OFFICIAL GAVE LEAVE HOURS TO HOUSE WORKER SUSPENDED OVER SHOOTING CASE

Half of the leave time donated to keep a suspended House of
Representative custodial work-er on the state payroll while po-lice
investigated his role in a shootout was donated by the same person who
decided earlier not to tell legislators that more than two pounds of
mari-juana had been found in the State House in the same employ-ee's
bag.

According to House records, Clerk of the House Greg Pappas donated 80
of the 160 hours that former House custodial worker Lorenza Hooks
received while he was suspended for his alleged involvement in a May
2008 shooting. Hooks is currently in the Montgomery County Deten-tion
Facility on an unrelated charge of trafficking crack co-caine. His
bond is set at $1.5 mil-lion.

The House Legislative Coun-cil suspended Hooks last year without pay
pending the out-come of the shooting-related charges. But it didn't
stop Hooks from collecting a paycheck, as three employees, including
Pap-pas, gave him 160 sick hours for "leave" time.

Pappas declined Thursday to make any further comments about the Hooks
case, saying that he "did not want to contin-ue to air House personnel
issues in the newspaper."

Hooks worked as a House em-ployee for six years and was able to use
his 229 accrued leave hours and his 336 sick hours to continue to
collect a paycheck while he was suspended.

The House Legislative Coun-cil fired Hooks this year after it
discovered that several thou-sand dollars of marijuana found in a
vacant State House office on Dec. 1, 2006, was in a bag that se-curity
cameras showed Hooks put in the office. Hooks said the bag was his,
but not its contents, and was never charged with a crime.

Pappas said he made the deci-sion not to inform the council about the
drugs.

He also apparently made the decision to help keep Hooks on the payroll
after he was sus-pended. In addition to the 80 hours of donated leave
time Hooks received from Pappas, he received the other 80 hours of
leave time from House mainte-nance and repair worker Mi-chael Green
and housekeeping supervisor Brenetta Moncrief. With their help, Hooks
stayed on the House payroll for six months. (2 of 2)

State Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, said he believes that Pappas
overstepped his au-thority in continuing to pay Hooks after he was
suspended without pay. Advertisement

Holmes said state law also likely was violated when Hooks received
donated time during his suspension.

Under Alabama Code 36-26-35.2, state employees are allowed to donate
their accrued and unused annual sick or com-pensatory leave time to
another state employee who has qualifi-ed for catastrophic sick leave
or maternity leave.

"Hooks wasn't sick and he certainly wasn't pregnant," Holmes said.
"Even if we had a House rule that said you could donate your leave to
anybody -- and we don't -- it couldn't be done because it's against
state law."

Attempts to reach House Hu-man Resources Manger Lynn Parker about
employment prac-tices for the legislative body were unsuccessful Thursday.

But Jackie Graham, director of the Alabama State Personnel Department,
said for agencies under the state merit system, the donation of leave
is strictly governed by Code 36-26-35.2 and is only used for what the
law al-lows: catastrophic illness and maternity leave.

Graham said while depart-ments such as the House of Rep-resentatives
are not under the merit system, many still follow state personnel
guidelines for consistency.

When asked whether merit system employees can donate their leave time
to a suspended employee her answer was a re-sounding no.

"Under our rules you can't even use your leave time if you are
suspended," she said.

She said the only way that a merit system employee could use their own
leave time during an ongoing investigation would be if the employee
was placed on mandatory annual leave.

"That's not a suspension," she said. "But it allows us to investi-gate
and to remove the employ-ee from the workplace when we don't have a
conclusive reason to suspend or terminate the em-ployee."

Pappas has said that Holmes' motivation in pursuing the Hooks case is
because Holmes has battled with him over issues involving his office
in the past. Holmes admits to bumping heads with Pappas in the past,
but only over the fact not enough black employees were being hired in
the House.

Holmes said his motivation in pursing the Hooks incident is to find
out why no one in the Legis-lature would be informed when someone had
drugs and was pos-sibly distributing drugs in the State House.