Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 21
Monday, July 27, 2015
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.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTH 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 2
JUDGES AND LAWMAKERS
Chapter 21
Petitioning Government (1993)
“I’d like your support for our SLAPP suit legislation,” ACLU Director Steven Brown said on the phone. “SLAPP is an acronym for ‘Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.’ It means that ordinary people get ‘slapped’ for exercising their First Amendment right to petition government for the redress of grievances.” Legislation to counter SLAPP suits had died in the two previous legislative sessions. We agreed to talk that afternoon at the State House.
Steve Brown had led the ACLU’s Rhode Island affiliate long before I came to Common Cause. Our organizations took opposite sides on some issues but worked together on others. We had pushed together to simplify voter registration but crossed swords over ethics and campaign finance reforms. Common Cause wanted disclosure by campaign donors, while the ACLU resisted revelations that might invade givers’ personal privacy. The ACLU had filed suit in U.S. District Court against sections of the 1992 Comprehensive Campaign Finance Law, and Judge Raymond J. Pettine overturned several minor provisions. Despite frequent public disputes, our differences never became personal.
In a file of newspaper clippings I found accounts of lawsuits filed by a former candidate for Congress. In 1990, Charles H. Gifford III had run for Congress in the 2nd District but lost the Democratic primary to Jack Reed, then a state senator. After RISDIC’s collapse in 1991, state bank examiners reported that Gifford had received favored treatment from the Davisville Credit Union. He had borrowed $2.6 million — $600,000 more than the legal limit. He sued two North Kingstown women — Isabel Bergeron and Nancy Hsu Fleming — who blamed him publicly for contributing to the RISDIC crisis. Claiming that their remarks were “willful, wanton, and malicious,” he sought punitive damages.
Gifford and two business partners ran a fifteen-acre landfill that had prompted numerous complaints over strange odors that wafted through nearby neighborhoods. The North Kingstown Standard-Times published a story in which neighbors charged that samples of water from test wells around the dump had been “doctored.” Gifford demanded a retraction, but when the paper refused, Gifford and his partners sued. They filed a second suit against Nancy Hsu Fleming, who had written to the state Department of Environmental Management (DEM) that toxic chemicals from what she called “their dump” were leaching into nearby wells.
Providence Journal reporter Peter Lord described other Rhode Island cases that appeared to be SLAPP suits. In one instance an environmental group in Warwick had tried to block plans to bulldoze towering pine trees for development. Neighborhood leaders raised $20,000 for lawyers but lost in court. The project went forward, and the developer sued the local activists for $500,000, claiming the environmental group “never had a case.” He called their tactics “legal sleaze” and “environmental terrorism.” He insisted that the activists had cost him half a million dollars, and he wanted to be made whole.
Other retaliatory lawsuits sprouted. In Narragansett, homeowners opposed the renewal of a liquor license at a nightclub renowned for rowdy parties. The club owner sued, claiming financial harm. In Burrillville, when an activist warned the town council against a proposed harness track, the promoter sued.
Steve Brown and I met in a nook between soaring marble columns. He plopped a thick folder full of bills on the balustrade. With our backs to the throng of other lobbyists, he talked about how Nancy Hsu Fleming personified the need to counter SLAPP suits. “She got her facts right, and she petitioned DEM to protect the public from serious hazards. For doing her civic duty, she got slapped.” He handed me a faxed letter from Fleming to DEM director Louise Durfee. It claimed that Gifford’s dump contained construction debris and other hazardous waste, that toxic contaminants had seeped into monitoring wells, that the EPA was considering a Superfund designation, and that the owners had resisted DEM’s efforts to regulate their activities.
Brown said California and Washington State had already enacted laws to blunt the use of SLAPP suits, and he hoped Rhode Island would do the same. He pointed to the section of the bill on legislative findings: “There has been a disturbing increase in lawsuits brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances.” The text specified that anyone sued while exercising the “right of petition or of free speech under the U.S. or Rhode Island constitutions in connection with a matter of public concern” could file a motion to have that suit summarily dismissed. A court could then delay the SLAPP suit or throw it out entirely.
