MONTGOMERY, Ala.(WSFA) – After the Alabama Veterans Affairs Board voted to keep Kent Davis in his position as the state’s veterans affairs commissioner, Governor Kay Ivey used her executive authority to override the board and promptly terminated ten in October.

“I am no longer a commissioner and my life has been turned upside down, so this is not going to go away,” said former ADVA Commissioner Adm. Kent Davis.

Davis says he is now taking legal action against Ivey.

“I think I have been publicly slandered. My family was affected by this situation. “I am still recovering from stage three cancer,” Davis said.

“I explained it in great detail to the administration in writing, I think there were seven or eight different accusations,” Ivey said at last week’s Kiwanis Club meeting in Montgomery.

Davis said he agreed to resign by the end of the year, but that wasn’t good enough for the governor.

“I had an agreement to resign effective December 31st. I have done nothing to violate this. “In fact, I think the opposite is true,” he said. “I was terminated before December 31st. If that wasn’t a violation, I don’t know what was.”

The admiral also denies allegations that the governor mishandled federal grant money.

“There were some reports that we were sitting on this money for months, the problem was we were trying to be completely unethical because we literally couldn’t spend $7 million on state veterans’ homes,” Davis said.

Davis said that of all the governor’s concerns, Ivey was most upset by the ethics complaint she filed and had to file with the state.

“I prefaced this ethics complaint with a disclaimer of ‘look, I’m reluctant to do this.’ “I’m not sure if this is appropriate, but it’s your job to investigate,” he said. “As an ethics commission in black and white, thank you for understanding your obligation to report this to us,” he said.

Ethics complaints are generally kept confidential, so the nature of the complaint filed by Davis was not made public.

WSFA 12 News has learned the complaint was filed in response to actions taken by the state mental health department. However, the state ethics commission ultimately found that there was no ethics violation.

WSFA reached out to Ivey’s office for reaction to Davis’ planned legal action and other concerns. A spokesperson for the governor said: “Governor Ivey has spoken at length about the case against Mr. Davis, so they are choosing not to discuss the concerns further at this point.”

While Davis said Ivey had not contacted him about his dismissal and learned of it from third parties, Ivey’s office said: “We made numerous efforts to contact him and follow through, but he did not respond.”

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