Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Eight

Monday, April 27, 2015

H. Philip West Jr.

Between 1986 and 2006, Rhode Island ran a gauntlet of scandals that exposed corruption and aroused public rage. Protesters marched on the State House. Coalitions formed to fight for systemic changes. Under intense public pressure, lawmakers enacted historic laws and allowed voters to amend defects in the state’s constitution.

Since colonial times, the legislature had controlled state government. Governors were barred from making many executive appointments, and judges could never forget that on a single day in 1935 the General Assembly sacked the entire Supreme Court.

Without constitutional checks and balances, citizens suffered under single party control. Republicans ruled during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Democrats held sway from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. In their eras of unchecked control, both parties became corrupt.

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H Philip West's SECRETS & SCANDALS tells the inside story of events that shook Rhode Island’s culture of corruption, gave birth to the nation’s strongest ethics commission, and finally brought separation of powers in 2004. No single leader, no political party, no organization could have converted betrayals of public trust into historic reforms. But when citizen coalitions worked with dedicated public officials to address systemic failures, government changed.

Three times—in 2002, 2008, and 2013—Chicago’s Better Government Association has scored state laws that promote integrity, accountability, and government transparency. In 50-state rankings, Rhode Island ranked second twice and first in 2013—largely because of reforms reported in SECRETS & SCANDALS.

Each week, GoLocalProv will be running a chapter from SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006, which chronicles major government reforms that took place during H. Philip West's years as executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island. The book is available from the local bookstores found HERE.

Part One: DePrete, RISDIC

Chapter Eight: Hope For Ethics (1991)

Although well hidden from public view, the Common Cause complaint against Edward DiPrete was inching forward. In June 1991, more than two years after we filed with the Ethics Commission, an investigating subcommittee finally seemed ready to decide whether there was probable cause to believe that DiPrete had violated the law while governor of the state. Officially, I represented “the complainant,” and Rae Condon was our attorney. We could observe the closed-door hearing but not speak.

We passed through a scrum of reporters who knew from public notice of the “executive session” that commissioners would consider complaint 89-1 against DiPrete. While the press kept vigil outside, Condon and I took seats in the white-walled hearing room. Moments later DiPrete and his lawyers burst through the hubbub of media questions and into the room. Unlike times we met in public settings during his last two years as governor, DiPrete now glared through me as if I were a hostile apparition.

The former governor had appointed the entire commission, with Michael A. Morry as chair of the investigative panel. Morry had been president of a Warwick credit union when he voted to exonerate Bob Bianchini. He had ignored our demand that he resign. He and four other commissioners took their seats. 

Morry called the meeting to order and explained that the law required this to be an executive session. Without explaining why, he said one commissioner, William H. Rizzini, had been excused and Paul l. Gaines, although present, had recused himself. Only four remained. Michael Morry, Richard A. Blaine, Peter J. Davis, and Roger R. Hall would decide whether our complaint against DiPrete could proceed. Everything rested on these four.

John M. Roney, the lawyer hired to prosecute our complaint, presented his findings from a thick memo that had been mailed to these commissioners. He reminded them that they had already voted to dismiss charges that cited actions taken by DiPrete before June 25, 1987, the day DiPrete signed legislation that created the Ethics Commission.

Roney—with thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses, a neatly trimmed beard, and bow tie—explained that he would present the case in four distinct parts. He argued first that DiPrete had wrongly steered the contract for studying pollution in Olney Pond at Lincoln Woods State Park to Tutela engineering associates, which had contributed $20,500 to Friends of DiPrete. The governor had issued executive orders that called for state agencies to negotiate contracts “on the basis of demonstrated competence and qualification for the type of services required,” but that process was a sham. The director of administration, who was officially responsible for final selections, had clandestinely forwarded lists to the governor. Under a secret protocol, DiPrete routinely penciled check-marks by his choices and returned the lists for contract awards. Roney added that DiPrete had covered his tracks well, so that even trusted members of the governor’s staff never knew that DiPrete was deciding which firms would get state contracts.