“What we need to do,” he said, “is shift the burden of proof from those who petition government to those who try to silence them. This bill would grant the petitioner who gets slapped what we call ‘conditional immunity’ against libel and slander suits. That means that a SLAPP suit can’t stick if the petitioner has been trying in good faith to have government act in the public interest.”
Although I had never met Nancy Hsu Fleming, a Common Cause recruiting poster came to mind, and I described it to Brown. People in work clothes glared at the camera. One word in bold type called them “troublemakers.”
Brown laughed. “That’s Nancy Hsu, all right.”
I promised to take the issue to our board. After he left, I sorted through the bill’s dry legal algebra as radiant sunshine spread across the fluted marble columns. Players became the “moving party” or the “responding party.” All were entangled in what the bill called “claims, counterclaims, or cross-claims.” Missing from the verbiage on paper was the adrenalin rush of waking up terrified in the dark of night. How could any ordinary person raise enough to pay lawyers for a protracted court battle?
Nancy Hsu Fleming became a perfect icon for the fight against SLAPP suits. She had been raised in Taiwan under brutal martial law that lingered after the death of President Chiang Kai-shek. At the Taipei American School she developed a flawless command of English. She went to college in San Francisco, where she met and married a Vietnam War veteran named Christopher Fleming. Like many immigrants who escape repressive regimes, she cherished the U.S. Constitution and was mystified when Americans took it lightly. “Gifford’s lawsuit scared us,” she told me over the phone. “But I went from scared to angry. That man was trying to take away my constitutional right to petition the government for the redress of grievances.”
Unknown to me, Nancy Hsu and Christopher Fleming were already members of Common Cause. She arrived early for our board meeting, petite and graceful with a resonant voice. I helped her mount scientific maps imprinted with the EPA’s logo on one wall.
With precise strokes, she oriented board members from where Dry Bridge Road crossed over the Amtrak main line. “Here’s the dump,” she explained, “and here’s where families live. These dots show test wells that the EPA drilled. This shading marks what hydrologists call ‘the plume,’ the flow of underground water in the aquifer that feeds neighborhood wells.” The EPA had documented excessive levels of lead, cadmium, and DEHP, a chemical used in the manufacture of plastics. “What troubled me,” she said, “was a long history of citizen complaints about midnight dumping, chemical odors, and all the rest. But DEM did nothing. They didn’t close the dump. They didn’t even issue a citation.”
Fleming said she had written to the Department of Environmental Management: “Besides polluting our aquifer, I specified the kinds of solid wastes that were being dumped, including thousands of old railroad ties treated with creosote and mountains of construction debris. The EPA was in the process of designating the dump as a Superfund site. I reminded the DEM that Mr. Gifford and his partners had resisted every effort to regulate their operation.”
Her contralto voice had the warm timbre of a bassoon. “Before DEM could even respond, I started getting letters from Mr. Gifford’s lawyers. They charged that I was ‘engendering unjustified concern about the safety of their operations’ and that I was ‘jeopardizing their license.’ They demanded legal proof or a retraction. They threatened a lawsuit.”
Her voice rose. “How could I retract the facts? If I had retracted, I would have been lying. Instead, I wrote back to Mr. Gifford’s lawyers: ‘The United States Constitution grants me the right to petition government. In this instance, I am petitioning state government to close and clean up your client’s dump.’ ”
The SLAPP suit came quickly, charging that she had made “defamatory statements.” Gifford’s lawyers wrote: “Her conduct clearly has been designed to malign the plaintiffs and generate public opinion adverse to them and the facility.” The suit demanded an award of compensatory and punitive damages, as well as court costs with interest.
Fleming paused to let her story sink in. “Can you imagine how it feels when people with political power and lots of money and teams of lawyers come after you? Chris and I thought we would have to mortgage our home to pay a lawyer. What a relief when the ACLU agreed to take our case.”
