Local candidate wants Hamilton probe expanded

By: JEFF E. SCHAPIRO AND OLYMPIA MEOLA TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERS | Times-Dispatch
Published: August 26, 2009

The money-for-a-job controversy engulfing powerful Del. Phillip A. Hamilton, R-Newport News, is creeping into a Richmond-area legislative race.

In addition to demanding that the vice-chairman of the House Appropriations Committee resign, Democrat James Towey wants an investigation of Hamilton's conduct expanded to include the delegate's past dealings with Towey's former employer, the State Crime Commission.

Towey is challenging Del. William R. Janis, R-Henrico.

This week, Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, asked the House Ethics Advisory Panel to investigate Hamilton for a possible violation of the state's Conflict of Interest Act.

Towey, former director of the State Crime Commission, said he thinks Hamilton tried to dismantle staff for the panel after Hamilton's wife, Kim, left her post as its executive director in 2006. Towey amassed more than 100 pages of e-mails and documents that he believes illustrate Hamilton's perceived hostility for the commission.

The collection includes an e-mail from Hamilton to a staff member at another legislative agency, the Joint Commission on Health Care, in which he says he hopes two staffers from the crime commission would be hired by the health panel.

In a letter responding to Towey's claims, Hamilton wrote today that "Any employees that left the crime commission did so voluntarily. The JCHC director was never directed by me or anyone else 'to hire away employees from the crime commission.' The JCHC director hired highly qualified staff from individuals who were interested in working in a better work environment and who were interested in working on health-care issues . . . "

" . . . I was not responsible for the low morale at the crime commission. That was the result of poor leadership by you."

Towey also is calling for an ethics investigation to include any actions by legislators to suppress release of, or to conceal the issue he is raising.

Towey said that more than a year and a half ago he alerted House leaders to his concerns about Hamilton. But, "What happened next? Nothing."

G. Paul Nardo, chief of staff to Howell, had no immediate comment.