“Bettye Fine Collins is looking at the governor to be the savior of Jefferson County and resolve all these problems and here comes a knock on the door from the Sheriff and Rob Riley about a contract. What kind of position is she in? I’m not going to speak for the governor but it would cloud my decisions if I had children on the payroll of the county where I was supposed to be figuring out whether they were going to go bankrupt or not. It would cloud my judgment.”

These were the words of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Johnson on a Birmingham talk radio show last week. Johnson worked for Gov. Bob Riley when he was in Congress and was Riley’s director of the state’s Department of Economic and Community Affairs. He resigned from the governor’s cabinet a few months ago to comply with Riley’s directive to either leave or announce that he would not be a candidate for governor. Johnson’s wife remains of the state payroll.

So, what is Johnson, the former Bob Riley crony, talking about?

He’s talking about the fact that Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale dumped his former law firm in January and has hired the governor’s son, Rob, to represent the sheriff’s office under a one-year contract, now totaling $900,000, as reported in The Birmingham News.

The WAPI talk show host, Matt Murphy, then proceeded to talk about Riley’s son-in-law, Rob Campbell, a shareholder at the Bradley Arant law firm in Birmingham. “Wouldn’t that perhaps also be a conflict?” he asked Johnson.

“As I said with regard to Rob, I believe my judgment would be clouded if I had children or family on the payroll. And one of the first things they did when he took over as the lead negotiator the county then hired Bradley Arant to be the law firm in charge of the bankruptcy.”

The Montgomery Independent reported in August that Riley has paid Bradley Arant at least $650,000 to advise a “task force on gambling” the governor created earlier this year.

We had previously reported in March that Bradley Arant’s legal fees for representing the state of Alabama increased almost 460 fold under the Riley administration.

Riley took office in January 2003, and Bradley Arant re-hired the new governor’s son-in-law nine months after the inauguration. Rob Campbell is married to Minda Riley Campbell, the governor’s daughter.

It is no secret that Riley’s election has paid huge dividends for both the law firm and his family.

Based on numbers from the Alabama Comptroller’s Office, Bradley Arant received $7,264 for legal services from the state in the four years before Riley took office. As of mid-March this year, the firm had received $3,339,258.77 for legal services since Riley took office.

We are currently in the process of taking a look at several other matters with regard to Riley family members and friends on the receiving end of the state’s largess.

Holmes’ committee wants contract

information

The Riley administration has already awarded a $6 million computer services contract to a company nobody seems to know anything about and now wants another $7 million to pay the same corporation, which lists its company headquarters as a residence outside Washington D.C., doesn’t have a phone number and obviously works almost in secret.

In fact, it appears the only way state officials can contact the company is via the cell phone of the person who signed on as its president.

I reported a few weeks back that State Rep. Alvin Holmes D-Montgomery, the chair of the Legislature’s Contract Review Committee, has also become suspicious and is asking Gov. Riley not to sign the new contract for $7 million with Paragon Source LLC. He said he will ask the oversight committee, of which he is chairman, to subpoena records to determine who has been paid from the contract.

Now Holmes wants the officers of the company to appear at the committee’s next meeting on Oct. 7 to answer questions and has reminded them the committee does have subpoena power.

A capitol observer told me last week: “The Siegelman administration couldn’t hold a candle to this stuff like this.”

Bob Martin is editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent. E-mail him at: bob@montgomeryindependent.com