After her presentation, Don Elbert, a lawyer who now chaired our ethics committee, described SLAPP suits as an unsavory fad among lawyers. “I’m not an expert,” he said, “but it’s clear that they’re wreaking havoc across the country, suing activists who have done nothing more than raise concerns, as Nancy has tried to do.”
He explained that most retaliatory lawsuits would fail if they went to trial, but they seldom did. “Unfortunately, many people without Nancy’s courage simply give up the fight. When that happens, the SLAPP suit serves its purpose.” Then Elbert walked our board through the bill’s intricate language. “In a word, this bill sets up a legal procedure which allows the target of a SLAPP suit to go to Superior Court and seek its dismissal through a declaratory judgment.”
As sensible as that seemed, the bill had run into a buzz saw of opposition in 1991 and 1992. “They buried it in each of the last two years,” Elbert said. “Our committee recommends that Common Cause Rhode Island declare our support and help secure passage this year.”
Elbert and his committee had done their homework. The board voted unanimously to go forward.
Charlie Silverman, now the leader of Operation Clean Sweep, phoned to seek support for voter initiative. He knew Common Cause had supported the concept, often called “Initiative and Referendum,” in the mid-1980s. He hoped we would again.
“That was before my time,” I said. During months that we had worked together on merit selection of judges, I had developed an abiding appreciation of this short, bald man who made his living as an illustrator, drawing exquisite shorebirds, sailboats, and lighthouses. He feared no one, and his reformist passion won grudging respect even from hardened politicians. I promised to do some research and call him back.
The right to petition government has deep roots in English common law. The First Amendment of the Constitution forbade Congress — and by extension any part of government — from interfering with religious practice, free speech, freedom of the press, the right of assembly, and the right to petition government for the redress of grievances.
I had heard of voter initiatives in other states but knew virtually nothing about the process itself. In our files, I found a printed report on initiative and referendum that Common Cause had produced for the 1986 Constitutional Convention. Marilyn Hines and Mollie Gibbons described a process that allowed citizens to place questions directly on the ballot by collecting signatures rather than by lobbying state legislators. They wrote that one Swiss canton had allowed citizens to petition for laws since 1309, and nineteenth-century American progressives had adapted the process. During the 1890s, the Populist Party embraced voter initiative, and South Dakotans approved a constitutional amendment in 1898. Over the next twenty years, eighteen additional states amended their constitutions to allow citizens to initiate laws or constitutional amendments. Then, for forty years, no state approved the voter initiative process.
Alaska became a state in 1959 and included voter initiative in its constitution. Between 1968 and 1992, four other states — Wyoming, Illinois, Florida, and Mississippi — amended their constitutions to permit initiatives. Most of the states where voter initiative took root lay west of the Appalachian Mountains, while along the East Coast only Maine, Massachusetts, and Florida practiced what many called “direct democracy.”
Common Cause had hoped Rhode Island would join the movement. As executive director in the mid-1980s, Marilyn Hines distributed copies of her report and lobbied delegates at the 1986 Constitutional Convention to place voter initiative on the ballot, but the issue proved divisive. The AFL-CIO and the business-backed Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council (RIPEC) both warned convention delegates about the way that financial interests had fueled initiatives in other states, such as California’s 1978 Proposition 13 against increases in property taxes, which voters approved. Taxpayer groups, meanwhile, argued that only voter initiative could impose meaningful restrictions on burgeoning taxes in Rhode Island. Convention president Keven A. McKenna and others close to House Speaker Matthew Smith insisted that initiative petitions must not be allowed to alter the taxing or budgeting authority of the General Assembly.
A spectrum of grassroots groups ranging from the ACLU to Ecology Action and the League of Women Voters had opposed any restrictions on issues that initiatives could address. Delegates narrowly backed a version that would forbid initiatives aimed at changing the state’s tax system or restricting its budget. Common Cause reluctantly supported what it saw as a flawed proposal. By a narrow margin voters rejected the 1986 voter initiative question.
