MT Commissioner of Political Practices Resigns after accusations of ethics violations

Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices, Dave Gallik handed his letter of resignation to Governor Brian Schweitzer Wednesday.

The decision comes on the heels of a Great Falls Tribune article this weekend in which the four staff members in the office of political practices accused Gallik of ethics violations. These include doing work for his private law practice while on state time and writing down more hours than he actually worked.

Gallik flatly denies doing anything wrong.He said he is performing his duties and is doing so exactly as he said he would.

“Yeah, I’m not here all of the time. I made it perfectly clear to everybody when I took this job that I could not afford to not continue my law practice. I will cut it way back. I’ve hired a full-time lawyer to make sure that she can take a lot of the load that I had at my law practice. But I can’t afford to give this up,” Gallik said. he said he decided to resign after the office staff called the Helena Police Department this week. He said that was completely inappropriate and crossed the line.

“And I got to thinking I said, you know, is there any depths that they’re not willing to drop to? What’s next, what’s the next false allegation? There’s me in that little office with the 4 women that obviously have a huge vendetta to get rid of me,” he said.

Gallik’s accusers have a different take on the matter. The Office of Political Practices is charged with statewide campaign finance laws and other ethical codes. The staff  say they could not let an agency dedicated to ethics be run by someone they say is unethical.

The staff of the Office of Political Practices

“This has been a very difficult situation for all of the staff members,” said Political Practices Office Program Supervisor Mary Baker. She said problems with Commissioner Dave Gallik started almost as soon as Governor Brian Schweitzer appointed him last May.

“I would see discrepencies in his time sheets just about every pay cycle,” she said.

She said sometimes only a half-day would be spent with his political practices work, but Gallik would put 8 hours down on his time sheet. Or she said he would be in his state office but would take conference calls and do work for the Gallik Law Firm, his private practice.

Gallik is also licensed to practice law in Washington state. Political Practices Investigator Julie Steab cited one extreme example where Gallik left for 2 and a half days to Vancouver.

“He attributed that time to the state and we knew he wasn’t here. We knew he was at this mediation for his private practice work. So he put that down on his time report and he didn’t correct it until after Mary asked him several times,” Steab said.

Program Supervisor Mary Baker said she tried addressing the office’s complaints with Gallik. She first tried contacting the Governor’s office last August, and was eventually referred to the Legislative Audit Division.

“Legislative Audit was diligently keeping track of the information and working on advising us that there will be an audit and all of this will come out in an audit but as you know those take a long time.”

The audit would not have begun until June. Baker said that was too far away for the Political Practices staff. That’s why they went to the press.

“The office has to be beyond reproach. You have to be ethical. Even an appearance of impropriety stirs up issues,” she said.

Governor Schweitzer’s office declined comment, but Schweitzer has sent a letter to the state legislature asking for a list of nominees for a new Commissioner of Political Practices by next Wednesday.

 

Advertisement

---