Newport News lawmaker works for center he helped fund

NORFOLK

Two years ago, a powerful Virginia lawmaker was instrumental in getting state funding for a teacher training center at Old Dominion University.

The day the money began flowing, the center put him on its payroll.

Del. Phillip Hamilton and the man who hired him at ODU say he was hired because of his credentials as an educator, not because of his political connections.

A government ethics expert and Hamilton's re-election opponent call it a conflict of interests.

Hamilton, a Newport News Republican, is a retired teacher and school administrator who works part time as coordinator of innovation and development for the Newport News school system.

During the 2007 General Assembly session, Hamilton sponsored an amendment to the state budget that provided startup funding for the Center for Teacher Quality and Educational Leadership at ODU.

Since then, the center has received $500,000 a year in state money. The center, in turn, has been paying Hamilton $40,000 a year as an independent contractor.

A legislator for 20 years, Hamilton is a senior member of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee. Each year he sits on the House-Senate budget conference committee, a select group of lawmakers who hamme r out the final details of the state budget.

Virginia's conflict-of-interest law says a legislator cannot "accept any business or professional opportunity when he knows that there is a reasonable likelihood that the opportunity is being afforded him to influence him in the performance of his official duties."

In an interview, Hamilton said there is no conflict in this case, because he was not yet on the ODU payroll when he introduced the initial budget amendment for the center and he has done nothing to advance the center's continued funding since he was hired.

"It would be wholeheartedly inappropriate for me to do that," he said.

There was no discussion with ODU officials of possible employment with the center before his introduction of the budget amendment, he said.

Hamilton said he has not recused himself from any votes on the basis of his employment by ODU because there have been no separate votes pertaining to the center. He has voted for the overall budget bill, which includes funding for the center.

According to his contract, Hamilton serves as coordinator for the center. His stated duties include recruiting school districts to participate in center activities, marketing the center to state and federal officials and maintaining records.

The center is based in a small office in ODU's Peninsula Higher Education Center in Hampton. It shares space with the Urban Learning and Leadership Center, another ODU-affiliated entity that provides some training services for the teacher-quality center.

Hamilton said he has worked closely with the urban learning center. However, Harvey Perkins, that center's chief executive officer, said he was unaware that Hamilton had any role in the teacher-quality center.

Hamilton was hired by Dave Blackburn, director of the Program for Research and Evaluation in Public Schools in ODU's Darden College of Education.

Blackburn said ODU has been working with the Newport News school system for several years and Hamilton's hiring grew out of that partnership.

"It was just a natural fit," he said.

Blackburn and Hamilton had worked together in the Newport News school system before Blackburn came to ODU.

Blackburn said the ODU center is working with eight other school systems, including Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Hampton, and has received $19 million in competitive grants.

Hamilton helped win those grants, Blackburn said, adding, "He's more than leveraged the money that we're paying him."

Hamilton's affiliation with the ODU center raises several red flags, said Judy Nadler, a senior fellow in government ethics at Santa Clara University in California.

One problem, Nadler said, is that he is serving two masters - the center and the state legislature, its funding source.

Of particular concern, she added, is that one of his duties is promoting the center to government officials.

"When he is going to one of these legislative bodies and he says, 'How do you do? I'm here as the coordinator of this center,' they actually know him as a member of the state legislature," said Nadler, a former mayor of the city of Santa Clara. "If it were John Jones who was the coordinator of the center and he went knocking on doors, would he get the same response? Obviously not.

"If you say, 'No, thank you, we don't have any money,' or 'No, thank you, we send our students to a different institute,' there's certainly the possibility that people would feel that there may be some retribution.

"If they don't consider this a conflict, I guess my question would be, what is a conflict?" Nadler said. "Where is your threshold?"

Hamilton faces opposition for re-election this fall from Newport News attorney Robin Abbott, a Democrat.

"In my judgment, a member of the Appropriations Committee drawing salary from funding he initiated using taxpayer dollars denotes a clear impropriety and an obvious conflict of interests," Abbott said in a statement. "This is another example that the people of the 93rd District deserve a new delegate focused on the needs of the people."

Pilot writer Julian Walker contributed to this report.

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com