Kay Ivey demands that Admiral Kent Davis resign immediately

October 18, 2024 – MONTGOMERY – Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (R) has called an emergency meeting of Governor Kay Ivey this morning called a special meeting of the State Board of Veterans Affairs for Tuesday, October 22, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. to consider the immediate removal of Kent Davis as commissioner of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs. In addition to notifying the Board members, the governor sent a letter, along with enclosures, to Admiral Davis and members of the press.

Ivey said in the letter that Davis was uncooperative, had filed frivolous ethics complaints, mishandled ARPA funds, had breached an agreement that he had made with Ivey to resign at the end of the year, had manipulating the board, and had lost the trust and confidence of the Legislature.

Retired Rear Admiral W. Kent Davis lost Ivey's confidence after it was revealed that he had filed an ethics complaint against fellow cabinet member Kim Boswell – Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Mental Health. Ethics complaints are supposed to be kept in confidence, but someone at the Alabama Ethics Commission revealed that it was Admiral Davis who had reported Boswell – thus last month Gov. Ivey demanded that Davis resign.

Admiral Daivs has served as the seventh Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs since February 19, 2019.

The Commissioner is tasked with managing the agency's operations, coordinating mission execution, and overseeing the work of approximately 1,200 state and contractor employees in 70 facilities throughout Alabama. He also manages an annual agency budget of over $190 million as well as state benefits and services for approximately 400,000 Alabama Veterans and their families.

Davis is the son of a combat-wounded World War II U.S. Army Veteran. Davis was born in Montgomery and also grew up in Atlanta and New Orleans. He was a National Merit Scholar, graduated from LSU on an academic scholarship with a degree in business administration. He enlisted in the Navy Reserve while attending college. Upon graduation from LSU, he was commissioned as an active duty Navy officer, and was assigned to the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63). He was deployed to the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War (for Operation Earnest Will). He served as both an Assistant Supply Officer and a Gun Director Officer for the 5- and 16-inch guns aboard the battleship. He was later stationed at Naval Air Station Atlanta and aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) in Alameda, California. Aboard the carries he deployed to the Persian Gulf for Operation Southern Watch in the wake of Operation Desert Storm and to Somalia in the wake of the Black Hawk Down incident in 1993.

Commissioner Davis left the active duty Navy in 1994 to attend law school on the GI Bill.

He attended Georgia State University Law School in Atlanta where he served as Editor-in Chief of the school's law review. He also studied one semester abroad at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, where he received a certificate in Dispute Resolution in 1996. He stayed in the Navy Reserve throughout law school.

Once receiving his law degree, went back on active military duty with the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, where he served as a trial counsel and ethics attorney at Fort McPherson, Georgia, in the rank of Major. After two years with the Army, he left active duty again, rejoined the Navy Reserve, and worked for two years full-time at the large law firm of King & Spalding in Atlanta. While serving in the Navy Reserve, he was assigned to such commands as U.S. Central Command, U.S. Joint Forces Command, the U.S. Sixth Fleet, and the Navy Office of Information at the Pentagon.

After the 9/11 attacks, Commissioner Davis joined the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in his civilian career and stayed with that department for 14 years, first assigned to the office of Secretary Tom Ridge in D.C. as one of his staff attorneys. From there, he practiced and taught law at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Brunswick, Georgia. In 2006, he was transferred to the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) in Anniston, Alabama and served as Senior Legal Counsel and then Deputy Superintendent at that large Homeland Security training facility. While working in Anniston, he was recalled to active duty twice by the Navy, for ground deployments in conjunction with Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2006 and then to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2012. In 2013, he was promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral (Lower Half) and completed numerous periods of active duty at the Pentagon in his role as Vice Chief of Information for the Navy.

In 2016, Commissioner Davis retired from the military after almost 31 years in uniform and also became the Director of Economic Development and then City Manager of Anniston for almost two years. In late 2017, he was hired as the (civilian) Director of Communication and Outreach at Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base and moved back to his hometown of Montgomery.

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