Pay rising rapidly at AG’s office

By By Bob Martin, The Alabama Scene
A couple of weeks back we learned that Attorney General Troy King is the second-highest paid attorney general of any state in the union, just behind California AG Jerry Brown. Brown, a former two-term governor of that state, earns $184,301. King’s annual salary is $163,744.
I have often advocated paying our legislators $150,000 annually, making them fulltime officials, and not allowing them to earn any outside income other than investments. I know many will disagree, but I do not have a problem with paying the state’s chief legal officer at King’s current level. He doesn’t set his pay, the legislature does, and a long time back lawmakers tied his salary to the pay of an associate justice of the State Supreme Court.
However, since that happened, the pay of the justices has changed significantly. Perhaps the legislature should re-look at the attorney general’s pay and untie it from the salaries of the high court justices.
What I do have a problem with is the swift rise in the pay of a young assistant in the AG’s office, who may not even be qualified for the positions to which Atty. Gen. King has appointed him. That person, J. W. Godwin, is a recent graduate of Troy State University where he was Homecoming King in 2006-07.
During just over a short time in the AG’s office he moved upward from an unpaid intern last summer while he was still a student, to a $10 per hour flunkey, to a $39,456-a-year Special Administrative Assistant, to a $57,504-per-year Executive Assistant. Between the last two positions, he graduated from Troy with a degree in broadcast journalism.
King’s spokesman Chris Bence says of Godwin: “He is an exceptional young man who is the chief aide to the attorney general and who is almost indispensable in terms of the many functions he carries out.” Bence said Godwin’s duties include policy research and constituent relations, and he serves as a liaison between the attorney general and the staff. He said Godwin travels with King as part of his duties, such as accompanying him to this years’ National Association of Attorneys General Conference.
Godwin, 24, replaces Kenneth Steely, an attorney. At the time, Steely held the same job Godwin holds now, he was earning $67,000 a year, Bence said. Steely took a leave of absence from the attorney generals office in 2006 to run King’s campaign and ten days after King’s election, was re-employed as a deputy attorney general at a salary of $95,941. Steely left for private practice a year later. Just recently the attorney general hired him as a contract lawyer to work on a lawsuit challenging the Department of Interior’s right to force Gov. Riley into negotiations over a gambling compact with the Poarch Creek Indians.
Bence has also been the recipient of King’s generosity. He was recently classified as a “paralegal” by King, which allowed his pay to be increased by the attorney general from $94,000 annually to $104,400.
Juror e-mails remain issue
The issue of juror e-mails in the trial of Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy has once again arisen. A federal appeals court in Atlanta has been asked by Scrushy’s lawyers to name a special master to investigate e-mails allegedly sent between two jurors in the trial.
According to court records one e-mail read: “ Gov &pastor up s—- creek. good thing no one likes them anyway. all public officials r scum; espically this 1. pastor is reall a piece of work.” Another alleged e-mail indicated jurors were doing research on their own, in violation of the judge’s orders Scrushy’s attorneys asked the appeals court to hold hearings and determine the source and authenticity of the purported juror e-mails, contending they could be grounds for a mistrial.
The motion comes after a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) disclosure concerning the e-mails. The DOJ acknowledged that the Siegelman and Scrushy defense team was not informed when the trial judge was told that postal inspectors, investigating at the behest of the U. S. Attorney, determined the e-mails were bogus.
The DOJ wrote that while Siegelman’s mistrial proceedings were pending, acting U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin asked U.S. postal inspectors to try to determine who sent the e-mails through the mail to defense attorneys. U.S. Marshals later informed Fuller that the inspectors concluded the e-mails were fakes, but that information was never shared with the defense lawyers.