NEW: Common Cause Launches Website to Reverse Ethics Bill Decision

Monday, March 18, 2013

GoLocalProv News Team

One week after taking Gordon Fox to task for his decision to nullify a vote by the House Judiciary Committee on a bill that would ask Rhode Island voters to amend the state’s constitution and restore power to the ethics commission over General Assembly members, Common Cause has launched a website to increase public pressure on the House Speaker.

The government watchdog announced today that it has created the site www.ethicsheldhostage.com to “commemorate this unprecedented seizure of the House and its Committee process by Speaker Fox and to call for a reversal of the nullification of the Committee vote on H 5498.”

“The people of Rhode Island have twice been let down by the House leadership in this instance,” said John Marion, Executive Director of Common Cause, “First, when the leadership nullified the vote in unprecedented fashion, and next when it bottled up this legislation in committee indefinitely. If the House leadership can order a vote to disappear, then it can just as easily reinstate it.”

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Currently, the site has a clock counting the minutes since Fox's decision last week under the banner "Ethics in Rhode Island have been held hostage for the last..." and a number of links for viewers to contact Fox's office by phone, by Twitter and through email.

For more information, visit the site at http://ethicsheldhostage.com/.

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