RNC product testing a new tactic in Kentucky?
Gov. Ernie Fletcher tried to persuade Attorney General Greg Stumbo to dissolve the special grand jury investigating whether officials broke civil service hiring laws, according to a memo released yesterday.
In the July 5 memo from Fletcher general counsel Jim Deckard to Stumbo, the governor agreed to “suggest that mistakes may have been made” in filling state jobs that merit laws are designed to insulate from politics.
And he would take “appropriate personnel actions” against employees found to “have exercised less than good judgment.”
Deckard said yesterday that Stumbo agreed to terms of the memo during a meeting over the July 4 weekend, but Stumbo disputed that.
The memo details how Fletcher would appear before the grand jury — not under oath and with a lawyer — to report on “new policies” regarding the hiring of civil service workers.
But Fletcher asked that the special grand jury not issue a report detailing evidence it had reviewed, and that no future grand jury take up matters already under investigation, according to the memo.
Stumbo was out of state yesterday and did not return calls. But he said in a telephone interview Sunday that the written memo “was hogwash. I wouldn’t sign it.”
I guess they’d call it the McConnell <$NoAd$>plan?