An entirely different issue gave me pause. Conservative Christian groups in Colorado had recently used voter initiative to write an anti-gay amendment into that state’s constitution. Between 1977 and 1991, the cities of Aspen, Boulder, and Denver had passed ordinances that banned discrimination against gays and lesbians in education, housing, and employment. Anti-gay crusaders collected enough signatures, and 53 percent of state voters barred the state or any of its municipalities from protecting gay rights of any kind. A Colorado district court judge blocked enforcement on the ground that the amendment violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. No one knew how the nation’s highest court might rule if the case ever got that far.
I phoned Charlie Silverman to ask what he thought.
“We have no position on gay rights,” he replied. “That’s not our issue in any way.”
I understood. “But your legislation doesn’t protect against what happened in Colorado.”
“Our bill is exactly what Common Cause supported in 1986.”
“It is,” I agreed. “But times have changed. What if anti-gay groups tried to use voter initiative against minorities in Rhode Island?”
“I couldn’t support that,” Silverman said.
“So would Operation Clean Sweep support modifying the text to prevent any Rhode Island initiative from attempting to roll back civil rights, as they did in Colorado?”
“That’s not my decision alone,” he said. “But it’s worth considering.”
I mentioned a second problem that the current legislation did not address. Several banks had challenged a Massachusetts law that barred them from spending to influence voters on ballot questions. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations — like individual citizens — were entitled to express their views on state constitutional amendments. The decision, First National Bank v. Bellotti, allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on ballot questions.
Judge Raymond J. Pettine had cited Bellotti in blocking part of our 1992 Comprehensive Campaign Finance Law that barred corporations from contributing to ballot campaigns. I told Silverman that those related federal decisions could open the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending on Rhode Island ballot questions.
Silverman pondered this. “You mean there’s no way to stop big corporations and unions from spending whatever they please?”
“For all practical purposes,” I said, “these rulings made corporate spending legal and limits on spending unconstitutional.” I recalled that Alan Hassenfeld had spent $50,000 in 1992 to produce three campaign commercials for four-year terms. Several banks and chambers of commerce had paid to broadcast the ads.
“And you got sixty percent of the vote,” Silverman said. “Isn’t it strange that a reform intended to counter corporate interests a century ago could now be overwhelmed by big money?”
The director of California Common Cause had told us that corporate interests were investing in initiative campaigns rather than traditional lobbying. I told Silverman about armies of paid signature-gatherers deployed to resemble grassroots groups.
“I’ve heard about that,” Silverman agreed. “They call it ‘Astroturf.’”
I suggested stringent financial disclosure rules for ballot questions. We would not stop moneyed interests from hiding behind phony front groups, but we might force them to disclose.
There was a third problem. Initiative propositions in California had become too long and complicated for voters to understand. In 1988 and 1990, a dozen propositions on California ballots had run more than five thousand words each.
“And not simple words,” he agreed. “Complicated legal gibberish.”
I described a California requirement that the attorney general provide a brief, nonpartisan summary. Even with that, I said, details often overwhelmed voters.
Ever the optimist, Silverman suggested that we develop a list of changes to the bill. “We want something that’s going to work, and we want Common Cause on board again.”
Over several weeks in the fall of 1993, we drafted specific wording to lessen opportunities for abuse and presented them to our boards. We added language to block any initiative that might undercut civil rights or liberties. Any individual or group that felt their rights were at risk would have automatic standing to ask a Superior Court judge to block the signature-gathering from going forward. Those who gathered signatures, furthermore, must be registered Rhode Island voters and wear badges that gave their names. Solicitors’ badges must include bold labels in block capitals indicating a volunteer circulator or a paid circulator. To avoid the problem of lengthy and complex questions, we would require that the text of the initiative be no longer than 125 words.