Members of the investigating committee asked perfunctory questions. DiPrete had interviewed each of them separately before he put them on the ethics commission, and the gravity of charging someone who had been governor for six years seemed to weigh heavily on them. 

Roney went on to describe DiPrete’s relationship with James l. Taft Jr., a lawyer and former mayor of Cranston who had chaired the governor’s fund-raising committee. Taft was also DiPrete’s partner in the development company that had benefited from the Cranston land deal back in 1987. Taft had also won a lucrative state contract to sue the contractor who had abandoned work on the new Jamestown Bridge, where unfinished concrete columns still jutted up from the water.

Seated behind their long table, the four commissioners listened impassively as Roney turned to the cranston land deal. documents and interviews added detail to our charges. Before the Cranston zoning board granted a variance that doubled the number of apartments, DiPrete had met with the chair, George DiMuro, and offered him a plum post as head of the Coastal Resources Management council. after the crucial vote, DiPrete’s family firm walked away with a $2 million windfall, and the governor quietly appointed DiMuro.

Finally, Roney told of the pressure brought to bear on top environmental officials to expedite certain wetlands permutes where the governor's son Dennis was the project engineer. DiPrete's director of policy, Ronald L. DiOrio, had called the governor's environmental director and wetlands chief to a meeting at his State House office. DiOrio had demanded to know why the permits were taking so long. 

Dennis DiPrete sat at the table across from the environmental regulators, but both DiPretes had denied any collusion.

DiPrete’s attorney, Joseph A. Kelly, rose for rebuttal. He repeated the gist of motions filed earlier in the process and claimed that the Common Cause complaint was politically motivated, based on hearsay, and not grounded in fact. He urged the investigating committee to dismiss all the charges. Kelly then stunned everyone by announcing that DiPrete would speak in his own behalf. 

The former governor greeted the commissioners as if they were old friends. He spoke gently and calmly, as if not to dignify the accusations. “This investigation has dragged on for more than two years,” he said. “These charges are purely political. They are groundless.” He came across as gracious, unperturbed by the annoyance of this hearing. Had I not known so many details about the case, I might have believed in his innocence.

“I have a right to get on with my life,” DiPrete said. “I’m under consideration for a position in the Bush administration. It would require confirmation by the U.S. Senate, but I’m stuck here on hold until you remove this cloud. I respect-fully ask you to do that.”

This was news. during DiPrete’s last term as governor, President George H.W. Bush had flown to Rhode Island on air Force One for a big ticket fundraiser at DiPrete’s home in Cranston.

None of the commissioners showed any reaction. Morry announced that the investigative panel would deliberate with its lawyer and everyone else had to leave. During the closed-door deliberation, the parties, lawyers, stenographer, and reporters shared a tiny reception area. Rae Condon and I stood at an awkward distance from DiPrete and his lawyer as reporters milled around, made small talk, and probed for tidbits. Half an hour ticked away. The receptionist fielded calls. a secretary came out to greet Rae Condon. 

Finally, the hearing room door opened, and Gary Yesser, the commission’s counsel, waved the participants inside while again shutting the press out. 

The stenographer adjusted her equipment, and Morry gaveled the committee back onto the record. Richard Blaine, a member of the committee read carefully from what was clearly a boilerplate motion. The committee, it read, was “satisfied that probable cause exists” that DiPrete had committed “a serious, knowing, and willful violation of the Rhode Island ethics law.” The motion was to refer the case to the adjudicative panel. at issue were facts related to the Tutela/Olney Pond charges. 

Without pausing for a vote or looking up, Blaine turned to the financial ties between DiPrete and James Taft. They were business partners in both Atwood Associates Realty Trust and DiPrete-Laurienzo Construction. A state contract to litigate over the Jamestown Bridge had been awarded to a joint venture that involved James L. Taft and Joseph A. Kelly. 

