NEW: RISC Backs GOP Appeal in Legislative Grants Case
Monday, February 27, 2012
The Rhode Island Statewide Coalition (RISC) is continuing its legal support for the state’s GOP legislative caucus as it argues an appeal to the State Supreme Court this week in a case against the General Assembly’s legislative grants system.
RISC filed an amicus brief to the original case, Watson vs. Murphy, after the case was first rejected by a state Superior Court judge in 2008. The case will be heard before the Supreme Court this Tuesday, February 28th.
The issue of so-called standing in the case must first be resolved before the merits of the actual legislative grants system can be taken up. The lower court had ruled House Republicans do not have standing, as they cannot prove direct injury or harm by the grants system. The friend of the court brief filed by RISC focuses in on the right of the taxpayer to enter the legal challenge. The RISC brief, which was filed by attorney Thomas Bender on behalf of the RISC sister organization, the RISC Foundation, cites rulings in other states where the question of taxpayers’ standing in cases challenging the expenditures of public funds has prevailed. (Judges in other states have viewed the unlawful expenditure of taxpayer funds as having the potential to injure the property rights of the taxpayer, an issue courts have equated with having substantial public importance.)
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“Doling out public funds in a less than transparent way, as is presently done with these grants, warrants a legal challenge, regardless of the worthiness of most of the programs,” states RISC Executive Director Harriet Lloyd. “We view it as a fundamental right of the taxpayer to challenge the expenditure of public funds and would hope the Supreme Court will recognize there is taxpayer standing here and allow the GOP caucus to proceed with the merits of the case.”
Sports Institute Scandal Raises Questions on use of $5 Million in Public Grants over 2 decades
Lloyd also notes the growing scandal over the alleged misuse of and/or missing public funds at the non-profit Institute for International Sport at URI raises new questions about public grants.
“ The growing scandal at the Institute raises troubling questions not only about the awarding of public grant funds by the state Legislature, but also about the lack of tracking or oversight of those funds once distributed,” Lloyd adds.
Recent news reports have cited the fact that the Institute received more than $5 million in state funds over two decades and several more recent grants remain unaccounted for, including: a $575,000 grant awarded in 2007 for the construction of a facility which not only never got built, but about $400,000 remains unaccounted for; and a $157,500 community service grant awarded last fall which was part of an automatic renewal grant program run by the Legislature which appears to have very little oversight. It has also been revealed that although the Institute was not submitting the required annual financial reports with the Secretary of State’s office in recent years and had received warnings about it, grant money was continuing to be doled out. Speaker Fox and Senate President Paiva-Weed have stated in recent days that they will pursue some form of reimbursement to the Legislature of those funds, but it remains unclear if that will be possible.
The court challenge to the grants process, which is being argued by former Rep. Nicholas Gorham, asserts that the longstanding General Assembly practice of having legislative leadership arbitrarily dole out grant money to individual legislators for their hometown organizations or projects violates the state constitution.
The specific charge is that Article 6, Section 11 of the RI Constitution states that expenditures of taxpayer funds for use by local bodies or private purposes, requires a two-thirds vote of approval in each chamber of the Legislature. The lawsuit is filed against the Legislature’s own Joint Committee on Legislative Services (JCLS), because a five member panel within JCLS, which consists of General Assembly top leadership, determines which grants get awarded and the size of the awards.
