percent. Worse for him, his disapproval rating was at 47 percent.

Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford’s campaign to unseat McConnell has been less than awe-inspiring. But with McConnell favorables dropping so precipitously in two months, the multimillionaire Louisville businessman may still have a chance to make this a real race.

Gov. Steve Beshear issued the following statement Monday concerning the FBI investigation of Transportation Cabinet activity during former Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration:

"We have been and will continue to cooperate fully with the federal investigation into allegations of impropriety at the Transportation Cabinet during the previous administration. I was elected to create a culture of integrity at the cabinet and throughout state government and we are making substantive progress toward that goal. Our full cooperation with this investigation from the beginning has been an important part of that process."

Sure, the statement may have given the current administration a bit more credit than it deserves in regard to this probe. But that's what politicians do; they seize opportunities to make themselves look good. So, if Beshear was indeed being opportunistic, I'm not going to gig him much for it.

Besides, this investigation offers Beshear another opportunity he should seize as quickly as possible. If he and his aides are serious about cleaning up state government, particularly the Transportation Cabinet, the allegations of bribery and corruption contained in an affidavit filed in federal court by Special Agent Clay Mason should create the perfect political climate for doing so.

In the early 1990s, the Operation BOPTROT scandal created the climate for putting some distance between lawmakers and lobbyists who had developed a far too cozy relationship. Similarly, this brewing scandal should create a climate for ending the often too cozy relationship between Transportation Cabinet officials and road contractors.

Certainly, neither contractors nor cabinet officials would be inclined during the midst of an FBI investigation to draw attention to themselves by sticking their heads up and complaining about efforts to improve the integrity of the contracting process.

So, whatever the Beshear folks have in mind for cleansing the cabinet and making the road contracting process less political and more competitive, this is the time for them to seize the day.

I'm still filling in for absent H-L editorial board colleagues, but an opinionated old so-and-so such as me can't keep quiet when something as interesting as the latest news from the FBI investigation of the Transportation Cabinet comes along. So, a few initial thoughts on the subject:

The affidavit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in London by FBI Special Agent Clay Mason confirmed a rumor members of the media had been hearing for at least a couple of months - that former Transportation Cabinet official James Rummage had admitted taking $20,000 from highway contractor Leonard Lawson in exchange for supplying Lawson with engineers' estimates for road projects. The same rumor had Rummage, who was known to be cooperating with the investigation, implicating former cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert in the scheme. For once, a juicy rumor turned out to be true.

Mason's affidavit says he started investigating the cabinet in July 2007 but the information about Rummage didn't surface until after the November election. That information "shifted the focus" of the FBI investigation, according to the affidavit. So, what was being investigated before the change of focus? Well, former cabinet official Sam Beverage's allegations about corruption in the Fletcher administration, including using road projects as rewards for political favors, became public in late June 2007 as part of a plea deal he made to get a perjury charge reduced to official misconduct. Whether that was indeed the impetus for launching the FBI investigation, the timing coincides.

My colleagues who have covered federal probes such as this one say it is at least a bit unusual for a document such as Mason's affidavit to become a matter of public record at this stage of an investigation. That begs the question: What do prosecutors and the FBI hope to achieve by getting such juicy details out in the open now?

Another question raised by the disclosures is this: What excuse will Fletcherites come up with to rationalize this latest scandal? "Partisan political witch hunt" won't cut it this time, not when the U.S. attorney was appointed by a Republican president.