OPELIKA, Ala. — Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard’s former top staffer delivered emotional — and potentially damning — testimony Wednesday in the speaker’s ethics trial, asserting that Hubbard’s actions in office made him worry that “Mike may end up in some sort of legal trouble.”
Hubbard’s former chief of staff Josh Blades detailed two particular instances in which Hubbard instructed him to take actions in his official capacity that would directly benefit Hubbard’s private business clients.
Blades said that in the spring of 2013 he took meetings with lobbyists who were seeking to have language inserted into the state’s General Fund Budget that would make American Pharmacy Cooperative Inc. (APCI) the sole provider of Medicaid prescription drugs in Alabama.
Blades testified that Hubbard agreed to have the language inserted into the budget, but the day of the vote Blades learned for the first time that APCI was a $5,000 per month client of Hubbard’s and warned him that it was a conflict of interest for him to cast a vote on the issue.
“He asked me, ‘What do you think I should do?’” recalled Blades. “I said, ‘Don’t do it’ — to not vote on the bill or abstain.”
But Hubbard voted for the bill against Blades’ advice.
“He said it would raise too many red flags [to not vote for his own budget],” Blades testified. “I was upset that I didn’t know about the contract. I was upset because I played a role in what had transpired that day, and I played a role in what had transpired previously. I was afraid that there could be legal implications for what happened. I was afraid Mike may end up in some sort of legal trouble after all of this transpired.”
Although Hubbard voted for the bill with the pro-APCI language in it, the provision was ultimately stripped out of the final budget and did not become law.
The defense dismissed the significance of the line item in the budget, saying it was “only a few lines” in a massive bill that appropriated billions of dollars.
In a second incident, Blades testified that Hubbard instructed him to assist Capitol Cups — a business located in Hubbard’s district — in securing a patent. Blades used his connections on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., to nudge the U.S. Patent Office along.
“He said it was very important to him we get this done,” Blades said of the patent issue. “Mr. Hubbard told me he had 100,000 reasons to get this done. It made me uncomfortable. Because when I heard it, I immediately thought that the speaker meant money in some form.”
As it turns out, Hubbard did in fact have a financial interest in Capitol Cups’ success. He was at the time receiving $10,000 monthly payments from CV Holdings, Capitol Cups’ parent company.
When Blades found out he was being asked to use his government post to assist one of Hubbard’s paying clients, he stopped.
“I felt I had done enough on the staff level, and I had done enough to push the project along,” he said.
Blades became emotional at several points during his testimony, also calling Hubbard a “friend” and “good boss.”
During the first two days of testimony in the Hubbard trial, the defense has not denied that many of the actions Hubbard is accused of taking took place, but has argued that they did not run afoul of state ethics laws.
Hubbard is facing 23 felony counts of using his public office for personal gain. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of two to twenty years imprisonment and fines of up to $30,000.00 for each count, all of which are Class B Felonies.
