Kentucky War Journal

          The Kent Downey scandal involved prostitution, gambling, misuse of state resources. [Drinking on the job. Downey put strip-club employees on the payroll. One woman named two legislators with whom she said she’d had sex, and another woman named a third legislator as a sex partner. Sexual harassment. Illegal campaign work. Link.]

         Kent Downey rented a house in Frankfort for himself and several state legislators to use:

Investigators also are showing an interest in a house where several legislators, including House Majority Leader Greg Stumbo, stayed during the General Assembly session.

Downey signed the contract on the house, paid the deposit and wrote the rent checks. Stumbo said he and the other legislators reimbursed Downey.

“Kent wrote the checks to the landlord, and we would write checks to Kent to pay our share of the rent,” Stumbo said.

The landlord, Danny McCord of Fleming County, said an investigator from Attorney General Ben Chandler’s office called him recently and asked whether he rented the house to Downey and whether he was aware of parties there. But McCord said he knew of no problems with parties at the four-bedroom house on a winding road along a big bend in the Kentucky River. Smith said Thursday that Downey handled rent money for the lawmakers “simply because he was a friend.”

Stumbo said the others who rented the house were Rep. Mike Bowling, D-Middlesboro; Rep. Harry Moberly, D-Richmond; Rep. Joe Barrows, D-Versailles; Parole Board member Homer Shumate; and Jerry Johnson, a member of Gov. Paul Patton’s staff.

(Frank Main, “Sex tale tarnishes Frankfort,” The Kentucky Post, October 25, 1996.)

         Joe Barrows and Greg Stumbo were good friends with Kent Downey.  Barrows and Stumbo were both members of the LRC, made up of 16 General Assembly members.  However, Barrows and Stumbo did not recuse themselves when three LRC employees made complaints about Downey.  In fact, it was later discovered that Barrows was acting as Downey’s attorney—even after investigators started looking into whether Downey had used LRC resources to illegally do campaign work for Barrows’ re-election campaign.  (Barrows should have also stopped serving as Downey’s attorney.)

         Instead of doing the right thing, Stumbo came out and supported Kent Downey:

Downey’s defenders include House Majority Leader Greg Stumbo of Prestonsburg, one of the legislators who shared the rental house.

“I haven’t seen any evidence, any credible evidence, that Kent Downey has committed any type of criminal act,” Stumbo said. “Kent Downey may have exercised some bad judgment. You could even debate that. By the fact that someone may have worked at a nightclub, does that mean they shouldn’t be able to fill out page certificates? … I think we owe Kent Downey the privilege of telling his side of the story.”

(Charles Wolfe, “Downey fired amid golf-outing flap,” The Kentucky Post, November 21, 1996.)

         Even after Downey was convicted, Stumbo stood by him:

Downey, who was fired after the raid, had influential friends in the legislature. Two wrote letters urging a lenient sentence for him.

House Majority Leader Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Mike Bowling, D-Middlesboro, said Downey had been a dedicated employee who should be judged on his whole life, not just one or two mistakes.

(Bill Estep and Jack Brammer, “Downey Spared Prison Sentence,” Lexington Herald-Leader, August 20, 1998.)

         Stumbo is the reason no changes have been made to the LRC since the Kent Downey scandal.  It should be no surprise that the sexual harassment and hostile climate remains, as evidenced by the recent $400,000 settlement to settle the latest round of harassment suits:

FRANKFORT — The Kentucky legislature will pay $400,000 to settle sexual harassment and hostile workplace lawsuits filed in 2013 by three female employees who complained of lewd behavior by lawmakers, their attorney said Thursday.

The settlements — which have not been filed yet in Franklin Circuit Court — end a statehouse scandal that embarrassed House Democrats and brought the resignations of Rep. John Arnold, D-Sturgis, who was accused of stalking and unwanted touching, and longtime Legislative Research Commission executive director Bobby Sherman.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think (lawmakers) have learned anything from all this,” said Thomas E. Clay, who represents the legislative staffers.

“I think they were only motivated to settle because they were getting very nervous about areas of political sensitivity we were entering into during the discovery process, with depositions and that sort of thing,” Clay said. “I’m getting information that suggests this sort of behavior unfortunately still goes on at the legislature.”

House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday evening. Internal documents uncovered by the lawsuits revealed Stumbo and other House Democratic leaders were told about the women’s sexual harassment complaints and Sherman’s ultimately futile attempts to privately resolve them before they were made public.

(John Cheves, “Attorney: Kentucky legislature paying $400,000 to settle sexual harassment lawsuits,” Lexington Herald-Leader, July 23, 2015.)