Hampton, Bevin fail to settle her lawsuit against him. Judge will now decide.
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin and Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton have not been able to resolve outside the courtroom her lawsuit claiming his administration had no authority to dismiss two of her three staffers.
The decision now lies in the hands of Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd.
Shepherd directed on Aug. 19 the governor and lieutenant governor or their designees to work out their differences.
Attorneys for the state’s top two elected officials notified the court in a joint status report last week that “representatives of both parties have met and conferred about this matter and that no settlement was reached.”
Both Steve Pitt, general counsel for Bevin, and Joshua Harp of Frankfort, attorney for Hampton, declined Tuesday to comment on the negotiations.
They both said the judge now will have to rule on her lawsuit.
In a 12-page suit Hampton filed last month against Bevin and the Personnel Cabinet, Hampton asked the court to declare that she — as a constitutionally elected officer of the state — is empowered by the law to appoint staff to her office and to block the governor from interfering with her appointment power.
Pitt has argued that the lieutenant governor does not have that power. He has based much of his argument on the 1992 constitutional amendment that allowed governors to seek a second, consecutive term and required them to run with a running mate instead of individually.
Harp argues that Hampton is a constitutionally elected officer in her own right and has the authority to hire and fire her staff.
The Bevin administration fired Hampton’s chief of staff, Steve Knipper, in January for refusing to follow its policy of leaving state government when he decided to run in May’s Republican primary election for secretary of state. He was unsuccessful in the election.
The Bevin administration then fired Adrienne Southworth, Hampton’s deputy chief of staff, in May. Southworth said she didn’t know why she was fired, but she had been investigating Knipper’s dismissal.
Knipper and Southworth have appealed their dismissals to the Personnel Board, which is to take up their cases Sept. 13..
Bevin’s chief of staff, Blake Brickman, has said he authorized Southworth’s dismissal for “remarkably poor judgment in a number of ways.”
Bevin and Hampton have been at odds since January when he chose state Sen. Ralph Alvarado of Winchester, instead of her, to be his running mate in his re-election bid this year.
This story was originally published September 3, 2019 at 5:18 PM.