"On the basis of the above fact," Blaine continued with the longest single motion I had ever heard, "and by virtue of his actions, and for failing to prepare and deliver a statement of conflict of interest to the commission," there was probable cause that DiPrete had violated specific enumerated sections of the Code of Ethics.  

“Second,” said commissioner Peter J. Davis, a former principal of Classical High School in Providence.

One by one, each voted “Aye."

With a bang of his gavel, Morry adjourned the meeting.

“That’s it?” I whispered to Rae Condon. “What about the Cranston land deal and St. James Estates?”

“They’re obviously gone,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” 

That came like a slap in the face. How could they simply drop those charges? Why not conduct a complete investigation? 

Condon said they were not required to explain.

“Just like that?” I asked her. “Those parts vanish?”

She nodded.

Commissioners were on their feet. It was over. Several members who had served on the old Conflict of Interest Commission greeted Condon and exchanged small talk with her.

I wanted to stand up and shout. evidence showed clearly that the Cranston zoning change had swept a $2 million windfall to DiPrete-Laurienzo construction, and DiPrete then named the zoning board chair to a plum post. How could they brush it aside? Or the fact that the governor’s son and policy chief had put immense pressure on the wetlands permitting process? Was that not worthy of a full hearing on the evidence?
 
DiPrete and his entourage left swiftly through a side door. 

Anger has always been a problem for me, and now I could feel a rush of adrenalin. air in the room became heavy. Reporters wanted to know what happened. I shook my head, forcing a smile, trying not to speak. 

The next day, Russell Garland phoned from the Providence Journal. He said DiPrete had convened a press conference to announce that he had “been cleared” of nine allegations in a complaint filed by Common Cause. 

“You were at the hearing,” Garland said. “Did they clear him on nine?”

“He wasn’t ‘cleared.’” In an instant I decided that if DiPrete convened a press conference, I was free to comment on the charges that had been dropped. I explained that this investigating committee had ruled two years earlier that the ethics commission had no jurisdiction over events that occurred before it was established by law. “They decided they didn’t have jurisdiction. We thought they did, since his actions constituted violations under both the old conflict of Interest law and under the 1987 ethics law. He got off on a legal technicality, but that’s far from saying he’s ‘been cleared.'

I summarized the four parts of our original complaint that John Roney had presented.

“I wish the investigating committee had explained why they dropped our charges related to the Cranston land deal and St. James Estates. We thought they had ample reason for a full hearing on the evidence.” Furthermore, I added, our bill to require open adjudicative hearings had died in the legislature. “But the current law provides for an open hearing if the public official waives his right to a confidential one.” I added that I thought DiPrete had waived confidentiality by convening his press conference. “By rights, the adjudicative hearings should now be open to the press and public.”

Other reporters called and went through the same details. I wished this story had broken before the General Assembly adjourned. Our legislation to open adjudicative hearings had died without a vote.

On June 13, 1991, thirteen members of the ethics commission took seats behind their nameplates around tables arranged like three sides of a square. The RISDIC disaster, the news of corrupt pensions, and the bribery charges against the mayor of Pawtucket, Brian Sarault, had touched them all. Commissioner Mel Topf said the time had come for the ethics commission to adopt specific ethics rules for public officials. Topf was thin and boyish in horn-rimmed glasses. He taught writing at Roger Williams University and often voiced impolitic truths, the wide-eyed innocent who piped up that the emperor had no clothes. Topf reminded his fellow commissioners that the General assembly had gone home without reining in nepotism or the persistent practice of trading key votes for permanent state jobs, particularly judgeships. Concluding that the legislature would never rein itself in, he urged the commission to follow its constitutional mandate and start “adopting” a code of ethics.

