Board debates embattled DOT chief’s future

Members of state transportation board met for two hours Thursday behind closed doors and discussed the future of Transportation Commissioner Gena Evans, but ended without taking action, board members said afterward.

A committee of the DOT board, joined by a half dozen or so other members, spent about two hours behind closed doors. Much of the meeting was spent discussing recent media reports surrounding Commissioner Gena Evans, board leaders said.

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Georgia DOT

Transportation Commissioner Gena Evans said there was no conflict of interest in her interaction with Tim Lowe.

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It was a “thorough discussion of all the things that have been going on the last two weeks,” said DOT board Chairman Bill Kuhlke.

Recent television news reports have suggested that Evans improperly helped men she was dating or had dated. The men worked at her agency or for a contractor overseen by her agency. She has denied the reports. Other recent news reports described sexually explicit e-mails she had made on state computers in 2003, when she was single and worked at the Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission. Thursday morning, when asked if she had any intent to resign, Evans said, “None whatsoever.” She reeled off a list of her accomplishments since she took over DOT nearly one year ago.

The full board meets next week. Kuhlke said that Evans could be discussed again, but he believed she had the support of a majority of the board.

“Everybody who spoke [Thursday] understands that the commissioner’s a bright lady. She has the ability to lead this department,” he said. “We’re going to work with her. She’s got some weaknesses, just like we all do.”

Many of the news reports have been aided by open government activist George Anderson of Rome. Anderson filed an ethics complaint about Evans with state officials Wednesday and held a press conference at DOT, where he distributed a two-inch-thick stack of documents he had gathered through Georgia State Open Records requests.

Within those documents was an e-mail that led to information that the president of an engineering company doing contract work for the state Department of Transportation helped shepherd a college application for Evans’ son. The application effort ended last month, Evans said, when her son missed a deadline.

Tim Lowe, president of Lowe Engineers, said he was to write a letter of recommendation for Evans’ son, who was in the process of applying to the U.S. Naval Academy, something he has done regularly for academy applicants for a decade. The recommendation — never written — was to address whether or not Evans’ son would make a good naval officer, Lowe said.

Lowe said he sought to handle Evans’ son’s application after noticing his name and that of his mother. At the time, she worked in another state office. She moved to DOT in 2007 and later married Michael Evans, who had been DOT board chairman but resigned because of their relationship.

DOT policy prohibits “accepting personal favors or benefits under circumstances which may influence or give the appearance of influencing their official activities.” Evans said Thursday any allegations of a conflict of interest in her dealings with Lowe were “completely off base.”

Lowe has not received a new contract under Evans’ tenure, according to DOT. Lowe said that of nine DOT contracts his company had, seven had been stopped and an eighth had been severely slowed. Lowe is a subcontractor on a $5 million contract awarded to another consultant, Arcadis. Evans said the DOT board had specifically ordered that type of work to continue.

“How does it appear to be a conflict if the work [that Lowe does for DOT] was in place before I got here?” Evans asked.