A look at Pam Lowe’s tort claim
A look at fired ITD Director Pam Lowe's tort claim against the state for wrongful termination shows some explosive allegations, beyond sex discrimination and improper dismissal. Among them: That Jeff Malmen, then Gov. Butch Otter's chief of staff, called Lowe and ITD Board Chairman Darrell Manning into a meeting after her 2007 budget presentation to the Legislature's joint budget committee, to angrily object to her plan to reduce a $50 million management contract for the Connecting Idaho program, a contract held by Washington Group and CH2M Hill. "Members of both companies' board of directors and staff and their families were significant campaign contributors to Gov. C.L. 'Butch' Otter and Senator McGee," the Senate transportation committee chairman, the claim says. The firms held the contract under the name Connecting Idaho Partners, or CIP.
The tort claim says at the meeting, "Mr. Malmen was extremely upset and told Ms. Lowe that she should not have said she would renegotiate the CIP contract. Sometime after this meeting, Mr. Manning also told Ms. Lowe that she 'needed to be careful with CIP,' and that the 'Governor could be compromised.'" Lowe proceeded regardless, the claim says, and took several projects back from the management contract to administer them in-house at ITD as a money-saving move. "In the summer 2008, Ms. Lowe directed her staff to implement ways that ITD could take back program management so as to phase out the CIP contract as quickly as possible. In Fall 2008, Mr. Manning once again told Ms. Lowe that she should not take the Program Management back from CIP because the Governor would not like it."
Negotiations on the contract were scheduled to begin after the 2009 legislative session, the tort claim says, but just three days after the session concluded, Manning asked Lowe to resign as ITD director, despite positive performance reviews. "The Board terminated her on July 16, 2009 before she had a chance to cut back the CIP contract and eliminate waste of funds," the claim says. You can read Lowe's full tort claim here.
Malmen, who is now vice president for public affairs at Idaho Power, didn't respond to a request for comment about the allegations from the Associated Press on Thursday, and couldn't be reached for comment this morning. Manning told the AP that Lowe's claims were without merit. The governor's office told the AP that it couldn't comment on a pending legal matter.
