Ex-delegate’s emails detail his ODU job pitch

RICHMOND

Emails from then-state Del. Phil Hamilton to his wife, presented Wednesday in his federal bribery trial, provide further evidence that he was negotiating a job for himself at Old Dominion University months before securing state funding for the position.

Presented over the objections of Hamilton's attorney, the emails indicate that the lawmaker made a specific salary request in a meeting with top ODU officials in August 2006, five months before he introduced budget legislation that would fund his compensation as director of a new teacher training center at the university.

"I'm heading to ODU," Hamilton emailed his wife, Kim, just before meeting with then-ODU President Roseann Runte and two other administrators. "If the possibility of employment comes up (and I suspect it will), I'll shoot for $6,000 per month."

After the meeting, Hamilton sent his wife a follow-up email confirming that he raised the suggested salary figure. However, the email suggests that the salary discussion did not occur while Runte was in the room.

"I was told that the ODU president was very interested,"Hamilton wrote his wife, "but she never mentioned it."

William Graves, the now-retired ODU dean of education who also attended the 2006 meeting, testified Tuesday that Runte told him to offer Hamilton a job. But Runte has repeatedly denied any knowledge of or involvement in his hiring.

Attorneys in the case took a videotaped deposition from Runte last week in her office in Ottawa, Ontario, where she is president of Carleton University. The video will be shown to the jury later in the trial as part of the defense's evidence.

In the end, Hamilton got a little over half of what he asked for. After steering a $500,000 startup appropriation through the General Assembly for the new teacher center, he went on the ODU payroll in July 2007 at a salary of $40,000 a year.

The university canceled his contract two years later when the relationship became public knowledge.

Other emails between Hamilton and his wife from June 2006 indicate that the semiretired school administrator was having financial troubles. After balancing the family checkbook, he emailed his wife that they were down to $230 in their checking account and $150 in savings.

"We can not take any more cash out or write checks," he wrote. "It looks like rain for the next two days."

The emails were retrieved by federal agents from Hamilton's work computer at the central office of the Newport News public school system.

Earlier Wednesday, a state Senate staffer testified that she was puzzled about Hamilton's role at the ODU teacher center when the Senate Finance Committee visited the Norfolk campus in 2008.

"It didn't really make sense to me" that the lawmaker would be director of the center, said Sarah Herzog, a fiscal analyst for the committee. "It seemed like there might be a potential conflict."

Her concern centered on an apparent dual role for Hamilton, Herzog testified: As director of the ODU center, he was functioning as a provider of training services. But as an employee of the Newport News school system - a major client of the center - he also was a consumer of those services.

When the committee visited the campus, Herzog said, it was David Blackburn, the ODU administrator who hired Hamilton, who made the presentation on behalf of the teacher center. Blackburn, not Hamilton, was listed on the meeting agenda as director of the center, and Hamilton was nowhere to be seen.

She never raised her concerns with Hamilton, Herzog said: "It seemed like it might be potentially sensitive. I guess I didn't want to know any more."

Hamilton was a state delegate from 1988 to 2010.

Prosecutors said Wednesday they plan to call no further witnesses. The defense will begin presenting its case Friday.

Bill Sizemore, (804) 697-1560, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com