Gov. Kay Ivey will not attend Tuesday’s meeting of the State Board of Veterans Affairs, a special meeting she called to ask the board to remove Commissioner Kent Davis.

Ivey is chair of the board, which oversees the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs, an agency Davis has led since 2019.

The meeting is a continuation of a dispute that has been going on for several months, one that appeared to be settled in September when Davis agreed to resign effective Dec. 31.

Ivey has accused Davis of breaching that agreement and spelled out her reasons for seeking immediate removal in a letter to Davis she released last week.

Davis, a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, said he has not broken the agreement and responded to Ivey with a letter to board members on Monday.

“Governor Ivey will not be personally attending the State Board of Veterans Affairs meeting, but will have a designee there to vote in her place,” Gina Maiola, communications director for the governor, said in an email.

“The governor has presented the facts at length, spoken her piece and trusts the Board to do the right thing to ensure the Department acts as a member of her team in the executive branch of state government. After the ‘orchestrated theater’ of last week’s meeting, she does not see the benefit in attending personally.”

The claim about “orchestrated theater” refers to the Oct. 10 board meeting when the board unanimously passed a resolution asking Davis to reconsider his decision to resign effective Dec. 31. Ivey attended the early portion of that meeting but left to go to a state Board of Education meeting. The resolution passed after she left.

Board member Ken Rollins, a supporter of Davis who proposed that resolution, said Ivey should be at the meeting she called.

“When you call a special meeting, that’s what it is, it’s special,” Rollins said. “It’s outside of all the other stuff. And you call a special meeting and then decide not to show up.”

Rollins said he will not be able to attend Tuesday‘s meeting because of health problems, but planned to participate by phone.

The governor’s office, however, informed board members they could participate only in person, not by teleconference or remote video.

Although remote participation and Zoom meetings are routine for many state boards, the governor’s office cited a portion of the Open Meetings Act that says “any state board or agency acting in any quasi judicial capacity involving employment actions” are “prohibited from participating in meetings and deliberation via electronic communications.”

Rollins said he initially suspected that he was being purposely excluded.

“As long as it’s legal and it’s not somebody trying to undercut somebody,“ Rollins said. ”But it does sound kinda fishy to me.”

Maiola, the governor‘s spokeswoman, said: “It is inaccurate to say the ’Governor‘s Office’ is not letting anyone attend remotely. This is a question of state law.”

Rollins, a two-tour Vietnam veteran who has served on the board for 20 years, said Ivey has mishandled her dispute with Davis, partly by not involving the board in the initial decision to seek his removal in September.

“When she asked Kent Davis to resign, we found out about it way, way after she had done that,” Rollins said. “The proper procedure would have been to call a board meeting and discuss it with the entire board, because he works for us. He does not work for the governor.”

Board Vice Chair Scott Gedling has urged the other board members to support the governor’s request to remove Davis.

When Ivey released a letter last week spelling out her reasons to ask the board to remove Davis, she released several other letters, including an Oct. 16 letter from Gedling to the other board members.

Gedling wrote that Davis has made important accomplishments as commissioner.

But Gedling said Davis had pressured some board members to support him despite Davis’ public statement that his agreement to resign on Dec. 31 would have mutual benefit.

Davis, in his letter to board members on Monday, said he was puzzled by the accusation that he had tried to manipulate board members.

Davis said his communications with board members before the Oct. 10 meeting came in response to questions that he felt he was obligated to answer. He said he did not talk to most members of the board before the meeting.

“I want to emphatically state up front that I have had every intention of honoring an agreement I made with the Governor and her staff on September 9, 2024,” Davis wrote.

The dispute surfaced with Ivey’s claims that the ADVA, under the leadership of Davis, mishandled a plan to distribute $7 million in federal grants for veterans mental health care.

The money came from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The governor released an April letter from Mental Health Commissioner Kim Boswell ending an agreement for the Department of Mental Health to work with the ADVA on the grant program because of what Boswell said were concerns with how ADVA was handling the program.

The governor also released a letter and attachment from the Department of Finance detailing some of the concerns about the organizations picked to receive the grants and whether they qualified for use of the federal funds.

In July, Davis filed an ethics complaint against Boswell, a member of Ivey’s cabinet.

In August, the Ethics Commission dismissed the complaint, saying that even if the alleged facts were true, they would not have amounted to a violation of the ethics law. Ivey has called the complaint “frivolous.”

Davis has defended the work of the ADVA on the grant program and said he was bound by law to file the ethics complaint because of what he was told by three members of the state board.

In his letter to the board members on Monday, Davis said he believed concerns over how the ARPA grant funds were handled was settled before they were cited as a reason to force him out.

“I would be glad to address the entire issue once more in detail and answer any questions raised,” Davis wrote.

“Moreover, on May 21, 2024, I received a call from Finance Director Bill Poole in which he clearly expressed that the entire ARPA grant program had been addressed and laid to rest. There were several witnesses to that conversation, but it again suddenly became an issue on September 5 when I was initially asked to resign by the Governor.”

Tuesday’s meeting begins at 2 p.m. at the State Capitol.

Rollins, who said he led the process to select Davis as commissioner over almost 40 other candidates, said he believes concerns about the grant program do not justify removal of Davis.

“I’ve heard 16 different stories,” Rollins said “But the bottom line to me is, there was no harm done by anybody to anyone. There was not a nickel misspent. There was no veteran unserved. There was no damage done. You got no victim.”