Joseph Gerth, and Tom Loftus

The Courier-Journal

A Democratic state legislator alleges Gov. Matt Bevin left a message threatening him and his district on his voicemail one day after he refused to change parties.

In the message, a copy of which was obtained by the Courier-Journal late Monday, Bevin told state Rep. Russ Meyer that he disagreed with his “decisions” and said he needed to understand how they will impact “you, your seat, your district.”

A month and a half after Bevin made the phone call, Meyer said he learned that the administration had canceled an $11.2 million transportation project that he said is crucial to his district — a move Meyer said is “absolutely” payback for his refusal to change parties.

The project was not formally stopped until March 24.

Bevin spokeswoman Jessica Ditto charged Monday night, after being presented with a transcript of the phone call, that it was Meyer who was motivated by politics when he made the allegations about the recording.

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And she blamed the cancellation of the Jessamine County transportation project on the administration of former Gov. Steve Beshear, saying it rushed the project before the state had secured the land to build it.

Bevin made the call to Meyer at a time when Republicans were furiously trying to recruit party-switchers in the House following the November election that saw the GOP make great strides. Meyer was a top target because he represents a district that votes heavily Republican.

“I want to make sure you understand, uh, where, where things are in my mind and the decisions that I’m going to make, uh, in the days ahead, the weeks ahead, months ahead,” Bevin said on the recording. “I want you to be very aware of what the impact of those decisions will be as it relates to you, your seat, your district, etc., uh, just so that we have all the cards on the table.”

He’s the second Democratic lawmaker who has accused Bevin of using undue influence in efforts to entice them to switch parties. In July, Rep. Kevin Sinnette, of Ashland, told CNHI News that Bevin had bullied him about the same time.

Sinnette told the newspaper company that Bevin told him during a meeting at the Governor’s Mansion, “If you don’t (switch), I’ll do everything in my power to get you beat and take you down.”

Bevin, at the time, denied he brought any pressure on Sinnette and said the report was “malarkey.”

“The reality is that people lie about things… I absolutely, categorically deny every bit of that drivel. It was partisan. It was pathetic,” Bevin said.

If true, the Meyer allegations could be more politically harmful. That’s because the state was forced to pay $625,000 to The Allen Company, which won the contract to build the East Brannon Road extension project in Meyer's district, when the project didn’t start on time.

If work on the project doesn’t start by May 1, 2017, the state must pay The Allen Company an additional $850,000. Supporters say the project will provide badly needed relief for traffic congestion in northern Jessamine County and southern Fayette County and trigger commercial and residential development in the area.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo on Tuesday called for federal and state investigations into the allegations that Bevin killed the project to punish Meyer.

And, Stumbo said, if it’s determined that Bevin did so, the House would consider bringing articles of impeachment against him.

In a statement, Bevin's office called Stumbo's threat of impeachment "a desperate political stunt ... Speaker Stumbo’s threats to impeach Gov. Bevin over a delayed road project in Jessamine County are ridiculous."

Asa James Swan, chief of staff for the Bevin Transportation Cabinet, said in an interview Monday that any allegation of political retribution is false. He and Transportation Secretary Greg Thomas said politics played no role in the fact that the project hasn’t been started and has been placed on hold with other pending projects until next year, when they will compete against each other for limited road funding.

He said the cabinet worked diligently to get the project moving and avoid any damages payment. But he said the state was so far from obtaining the right to enter the land when Bevin took office Dec. 8 that “there was no way we could have made" a contractual March 15 deadline for starting construction.

“The real story is why was the Beshear administration rushing this project?” Swan said. He added that Allen Company representatives visited cabinet offices on Dec. 7 to obtain required signatures of some officials on the contract before the Beshear administration ended at midnight.

“Whatever it is they were up to, that’s what they’re trying to cover, I think, by this Russ Meyer story," Swan said.

In a statement released Tuesday, Beshear blamed the damages payment and delay on the Bevin administration. “The few remaining right-of-way and utility issues could be managed alongside the beginning of actual construction and therefore speed up a partial solution to the traffic nightmare in that area..." Beshear said. "There was no legitimate reason for the Bevin administration to halt the project and pay the contractor hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in damages."

Mike Hancock, who was Beshear’s Transportation secretary and remained in that post under Bevin until early March, said it is unusual to put a contract to bid before the property issues have been resolved. But Hancock said it is not unheard of and he would not have done so in this case unless he was confident the deadline for starting work could be met.

Hancock did not dispute that the project was expedited so it could be awarded before Beshear left office. But he insisted, “I don’t believe it was irresponsibly rushed. We had information that led us to believe the right-of-way would be clear within a specified period of time and we were confident in that... If I didn’t have full confidence in my staff’s report or recommendations at that time, I assure you we would not have let it. I wouldn’t have done that.”

Meyer said one project to build an 185,000-square-foot long-term care facility has already been canceled because the East Brannon Road project was delayed, costing his district 90 high-paying jobs.

“I just feel like the people are getting left out,” he said. “We’re sent to Frankfort to stand up for our people and that’s what I intend to do and it doesn’t bother me if I have to stand up to the governor of Kentucky or I have to stand up to my own party.”

Bevin has denied that he bullied Meyer since Saturday, when CNHI ran a story online in which Meyer, without mentioning the voicemail, said Blake Brickman, the governor’s chief of staff, had threatened to “punish him politically” after he rebuffed the governor.

On Monday morning, Bevin called that claim “baloney.”

In a telephone interview Monday, Meyer confirmed that he had, indeed, received the call from Bevin two days after he met with Bevin in the Governor’s Mansion – and just nine days after Bevin was sworn into office.

The next day, according to CNHI, Meyer told Brickman that he wouldn’t be changing parties but that he wanted to work with the administration because that’s what people in his district expected of him. He said Brickman responded by calling him an “Obama-loving baby killer.” Meyer opposes abortion rights.

Brickman denied the allegations Monday, particularly the claim that the cancellation of the road project was politically motivated. “Russ Meyer’s uncorroborated allegation is completely untrue and absurd, especially considering his district is also represented by a Republican state senator and Republican county judge-executive,” Brickman said in a statement.

In the voicemail, Bevin didn’t say anything about Meyer changing parties and doesn’t mention the project but said that that he was disappointed in what he had been hearing following an earlier conversation between the two men.

Meyer said he took that to mean that Bevin would punish him and his district because of his decision.

“That’s the way it was said. That’s the way I took it. It’s the way anybody would take it,” he said.

And he said he believes the cancellation of the road project is evidence that the governor was following through with a threat.

“It was clear after the Blake Brickman conversation, and it was very clear after the governor left the message, what I was up against,” he said.

Asked directly if he believed the cancellation of the project was “payback,” Meyer said, “I feel like it speaks for itself. Yes. Absolutely.”

Presented with the transcript, Ditto said the voice message was “polite and personal” and said Meyer was attempting to “misconstrue the conversations that he initiated” and that doing so “is a discredit to the office he holds.”

“Rep. Meyer was worried about the governor supporting a Republican opponent against him this year and expressed an interest in changing parties because Jessamine County is now a Republican county and trending more so,” she said.

Meyer shot back, saying that Bevin needs to stop playing politics with vital projects.

“The governor says he doesn’t play politics, yet he canceled a road project that’s badly needed because of politics," he said in a statement. "The governor says he wants to create jobs; if he let the contract, he would create hundreds of jobs in the construction of a badly needed road. The governor says he doesn’t want to waste taxpayer money, yet he paid a contractor $625,000 to do nothing.”

Reporter Joseph Gerth can be reached at (502) 582-4702. Reporter Thomas Loftus can be reached at (502) 875-5136.