FAIRHOPE, Ala. - New provisions of the state ethics law passed by the legislature in December will not apply to any investigation of state Sen. Trip Pittman for an ethics complaint filed against him last year, according to the director of the Alabama Ethics Commission.

“Those provisions would only apply to cases where the complaint was filed after the law was enacted,” James Sumner, ethics commission director, said Monday. “They would not apply retroactively to something that was filed last year. They would only apply to cases filed after Jan. 1.”

The new provisions include subpoena power and the requirement that probable cause against an individual must be determined by the ethics commission within 180 days of the filing of a complaint.

“We would not be able to use subpoenas, and we would not be limited to the 180 days either,” Sumner said.

Fairhope resident Paul Ripp filed an initial complaint against Pittman on Sept. 27.

The complaint stems from a contract awarded last June by the Fairhope City Council to Pittman’s company, Pittman Tractor, for oil spill response work after Pittman had been chosen by former Gov. Bob Riley to help oversee the division of BP funding awarded to Baldwin County, according to published reports.

Ripp sent a separate 130-page document with additional allegations Jan. 16, but Sumner said that filing would be considered a supplement to the initial complaint and not treated as a new complaint filed after the new provisions were enacted.

The ethics law prohibits the use of an elected official’s position or office for personal gain, one of the provisions possibly applicable in the ethics commmission’s consideration of Ripp’s complaint.

“After we have a complaint, we conduct a preliminary inquiry,” Sumner said. “And if I determine that it should go to the commission, we do a full-blown investigation. That case is then presented to the commission, and they vote on whether or not there is probable cause.”

Sumner said if a case gets beyond the preliminary inquiry stage, the individual would be notified that an investigation was underway.

“We turn it over to over (to the attorney general or district attorney) once we have a finding of probable cause,” he said. “In a case like that involving a state elected official, we would hand it off to the attorney general.”

Sumner would not comment on whether an investigation had moved beyond a preliminary stage in Pittman’s case.

And Pittman would neither confirm nor deny whether he had received notice that an investigation had been undertaken based on the Ripp complaint.

But Pittman did say this week he was prepared for that possibility.

“I look forward to working with the ethics commission so they can investigate and dismiss this baseless complaint, and we can all turn our attention to solving the serious problems and challenges that face Alabama,” Pittman said Monday.

Sumner said there is no rule of thumb for how long an investigation can take after an ethics complaint has been filed before it is presented to the ethics commission.

“Some cases move very quickly and are very simple, and we can do them in a matter of weeks,” Sumner said. “Some cases might take a long time. We had a case on a state senator some years ago that took us about a year and a half.”

Download the entire text of the ethics complaint at www.baldwinwatchdog.com.