Two weeks later, the commission’s jovial executive director, Mark Eckstein, distributed a memo that summarized ethics legislation which the commission had supported. He focused on the two common cause bills Topf had mentioned: nepotism and the revolving door. The first would dramatically enlarge the circle of family members officials were forbidden to favor with official acts.The second aimed to bar lawmakers from seeking or accepting state jobs while they served in the General Assembly and for a year after they left office. Both bills landed in overflowing legislative wastebaskets. 

Gary Yesser, the commission’s suave legal counsel, provided a memo on constituational issues. He described the 1986 constitutional amendment that created the ethics commission and directed it to “adopt a code of ethics,” including provisions on conflicts of interest. Older sections of the Rhode Island constitution authorized the General Assembly to “pass all laws necessary to carry this constitution into effect” and declared that the “legislative power” was vested in the state Senate and House of representatives. Ultimately, Yesser said, the Rhode Island Supreme court would need to resolve that contradiction.

He then reminded the commissioners that they had maneuvered between those sections in 1987 when they voted “to adopt” the code of ethics that the General Assembly had already enacted into law, and suggested that they ask Gov. Sundlun to seek an advisory opinion from the Supreme Court. One way to force the question might be to approve an ethics rule that would “significantly modify” current law. They could avoid a constitutional crisis by making the new rule take effect at some future date. The Supreme Court would then have time to decide whether the commission had acted within its constitutional authority.

Mel Topf came back in July with a memo in which he analyzed the records of the 1986 constitutional convention. The convention’s ethics committee, he wrote, had proposed “an independent non-partisan ethics commission” that would be responsible for adopting the ethics rules. He noted that the entire convention had voted specifically that the ethics commission should write the code of ethics. That proposal went onto the 1986 statewide ballot as the “ethics in Government” amendment to the state’s constitution, and voters approved.

“In spite of all this,” Topf wrote, “the General Assembly included a code of ethics in the 1987 legislation that established the Ethics Commission.” By imposing its own code, the legislature violated the state’s constitution. rail-thin and professorial, Topf told his colleagues that the word “law” encompassed more than books of statutes; decisions of the Supreme court carried the full force of law, as did rules adopted by administrative agencies and executive orders issued by presidents or governors. For all those reasons, he argued, the ethics commission should adopt specific provisions that would significantly modify the present code of ethics. “We must act as if we had the authority we clearly do have,” he wrote, “and if anyone wishes to challenge us, he or she may do so in Superior court.” 

Topf concluded that the commission’s constitutional mandate was “so clear, so strong, and so integral to our purpose” that failure to act made them guilty of misfeasance for neglecting their mandate. “We do not need the Supreme Court to advise us to do our duty. We do not need the Governor to ask the Supreme Court to advise us to do our duty. We need simply to do it.”

On a dry august afternoon when Rhode Islanders jammed roads to the beaches, the commission prepared to act. Fourteen of the fifteen commissioners took their seats, most in jackets and ties. The question of adopting specific ethics rules for public officials topped their agenda. 

Topf reminded his colleagues that no one was proposing that they scrap the code approved four years earlier by the General Assembly. Rather than trying to write an entirely new code of ethics, he suggested that they approve two rules they believed were sound but which the legislature had rejected. 

Commissioner Richard Mcallister warned against any effort to exercise what he called “the legislature’s lawful authority.” For nine years, Mcallister had represented Cranston in the state Senate but left for a job at a nonprofit agency that received nearly all its funding from the state. Here was a common pattern: Rhode Island lawmakers who did their leaders’ bidding often got state-funded jobs. On this occasion he clearly sensed that the vote would go against him. He said the commission would make a mistake and risk its credibility by grasping for legislative powers. He warned that such a move would cause only turmoil.

Commissioner Michael Morry moved to nip Topf ’s proposal in the bud. House leaders had nominated him, and I assumed that he stayed in touch with them. now he argued against trying to amend the code of ethics: “This is a mistake. I believe you genuinely want to produce a stronger code, but I think you’ll get a weaker commission, and it will be open to lawsuits that we can’t win.” as he spoke, I wondered if others around the table saw Mcallister and Morry as doing the legislature’s bidding. 

