FRANKFORT – After months of speculation and intrigue, a special grand jury investigating the state government’s hiring practices indicted Gov. Ernie Fletcher on three misdemeanor charges of conspiracy, official misconduct and political discrimination.

The foreman of the jury, which has been reviewing reams of documents and hearing hours of testimony for nearly a year, calmly read the charges to Franklin Circuit Court Judge William L. Graham shortly before 4:30 p.m. yesterday.

Fletcher becomes the third sitting Kentucky governor to be indicted and the first since Flem Sampson was charged in 1929 with receiving improper gifts.

In addition to Fletcher, the jury charged former chief state highway engineer Sam Beverage with perjury and submitted 14 more indictments under seal.

Those could be made public once the Supreme Court rules on a related question: whether Fletcher’s pardoning of his administration staff in August also blocks future charges.

Fletcher didn’t pardon himself, but still has that option.

The Republican governor, after stepping off a plane from a visit to Ashland, said he has “no intention of that.”

The administration’s first response was to fire back at Democratic Attorney General Greg Stumbo, whose office has led the investigation.

Fletcher’s personal attorney, R. Kent Westberry of Louisville, filed a motion yesterday evening in Franklin Circuit Court to have Stumbo, his investigators and the prosecutors thrown off the case.

The filing claims that Stumbo is a political rival considering running for governor next year and should be disqualified from the proceedings.

“I think there is substantial conflict of interest there,” Fletcher said last night at Frankfort’s airport, with his wife Glenna at his side.

Although he said he had no plans to step down from office, Fletcher acknowledged the indictments were “a disappointment.”

“But it’s not going to let us take us off our game,” he added.

On many occasions, Fletcher has admitted that “mistakes were made” by his aides when hiring for rank-and-file state merit positions, which are supposed to be filled based on qualifications – not politics.

But he has maintained that the investigation has been “politically motivated” from the start.

Vicki Glass, Stumbo’s spokeswoman, read reporters a three-sentence statement calling the governor’s motion “baseless.”

The indictments came exactly a year after a transportation personnel official, Doug Doerting, walked into Stumbo’s office on May 11, 2005, and dropped off boxes of e-mails and documents showing questionable hiring decisions, which started the investigation.

But the timing was more than symbolic.

The one-year window to charge someone with violating or conspiring to break state merit employment laws was set to expire Saturday.

That’s the anniversary of the May 13 firing of transportation cabinet inspector Mike Duncan, who claims to have been terminated once administration officials learned he had supported Fletcher’s Democratic opponent in the 2003 governor’s race.

His firing was the last in a string of personnel decisions alleged to be politically motivated.

Fletcher was specifically charged yesterday with political discrimination in connection with that move.

The indictment says the governor “willfully ordered, directed, approved or otherwise participated” with previously indicted Transportation Cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert, Deputy Secretary Jim Adams and former Administrative Commissioner Dan Druen to fire Duncan, a merit employee.

The administration has argued that Duncan had worked for the cabinet less than six months, so he was still a probationary employee who could be removed for any reason.

Earlier this week, Duncan filed suit against the state charging wrongful termination.

Before yesterday, the grand jury had charged 11 current or former administration officials and two unpaid Fletcher advisers with violating personnel laws.

Some indictments cited officials’ roles in specific hires, while others were charged with conspiring to circumvent the laws, particularly through a round table of representatives from across state government that became known as the “Governor’s Personnel Initiative.”

Fletcher’s participation and knowledge of that group’s work had remained an open question.

But the indictments on charges of conspiracy and official misconduct state that Fletcher “ordered, directed and otherwise approved the development and implementation” of the personnel initiative.

Fletcher has said that the group was supposed to make the personnel process more efficient.

Scores of administration e-mails and notes that emerged during the investigation revealed that group participants – who called themselves “Disciples” and “Apostles” – regularly discussed how to vet job candidates for political ties as well as which positions were opening up that could be filled by Fletcher supporters.

“As ‘change agents’ and ‘missionaries’ of the Governor, our task will not always be embraced by those around us,” wrote personnel initiative participant Tim Hazlette in a Jan. 25, 2005 e-mail.

The operation, which prosecutors have dubbed “a corrupt political machine,” also drew on the administration’s local liaison staff as well as a loose network of “county contacts” to make job recommendations.

Prosecutors have alleged that job seekers with political ties were favored over those with better résumés.

“If you only hired the most-qualified people, how will our people ever get hired?” former Fletcher adviser Dave Disponett said in one meeting, according to a transcript of an interview with a health cabinet aide.

In the Transportation Cabinet, much of the details for rank-and-file hirings late in 2004 and early in 2005 came across the desk of Druen, who served as administrative services commissioner.

Druen also was linked to the now infamous “hit-list” of transportation employees slated to be demoted or fired last spring. That list of 32 names included 10 who were protected merit employees, including Duncan’s.

Notes scribbled by Fletcher’s personal secretary last spring showed that the governor’s office considered Druen the “vetting guy,” according to evidence filed in court.

The conspiracy and discrimination indictments also allege that Fletcher worked with “co-conspirators” to order or approve “the appointment, promotion, demotion, transfer or dismissal” of some of those rank-and-file state workers.

Fletcher has repeatedly denied any involvement in specific personnel actions.

“As I’ve said in the past, my conscience is clear,” Fletcher said last night. “I’m not going to let this dissuade me from moving Kentucky forward even more.”