BY PATRICK CROWLEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The infamous Gex "Jay" Williams land deal is legitimate.
His story is another story.
The Kentucky Ethics Commission last week found nothing wrong with Mr. Williams selling 10 acres of his Verona farm last year for $60,000 to one of the supporters of his congressional campaign. So why did the bipartisan commission, the body charged with keeping lawmakers in line, slap the Boone County Republican state senator around like a rented mule in its ruling on the deal?
Because it wasn't the transaction itself, but other transgressions that caused the commission to rip into him.
The commission called him "grossly negligent," said he should have been more "forthright" when questioned under oath and -- in the greatest slam any conservative like Mr. Williams can receive -- compared him to the right's political anti-Christ, the ethically tainted and morally challenged Bill Clinton.
The commission didn't mention Mr. Clinton. But it doesn't take one of Ken Starr's investigators to figure out the reference being made with this passage from the report:
"Current events make it apparent that there are some in contemporary society who do not have a high regard for the sanctity of an oath," read the order, signed by Commission Chairman Bruce Lester, a Fort Thomas Republican and the former chief justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals.
"Senator Williams appears to be among those people."
That's not spin. That's not hype. That's not a "Gex hater," the nasty nickname Mr. Williams' supporters have for anybody who has the audacity to question the senator.
That's from a group whose job it is to wade through the political cesspool and pull out the truth.
It wasn't an easy task with Mr. Williams.
In testimony he gave to the commission, Mr. Williams had a story, but he sure didn't stick to it. He basically gave two versions of how he came to file a false financial disclosure form with the commission. Here, in his own words from the report, he is "amplifying his explanation" about failing to report the land sale:
"As I go back and review this, the original financial statement, I see there are a number of corrections like where my office was and that sort of thing that I should have made at the time, but I just didn't because I just copied down things verbatim so the Sale of Properties was my mistake and I really have no explanation other than I obviously, I thought originally I had missed it.
"I was thinking about that I had just not recorded the sale of property but when I looked at this thing I realized that very clearly Sale of Properties was on the front page and I think I just must have been as I was hurrying through here saw Sole Proprietorship in my mind wrote sale of properties down here and then went on."
Geez, take a breath.
So after he goes through a rambling dissertation of how he improperly filled out the disclosure form, the commission's attorney drops a bombshell on him: Based on the handwriting it was someone else, not Mr. Williams, who filled out the form. He just signed it.
Whoops. Gotcha.
Again, the commission was adamant that Mr. Williams did not intentionally try to mislead anybody or break the legislative code of ethics. But he sure did get his stories screwed up.
And Mr. Williams' own supporters and those involved in the land deal didn't help matters much, coming off in the whole fiasco as the Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight.
In its majority opinion, the commission states that "the cooperation of some witnesses has been little short of grudging."
Mr. Lester, in a dissenting opinion on the ruling, said, "This is a gentle way of saying of what I understand as the more accurate description in that our investigating personnel were treated with disdain, almost conspiratorial in nature, hesitancy and evasiveness to a point that a clear picture of this real estate matter became heavily clouded."
Last week, when the commission met to finish its work on the case, Mr. Williams' attorney, Robert Cetrulo of Covington, called and wanted an immediate ruling.
That attempt at pressure didn't sit too well with the commission, which waited a few days before releasing the final report.
If you don't have anything to hide, why not cooperate?
If you didn't fill out the form, why testify -- under oath -- that you did?
If you are dealing with a body that has the opportunity to put some serious heat on the candidate you're supporting for Congress, why try to flex some muscle and make demands over the phone?
Yes, Mr. Williams was cleared of all charges. But the Democrats think he was wounded, and they smell blood.
Look for lots of juicy quotes from the report in press releases, speeches, statements and commercials from opponent Ken Lucas' camp in the final two weeks of what has already been a bitter, negative campaign.
Lucas' supporters bet a large part of their success on hammering Mr. Williams for a lack of integrity.
This report didn't give the Lucas campaign a smoking gun, per se.
But it got enough to make Mr. Williams look bad. And he handed it over on a big ol' silver platter.
Patrick Crowley covers Kentucky politics for the Enquirer. He can be reached at 578-5581, or (502) 875-7526 in Frankfort.
CROWLEY ARCHIVE