Several other commissioners wondered aloud why the General Assembly seemed so tolerant of wrongdoing in its midst and why RISDIC’s collapse had produced so little legislative change. They seemed to be girding their loins for the struggle ahead. 

Commissioner William Rizzini, the former president of Roger Williams University, offered a resolution: “The commission has the right, and intends to, change provisions of the code of ethics without legislative approval.” With portly gravitas, Rizzini revealed no fear of retaliation. Without mentioning the nepotism or revolving door proposals, he backed Topf, arguing that the state’s constitution was clear. 

The ayes carried easily, a vote of 11–3, and the commissioners agreed to notify Gov. Sundlun of their decision. Their vote marked a watershed, the first step in a rule-making process that would take months. When reporters called, I said common cause had encouraged commissioners to adopt the nepotism and revolving door proposals. “They should be in position to adopt tougher provisions in areas where the legislature has refused to act,” I said. “This embodies the will of the people that there be a strong code of ethics.”

Within days, however, legislative leaders fired a heavy cannon across the commission’s bow. In a three-page letter emblazoned with their florid signatures, House Speaker Joseph Deangelis and Senate Majority leader John J. Bevilacqua denounced the commission’s plan. House Majority leader Thomas A. Lamb also signed, his inscription tighter and lighter than those of his younger superiors. “as we are sure your own attorneys will advise you,” the leaders wrote, “the legislative power of the State of Rhode Island is—and always has been—vested exclusively in the State’s democratically-elected General Assembly.” They scoffed at the commission’s claim that the 1986 ethics in Government amendment had conferred upon the ethics commission “concurrent legislative authority over matters relating to governmental ethics.” Deangelis and Bevilacqua also threatened that this move would bring “unnecessary and expensive litigation.” By invoking the specter of costly lawsuits, the two men served notice of their chokehold on the commission's budget. Not only did they control the purse strings, they could write their own check for top-flight lawyers. The letter closed with an invitation to meet. 

The commissioners instructed their attorney and executive director to talk with legislative leaders and with the governor. On September 23, lawyers from the Senate, House, and ethics commission slipped secretly into the governor’s office. The only outsider invited was Peter Lacouture, who had served in 1986 as counsel to the constitutional convention’s ethics committee.

Sheldon Whitehouse, Sundlun’s policy director, opened the meeting by stat-ing his hope that all parties could agree on the commission’s constitutional au-thority to strengthen the state’s code of ethics. at that, the General assembly’s lawyers erupted. A bearded, bearish edward Fogarty, legal counsel to House Speaker Joe Deangelis, rehashed the points already made in the leaders’ letter. 

Lacouture circulated minutes from crucial meetings of the constitutional convention’s ethics committee. He parsed the text he had drafted five years earlier, showing how the committee had reached consensus that the Ethics Commission—not the General assembly—should make ethics rules for public officials. He reminded the roomful of lawyers that voters had approved this language as a constitutional amendment. 

Both Fogarty and the Senate’s top lawyer, Thomas DeSimone, denounced the ethics amendment as contradicting centuries of legislative control. Though the two were outnumbered in the meeting, they gave no ground. They represented the most powerful politicians in Rhode Island. 

Afterwards, Gary Yesser described the donnybrook in a confidential memo to the Ethics Commission. He predicted that the General Assembly would fight for its exclusive authority over ethics rules. Yesser added his own view that the ethics commission had both a constitutional right and an obligation to adopt a code of ethics for public officials and employees.

Although his memo remained under seal, Yesser rehearsed part of what had happened during a public session on October 3. He revealed enough to let everyone in on the fiery closed-door debate. Meanwhile, in what would prove a crucial personnel change, former Sen. Mcallister’s term ended, and Gov. Sundlun appointed Richard W. Morsilli in his place.

