What did Kentucky get for Bevin’s $600,000+ contract to investigate Steve Beshear?

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration has paid an Indianapolis law firm at least $600,000 to investigate former Gov. Steve Beshear’s administration but refuses to release what it got for the money.

Kentucky paid Taft Stettinius and Hollister $601,765.26 from Sept. 20, 2016, to Sept. 11, 2019, for “legal and investigative services,” according to information obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader through an Open Records Act request to the state Finance and Administration Cabinet.

The newspaper also asked for any and all reports the state has received from the firm but received nothing beyond a 16-page report from the firm in January 2017.

At that time, the state had spent $141,649.07 with the Indianapolis law firm under the 2016 contract that initially called for up to $500,000 to be spent. That contract was renewed in mid-2018 for another $500,000 and two more years.

Since the first report from the firm, the state has paid it $460,116.19, but it has not released any more reports.

Crystal Staley, a spokeswoman for Gov.-elect Andy Beshear, who has been Kentucky’s attorney general for the last four years and is the son of forrmer Gov. Steve Beshear, said the new governor “will be reviewing this and other issues” when he is sworn into office Dec. 10.

The January 2017 report said state employees in the Steve Beshear administration were pressured to donate to the 2015 campaigns of Jack Conway for governor, Andy Beshear for attorney general, the Kentucky Democratic Party and the Capitol Club (which raised money for Democrats from state employees in the Frankfort area) with the threat of losing their jobs.

The report listed anonymous statements from 16 non-merit employees from six cabinets in the Beshear Administration. It, in large part, contained information that already had been in the news and led to several fines and reprimands from the Executive Branch Ethics Commission.

In May of this year, Pamela Trautner, a spokeswoman for the Finance Cabinet, told the Herald-Leader that a draft report from the law firm “with additional findings is in progress but its release has been impeded by the refusal of former Beshear employees to comply with subpoenas from the firm.”

That sparked questions about whether Bevin had any information that could affect the gubernatorial campaign of Andy Beshear.

Nothing materialized publicly. On primary election night in May, the Republican governor told reporters he didn’t know what they were talking about when asked about the state contract to investigate alleged wrongdoing in the Steve Beshear administration.

Beshear won the Nov. 5 election against Bevin.

The Herald-Leader inquired about the status of the firm’s expected draft report earlier this fall but was told by Trautner on Nov. 1 that any documents concerning the firm’s work for the state were preliminary. She would not say whether any report from the firm has been handed over to any investigative agency.

Both Steve and Andy Beshear have criticized the contract. Marisa McNee, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Democratic Party, said this week that it had no comment about it at this time.

Bevin launched a political feud with Attorney General Beshear when he announced on April 19, 2016, he would hire the outside law firm to investigate his predecessor’s administration.

That was the same day the personnel cabinet secretary from Steve Beshear’s administration, Tim Longmeyer, pleaded guilty to soliciting more than $200,000 political bribes for state businesses. Longmeyer also had been Andy Beshear’s top deputy in the attorney general’s office.

The Finance Cabinet has said the Indianapolis law firm has worked on Finance Secretary William Landrum’s efforts to subpoena former Beshear administration official Frank Lassiter in an investigation of contracts awarded to a computer company that Lassiter went to work for after leaving the Beshear Administration.

Last November, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled that the Finance Cabinet has the power to issue a subpoena to Lassiter to compel him to provide information as part of its investigation of contracts awarded in the Beshear administration.

Lassiter’s attorney, J. Guthrie True, said Lassiter has appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court.

Trautner said this week that the state’s litigation involving Lassiter was slowed by its inability to secure needed information. She did not elaborate.