But while I appreciate the attention to the issue, I am disappointed that neither I nor my office was contacted to respond to false allegations contained in the article.
It quotes Jessamine County Attorney Brian Goettl, the owner and operator of a conservative blog, who implies that the reduction in prosecutors' budgets was due, in part, to my lack of attention to this matter with legislators.
You may read Conway's entire whinefest here.
What appears below is Goettl's response to Conway, which the Herald-Leader now refuses to print:
In response to AG Conway’s recent guest opinion in the April 28th, 2008 Lexington Herald-Leader, let me provide your readers with some facts regarding the budget process, and why I vocalized my criticism of General Conway. On March 11th, Assistant Attorney General Janet Graham sent out the following e-mail:
Hi folks, we have representatives from the County Attorneys Association and the Commonwealth's Attorneys Association up here in Frankfort today advocating on your behalf for your budget. We have been meeting with members of the Senate to stress our budget concerns. The uniform message that is coming back to us is that we need to get a meeting with Senator Williams and Senator Stivers. If any of you believe that you can assist us in getting these meetings, please give me a call at (502) 696-5641.
The e-mail was entitled “Help with the budget please”. After receiving the e-mail, I arranged for a meeting with Senator Stivers and Senator Borders through my association with Becky Harrelson, chief of staff to Senate President David Williams. Ms. Graham acknowledged as much with the following e-mail:
Thank everyone for all of your help on this - we now have a meeting with Senator Stivers regarding the budget, so all of your calls and emails certainly helped. Much praise should be directed to Jessamine County Attorney Brian Goettl for his efforts to get us this meeting. If you see him, give him a big pat on the back.
General Conway did not attend that meeting. I, along with Mke Foster, Janet Graham, Chirs Cohron and members of the PAC budget staff did attend. In a subsequent PAC meeting, General Conway implied that he did not have much sway with Senate Republicans.
I suggested that a public relations campaign be conducted in much the same manner as the Department of Public Advocacy had done concering their budget. The prosecutors present at that meeting were in unanimous agreement with my suggestion.
As a result, General Conway did say that he would assign his deputy press secretary to that task, but asked Commonwealth Attorney Chris Cohron to work with the deputy press secretary, instead of himself. My opinion is that there would have been a better press response if General Conway had held a press conference and spoken directly to the press about the budget situation.
Considering that prosecutors did not receive any media coverage about the budget short fall following that PAC meeting, until after the budget had been set, I feel that I was right.
There is no doubt that General Conway did a great job with the budget when dealing with House Democrats. As well, his PAC budget people and Assistant Attorney General Janet Graham did an outstanding job throughout the entire process.
And, the reality is, General Conway may not have had much sway with Senate Republicans. But, he failed to take advantage of the few opportunities he did have with the Senate. I criticized him for that failure. His implications otherwise are false.
Sincerely,
Brian T. Goettl
Jessamine County Attorney