With the sober fortitude of people who know their duty but do not relish it, the commissioners approved a series of motions required by the state’s adminstrative Procedures Act, normally cited by its initials “the APA.” The commis-sion had to approve draft regulations, advertise them, and invite comments at a public hearing. as they began voting, one proposed regulation at a time, no one spoke what everyone knew: the act of approving these rules would spark a constitutional confrontation. 

The first would remove the confidentiality of ethics complaints and open the commission's adjudicative hearings to the public. Twelve commissioners, including Morsilli, hear their names called and answered, "Yes." Roger Hall abstained but did not explain why, and Michael Morry voted "No." 

The second proposed new regulation would expand the list of family members an official could not favor from “spouse or dependent child” to “any of the following relatives . . . whether by blood, marriage, or adoption: parents, grandparents, adult children, siblings, grandchildren, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews.” Again, twelve voted yes, Hall abstained, and Morry voted no.

The third would bar officials who were members of town councils, zoning boards, or quasi-public bodies—whether they were elected or appointed—from accepting salaried positions from the body in which they served for as long as they served and for one year after they left that position. Again the votes held.

The final draft rule took direct aim at the General Assembly. Almost word for word, it was the common cause revolving door bill to stop legislators from seeking or accepting state jobs for one full year after they left their seats as senators or representatives.Without fanfare or speeches, the commissioners again voted 12–1, with one abstention.

With this series of quiet votes on a gray October afternoon, the commissioners moved across a divide that no ordinary Rhode Islander had crossed since the Dorr rebellion, a century and a half before. They declared that they would fulfill their constitutional duty to make rules for all public officials, including elected legislators. Without shouts or muskets, they assaulted the sturdy bulwark from which the General assembly had resolutely repulsed all challenges for more than three hundred years. 

The news ricocheted around the state. A Providence Journal headline declared: “tougher rules on ethics kindle political fire storm.” reporter Scott MacKay wrote that the most controversial part of the proposed new code would ban legislators from “full-time state employment while serving or within a year of leaving the assembly, unless exempted by the commission.”

Senate Majority leader John Bevilacqua blasted the vote: “I’m not going to take a whole class of people and say you can’t compete for a state job.” Bevilacqua rattled off a list of top judges who had advanced directly from the legislature to the bench. “They’re good judges,” he insisted. “You can’t just put a label on these people and say they’re not good because they’ve been members of the General assembly.” More ominously, Bruce Sundlun growled to MacKay that he thought the ethics commission had gone too far in trying to ban lawmakers from judgeships for a year after they left office. The governor portrayed himself as the prime mover in ethics: “everybody has gotten onto my ethics train,” he said, “but I still think I’m driving the engine.” 

On November 4, Sundlun formally asked the Rhode Island Supreme court to decide whether the ethics commission or the General Assembly had authority to approve ethics rules for public officials. Two days later, at the State House shortly before sunset, the ethics commission began its final required public hearing and public votes on the proposed new rules. The commission’s chairperson, William Rizzini, invited witnesses to sign in on half-sheets of paper, which a clerk collected and passed to him. Rizzini outlined the proposed new regulations and invited public comment.

Sen. Walter Gray of North Kingstown spoke first. With a twinkle, Gray announced that he had won election only a year earlier. “I’ve only been a senator since January first, so you can’t blame everything on me yet.” Gray said he had sponsored the Common Cause nepotism proposal that was now before the ethics commission. Gray told how the Senate Judiciary committee pared down the list of family whom public officials could not favor. The Senate had passed his bill on May 2, but the House, which had passed similar legislation the previous year, rejected its equivalent on May 29.

Gray declared that the ethics commission had the right and responsibility to enact nepotism rules. He warned that legislative leaders would “so emasculate the reforms that they will be unrecognizable when they finally come to a vote — if they progress that far.” He described the practice of advancing favored bills in return for loyal votes that often harmed the public interest. “It’s obvious that we’re in a war,” Gray said, “and it’s not the time for timid people or timid actions. It’s a time for courage.”

