A Phoenix attorney who says he was hired to deal with “shenanigans” and other matters at the Treasurer’s Office has completed his work.
Don Dybus, who was employed as a part-time special assistant by Treasurer David Petersen in June for what he described as an assignment to prepare the office for the next treasurer, says he completed his work as of July 31. During his time there, Mr. Dybus negotiated a nearly $2 million payment to the Attorney General’s Office, which has been questioned by the Board of Investment, and labeled two of Mr. Petersen’s deputies as “insubordinate” and not serving the treasurer’s best interests.
“I finished what I had to do,” said Mr. Dybus, an attorney with Cummings McClorey Davis & Acho. “They changed the scope of what they wanted me to do to just the one item I completed.”
That one item was to negotiate a $1.9 million payment to the AG’s office for its work in settling a fraud case. Before Mr. Dybus’ employment, Chief Deputy Treasurer Blaine Vance refused to make the payment without written advice from the state solicitor general. Mr. Dybus stepped in and verbally negotiated the payment because Mr. Petersen recused himself from the matter.
Mr. Petersen, whose office oversees $9.5 billion in investments and cash, is under investigation by the AG’s Office for several alleged felonies, and he has announced he will not seek re-election.
In the meantime, the Board of Investment, which oversees the state’s financial portfolio, is seeking clarification on whether it should have been involved in the AG payment matter because the fraud case involved the loss of $131 million in investments by Arizona governmental entities, including the state. The board also has requested written advice from Solicitor General Mary O’Grady, which is forthcoming, a source said.
“I was communicating regularly with her,” said Mr. Dybus, adding he acted on a lawyer-to-lawyer basis with Ms. O’Grady, and not everything was in writing. “I did what I was tasked to do.
“They are going to do the rest of it on their own,” he said of the Treasurer’s Office.
Office shenanigans
“The reasons he [Mr. Peteresen] called me in in the first place was because of all the shenanigans,” Mr. Dybus said.
After Mr. Dybus’ remarks about them were published in the Arizona Capitol Times, Mr. Vance and Tony Malaj hired attorney Jeffrey Arbetman.
“I stand by everything I said,” Mr. Dybus said in an Aug. 3 interview.
“You don’t expect to bring someone with lawyering skills into a work environment and not expect for there to be some sparks,” he said. “That’s what we do.”
Mr. Petersen, who did not return phone calls, was quoted in The Arizona Republic on Aug. 2 that he had talked to Mr. Dybus about the attorney’s criticism of Mr. Vance and Mr. Malaj. He told The Republic that Mr. Dybus “is not going to continue to speak on [the Treasurer’s Office] behalf.”
Mr. Dybus said he explained the arrangement under which he was hired to the AG’s Office, and it had no objections. He said the Treasurer’s Office did not have time to put out a Request for Proposal for the position and secure a contract, so as a payroll employee, “I turned over my pay stub to the firm. Anyone who questions it probably just doesn’t understand it.”
The Treasurer’s Office is “no longer a client of the firm,” Mr. Dybus said.