The closest these rules come to addressing this situation is the policy on hiring relatives, which prevents "a supervisor or manager at any level" from making an employment decision directly benefiting anyone "within the third degree of relationship."
That would include a spouse — but not a lover.
Ray Stern
Attorney General Tom Horne with Horne's outreach director, Kathleen Winn (right), at the Arizona Republican Party 2012 election night event at the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Phoenix.
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Assistant Attorney General Carmen Chenal, the employee Horne's "having an affair with," according to the FBI.
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By all accounts, the Horne-Chenal relationship is consensual. So would state and federal laws against sexual harassment apply?
Phoenix attorney Julie Pace's expertise is employment law. She regularly shows companies how to avoid sexual-harassment lawsuits.
"You try to teach a company that managers should not be dating subordinates," she says. "If they do, they risk a lawsuit. The subordinate could claim it was harassment or that they felt they were compelled to be in the relationship."
A relationship can start consensually, Pace observed, but it may not stay that way. If the relationship sours, a legitimate sexual-harassment claim could result.
Ironically, the Arizona Attorney General's Civil Rights Division partners with the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission in enforcing sexual-harassment laws.
Julie Pace notes that there are additional concerns related to the public nature of Carmen Chenal's employment.
"Anytime you're using taxpayer dollars for personal benefit . . . that may raise concerns and potential liability," Pace says.
Add to this the damage done to the state office's reputation.
Horne's "Chenal-gate" has been as high profile locally as a similar scandal on a national level involving former CIA director and retired four-star Army General David Petraeus.
Petraeus recently resigned his CIA post after revelations of an extramarital relationship with his biographer, Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Paula Broadwell.
The FBI played a starring role in both scandals — by making public the sexual peccadilloes of powerful men.
In Horne's case, the FBI investigation was the result of an attempt by Horne to keep his affair with Chenal hush-hush. Paranoid about the FBI probe, he doubled down on a cover-up, straying into dangerous territory for the state's highest-ranking law enforcement official.
If Horne hadn't ordered AG's special agent Meg Hinchey to investigate who in the office had leaked information on Chenal to New Times, Hinchey never would've gone to the FBI with allegations of wrongdoing by Horne and the FBI probe never would've occurred. Horne's March hit-and-run never would've come to light, and the public might've thought Carmen Chenal was nothing more than a fancy French perfume.
Nor would Horne be looking down the barrel of a potential fine of $1 million.
And the state wouldn't be the target of a $10 million legal claim by Hinchey.
A seasoned investigator and member of a local FBI-led task force on public corruption, Hinchey says she was the target of retaliation, including a smear campaign by Horne and Deputy AG Bistrow, after she went to the feds with allegations unrelated to her initial inquiry.
According to her claim notice, Horne called her untrustworthy after he learned he was under investigation by the FBI in late January.
A Democrat, Hinchey donated $53 to Horne's 2010 general election rival, Rotellini, making her suspect in his eyes.
Horne, according to Hinchey, also spread false rumors of a lesbian affair between Hinchey and Rotellini, who is divorced.
Criminal division chief Jim Keppel's notes, part of the investigative file, confirm this.
"[Horne] asked if [assistant AG Steve Duplissis] knew of any 'lesbian relationship' between [Meg Hinchey and Felecia Rotellini] and other questions re [Hinchey's] political leanings," Keppel wrote in late February.
This was quite a shift from July 2011, when Horne handpicked Hinchey to lead the investigation on the recommendation of Hinchey's boss, chief investigator Rubalcava,
Horne also approached his predecessor Terry Goddard's employee services director, Susan Schmultz, about picking Hinchey to do the internal investigation. The AG expressed concern about the leak of information during a lunch with Schmultz.
"[He] had wanted specifically to talk about the articles that had been happening in New Times," Schmultz told the FBI. "He had a concern that someone interior in the office was leaking information about Carmen."
Horne's worry preceded my first column on the subject in New Times, as I had been pummeling the AG's Office with public-records requests concerning Chenal's employment.
In Hinchey's timeline in the FBI file, she notes that the investigation was precipitated by my public-records requests and started a week before my first article was published ("Attorney General Horne Hired Carmen Chenal to a Highly Paid Top Post -- 'Cause She's His Goomba," July 14, 2011).
"I was advised by Chief Special Agent Andy Rubalcava," wrote Hinchey on July 7, "that while on vacation, AG Horne had requested that I be assigned to conduct an administrative internal investigation to determine who . . . leaked sensitive information to New Times reporter Stephen Lemmons [sic]."
Hinchey and Rubalcava met with Horne and his chief of staff to discuss the investigation. Hinchey was granted authority to work with the AG's IT director "to recover hard drives from personnel suggested as possible sources for the leak."
Horne had retained several Democratic employees from the Goddard administration, and they became a source of angst for him. Suspicion fell on Democrats Gerald Richard, a special prosecutor now employed by the Phoenix Police Department, and assistant AG Mike Flynn.
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