What’s wrong with Puckett’s resignation?

Further to the matter of Sen. Phil Puckett’s retirement, I want to play out the shades of inappropriateness here. While what he has done clearly feels wrong (allegedly quitting his seat in the Senate of Virginia in exchange for a job running a state-chartered organization and a judgeship for his daughter, all done immediately prior to the deadline for the legislature to hold a vote on the budget, in which his absence will give Republicans a one-member majority and the ability to prevent healthcare reform), I think it’s worth exploring what about it is wrong.

Imagine that Sen. Puckett had sold his vote. In exchange for $150,000 in cash, he would vote against a budget that included healthcare reform. Any reasonable person would regard that as wrong.

Imagine that Sen. Puckett had sold his non-vote. In exchange for $150,000 in cash, he would take a walk when the bill came up for a vote. I think that any reasonable person would regard that as wrong, too.

Imagine that Sen. Puckett had sold his absence. In exchange for $150,000 in cash, he would make sure that he was thousands of miles away when the legislature reconvened to hold the vote. I also think that any reasonable person would regard that as wrong.

Now imagine that Sen. Puckett sold his resignation. In exchange for $150,000, he would quit so that he could not cast a vote on the budget bill. Many reasonable people would regard that as wrong.

And now we have the alleged reality, of Sen. Puckett selling his resignation in exchange for perhaps $150,000 annually, so that he could not cast a vote on a budget bill. Many reasonable people would also regard that as wrong.

In that real-life scenario, we have two possible parties who might have done something wrong. First, we have Sen. Puckett, who may or may not have intended to quit in order to prevent a vote from happening—he might argue that he simply quit the legislature for a tantalizing job offer that was only available within a small window, but that he couldn’t have held while also serving in the legislature. Puckett of course knew that his resignation would prevent him from voting on the most important bill before the legislature, and unless he is a very stupid man, he would have known that Kilgore was offering him the job so that he could not cast that vote. Then we have Del. Terry Kilgore, the chair of the tobacco commission, who offered Puckett the job. Kilgore likewise knew what Puckett’s resignation would mean. I suspect that two key questions here these: Did Kilgore intend to prevent Puckett from voting on the budget bill by offering him a job? And did Puckett intend to not vote on the budget bill in exchange for accepting a job?

Kilgore, of course, thinks that he’s being clever by saying that he never offered Puckett a job, but that “if he’s available, we would like to have him.” This is almost certainly bullshit, which I define as meaning that the statement is a) untrue, b) Kilgore knows that it’s untrue, and c) we know it to be untrue. It insults our collective intelligence to claim that Puckett resigned from the Senate of Virginia on the vague hope of a job heading the tobacco commission. (Or, at least, it insults Puckett.) And that leads us to the third key question: Have Puckett and Kilgore already negotiated the terms of employment for the tobacco commission?

If state investigators look into a violation of § 18.2-447, they’re going to get records of communications between Puckett and Kilgore. If they actually struck a deal here, and they didn’t have the good sense to only negotiate the terms privately and in-person (making discovery impossible), this could get ugly, and fast. On the other hand, if they’re aboveboard and have any sense, they made sure that all negotiations occurred in the presence of attorneys, and were done either exclusively by writing or were recorded as audio or video.

Evidence has a way of disappearing. I hope investigators are looking into this.