FRANKFORT, KY. — A top official in state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer’s administration who also worked for embattled former Commissioner Richie Farmer is being fired, a spokeswoman for Comer said Wednesday.
At a news conference to announce the closing of a controversial fuel-testing lab that Farmer started, Comer said Deputy Commissioner Bruce Harper — who already was on unpaid leave at his request to deal with ethics charges — was given the option to resign or be fired.
Later in the day, Comer chief of staff Holly Harris VonLuehrte said Harper was being dismissed.
Comer declined to say why Harper was given the ultimatum.
Harper, who also was deputy commissioner under Farmer, faces three ethics charges by the Executive Branch Ethics Commission that accuse him of improper soliciting of donations for an agriculture commissioners’ convention and interfering with department enforcement actions for political reasons.
He is one of eight people charged with ethics violations stemming from Farmer’s eight-year tenure as Kentucky’s agriculture commissioner. Farmer, a former University of Kentucky basketball star, himself faces a record 42 charges that allege he used his tenure for personal gain.
Harper, who has been an at-will employee not in the state’s merit system, did not return a phone message seeking comment.
The ethics charges followed an audit of the department that Comer, who took office in 2011, requested because of questions regarding Farmer’s management of the agency, including hiring a girlfriend.
Comer named Larry Cox to be the new deputy secretary. Cox had been executive director of Comer’s office of consumer and environmental protection and previously worked for U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The fuel lab drew criticism from legislators after Comer found that cost savings Farmer promised when he started the lab more than five years ago didn’t materialize. Farmer had said the lab could make money by testing fuel for other states.
“I can see where it would seem like a good idea, but there was never a business plan,” Comer said. “There was never any business development. It was just a pie-in-the-sky idea.”
The lab contains $3.1 million in equipment and cost $900,000 a year to operate — including almost $200,000 a year in rent — until cuts were made under Comer. The lab is down from nine employees to one, a chemist who will remain with the department.
The new contractor testing will cost about $330,000 a year, for annual savings to the department of about $600,000.
Comer said the changes will have no impact on consumers at the pump or the department’s legal requirement to test fuels.
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