My message dovetailed with Gray’s. I listed ethics bills introduced year after year but never enacted. even after RISDIC had left citizens feeling betrayed, lawmakers protected loopholes for family favoritism. neither chamber would close the revolving door that carried many into judgeships and other permanent state jobs. I urged commissioners to outlaw these abuses. “The people autho- rized you, as members of the ethics commission — in an orderly process — to prevent such scandals. You now have that opportunity.”

Rae Condon passed out copies of her legal memo on the problem of nepotism, which she had presented to the commission three months earlier. “We’re happy this day has come,” she said. “We encourage you in your constitutional mandate to adopt the code of ethics.” Then, without mentioning that she had drafted most of the proposals, condon explained them briefly. “We urge you to fight vigorously for your right — as given by the constitution — to set standards of conduct for public officials and to establish what acts are prohibited.”

Rep. Bruce long, a republican from Middletown, testified that the General assembly had proven itself unwilling to restrict its members’ behavior. Both representatives and senators, he said, would campaign on claims that “they passed several ethics bills proposed by common cause,” even though each chamber routinely killed bills the other had passed. as a result, long said, “there is no fruit born.”

Paul Boghossian walked to the microphone. His grandfather had escaped the armenian genocide and founded the textile company that he now ran. A slender man in his thirties with curly black hair, he introduced himself as the employer of 165 people in Coventry. He told the commission that businesses were leaving Rhode Island because “the sleaze factor” was driving jobs out to other states and countries. Urging tougher ethics rules for lawmakers, judges, lawyers, and independent contractors, Boghossian insisted that the commission- had both the right and the responsibility to go forward. Yet for all that was wrong, he harbored the hope that these strong rules could address chronic problems. “look at the mess we’re in because of halfway measures in the past,” he testified. “We cannot settle for halfway measures.”

Alan Flink introduced himself as a partner at Edwards & Angell, one of the state’s most prestigious law firms. Flink said that although he was president of the Rhode Island Bar Association, he was not speaking in any representative capacity, although he hoped most lawyers would affirm what he was about to say. “This commission,” he declared in a rumbling baritone, “has been assigned the difficult task of acting as the conscience of the community. You are performing the public’s business as no other body.” Flink affirmed the proposed rule for an open complaint process. The American Bar Association, he said, had urged that all complaints against lawyers be made public from their inception. “There is no room for closed hearings on alleged public misconduct. When we open up the process, we all become more accountable to the public we serve. If we seek the public’s trust and confidence, we should be prepared to do no less.”

Flink also endorsed the revolving door rule with a new twist. He noted that there were roughly four thousand lawyers in the state: “On their behalf, I strongly object to the fact that the vast majority of those lawyers have been excluded from consideration for judicial appointments.” an informal analysis of the state courts showed that three-quarters of the judges were former legislators or had been directly involved in political activity. He also thundered against Senate Majority Leader Bevilacqua’s claim that the revolving door rule would treat legislators as second-class citizens: “to the contrary, it would appear that most of us who have been effectively excluded from the process have a more legitimate right to make that claim.” Flink struck me as a lion, deep-throated and fierce. “By creating a one-year waiting period, your proposals will assist in creating an appropriate separation between state political service and public employment. In the process, you will assist in allowing judges to be chosen on the basis of merit.”

He gathered his notes and drew a deep breath. “The message from the state’s ethical conscience should be clear and unambiguous: ‘If you serve in the legislature, concentrate on your legislative duties. Your office is not to be used as a springboard to other public employment.’”

A dozen other witnesses spoke, including Operation Clean Sweep leader Charles Silverman. With minor variations, most supported the commission’s proposed new rules.

The only disagreement came from the ACLU. Associate Director Andrea Geiger criticized the one-year revolving door prohibition: “We realize there have been some terrible abuses in the hiring system, where favoritism has clearly been used to advance legislators to high-paying state jobs.” Still, she insisted that the proposed rule was “an inappropriate and overbroad way of dealing with the problem it seeks to correct.” She added that the most controversial jobs had been created for specific legislators, or had been filled without an open and public hiring process. “Sweeping with so broad a brush as this rule does,” she reasoned, “penalizes individuals solely for serving as elected officials, not for any misconduct on their part.”

Commissioner Mel Topf asked Geiger what she thought of the one-year revolving door cooling-off periods that existed in other states.

Geiger hesitated. “I can bring that question to the director, and he would be happy to answer your question in writing.”

Topf mentioned a one-year prohibition established by the town council in Middletown. “Has the ACLU taken a stand on that?”

Geiger said she could not answer.

Sara Quinn began her testimony by refuting the ACLU position. “The revolving door philosophy,” she said, simply recognized that “the very position that an individual holds while in public office should not become an opportunity for personal benefit.”

Quinn had learned her craft under Rae Condon at the old Conflict of Interest Commission. She ridiculed the wink-and-nod corruption that could not be prosecuted under deliberately vague ethics laws. More recently, she had served on Sundlun’s ethics task Force, which she said had heard the “despair and cynicism” that spread because many thought Rhode Island could never change. She affirmed the commission’s efforts to restore public confidence by tightening the rules. “The change has already occurred,” she testified. “You are that change. When the people of Rhode Island voted in 1986 to amend the constitution, they changed the way we must govern ourselves ethically in Rhode Island.” Quinn reminded commissioners that convention delegates had just come through the RIHMFC mortgage scandal, and the state’s chief justice was under investigation while they met. Bevilacqua’s continuing associations with organized crime figures drove him out of office. It was this sense of endemic corruption that had given rise to the 1986 Ethics in Government Amendment, which mandated a strong ethics commission.

She added that voters in 1986 had understood the power they were vesting in the Ethics Commission. “I am convinced that the citizens fully intended to create an autonomous, nonpartisan commission which would act as the conscience of government to compel a higher standard of public service in this state.”

The moral force of her message rang through the room. “The people of this state chose you as their guide — not the legislature, not the supreme court, not the governor, not Common Cause, not the Governor’s Ethics task Force — but you. You possess the moral consensus of the community. You have the expertise necessary to develop a code of ethics by which all government officials and employees must abide.”

Quinn challenged the commissioners to fulfill their destiny. “The call to leadership beckons,” she said. “You have been chosen to bear this standard.”

Fully aware of what they were doing, commissioners crossed the Rubicon.

 

©2014 H. Philip West Jr.

H. Philip West Jr. served from 1988 to 2006 as executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006, chronicles major government reforms during those years.
He helped organize coalitions that led in passage of dozens of ethics and open government laws and five major amendments to the Rhode Island Constitution, including the 2004 Separation of Powers Amendment.

West hosted many delegations from the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program that came to learn about ethics and separation of powers. In 2000, he addressed a conference on government ethics laws in Tver, Russia. After retiring from Common Cause, he taught Ethics in Public Administration to graduate students at the University of Rhode Island.

Previously, West served as pastor of United Methodist churches and ran a settlement house on the Bowery in New York City. He helped with the delivery of medicines to victims of the South African-sponsored civil war in Mozambique and later assisted people displaced by Liberia’s civil war. He has been involved in developing affordable housing, day care centers, and other community services in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

West graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., received his masters degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and published biblical research he completed at Cambridge University in England. In 2007, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Rhode Island College.

Since 1965 he has been married to Anne Grant, an Emmy Award-winning writer, a nonprofit executive, and retired United Methodist pastor. They live in Providence and have two grown sons, including cover illustrator Lars Grant-West. 

This electronic version of SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006 omits notes, which fill 92 pages in the printed text.

Related Articles

• Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter One
• Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Two
• Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Six
• Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Five
• Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Four
• Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Three
• Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Seven

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