Even with these changes, Common Cause board members were less supportive of voter initiative than their predecessors had been in 1986. Greta Abbott, who chaired the government reform committee, summarized the organization’s historic support and recent developments. “In states with voter initiative,” she said, “citizens groups often have to spend enormous amounts fighting bad initiatives rather than promoting positive changes.”
Mike Smith, now vice president of the board, said he thought voter initiative would again face concerted opposition from labor, business, and civil rights groups, not to mention legislators themselves. “There’s virtually no chance that the General Assembly will agree to put voter initiative on the ballot,” he said. “And frankly — with some of the abuses we’ve seen in other states — I’m not sure we should pour a lot of political capital into a fight we won’t win. I suggest that if we support voter initiative, we should not make it a priority.”
Our victories in 1992 had propelled board president Cathy Speer onto the Common Cause national governing board. “Almost every time I go to Washington,” she said, “people from other states talk about problems with voter initiatives. But in the next breath, they say it’s a tool they’d never want to lose.” Speer said she was of two minds about supporting voter initiative.
Without passion or disagreement, Common Cause Rhode Island reaffirmed its previous support for voter initiative and referendum — provided the amendment establishing the process included the specific prohibitions we had discussed. No one in the room suggested that this vote might prove contentious or bring fierce struggles in years to come.
Nancy Hsu Fleming personified the campaign against SLAPP suits. Although English was her second language, she vividly evoked constitutional principles. She enjoyed reporters, and they warmed to her. Charles Gifford, by contrast, was aloof and hid behind his lawyers. He had money and power, but his behavior made him seem callous.
Women legislators also championed Fleming’s cause. North Kingstown Rep. Suzanne M. Henseler and Providence Sen. Myrth York, both Democrats, sponsored the anti-SLAPP legislation in their chambers. Henseler argued that law enforcement depended on citizen complaints: “The little guy with pertinent information stands no chance against large companies with the financial wherewithal to threaten or pursue legal action.”
When Gifford’s SLAPP suit advanced to Superior Court, Atty. Gen. Jeffrey Pine moved to have it dismissed. “The threat of such a lawsuit tends to inhibit public participation,” Pine declared, “and thereby limits the flow of information from citizens to their elected officials.” His 25-page amicus brief added little to the legal discussion, but the weight of his office balanced the scales against Gifford’s SLAPP suit.
Every new story summarized Fleming’s case for readers who might have missed earlier accounts. “It’s not me alone they’re attacking,” she told one reporter. “It’s really a very basic right that we’re all entitled to.”
The House had passed SLAPP suit bills in both 1991 and 1992, but the Senate did not. In 1993, with leadership changes in both chambers, the legislation passed easily in the Senate but nearly died in the House. John Harwood had resisted passage in previous years. One of his most enthusiastic supporters was Rep. Vincent J. Mesolella, a developer renowned for his hard-fisted tactics. Mesolella had railed against local groups that opposed his projects, claiming they engaged in emotional arguments and “failed to get their facts straight.”
Rep. Charles T. Knowles, a Narragansett lawyer who had supported earlier iterations of the anti-SLAPP bill, now chaired the House Judiciary Committee at Harwood’s behest, and his position shifted. He seemed reluctant about the very legislation he had pushed in two prior legislative sessions. From his end of the committee’s long oak table, he treated Nancy Hsu Fleming with elaborate courtesy but challenged my testimony. “What bothers me with all this gobbledygook about these ‘civil claims, counterclaims, or cross-claims against said party’ based on a claimed ‘right of petition or free speech’ is just this: What if some disgruntled citizen is just engaging in character assassination? What if their real goal is just stalling a project to death?”
“Respectfully, Mr. Chairman,” I replied. “That wasn’t the case when these dump owners filed their SLAPP suit against Nancy Hsu Fleming. You’ve seen her maps. . . .”
“But suppose it was? Just suppose that — instead of being as pure as the driven snow — she just didn’t like the owners of the landfill? Suppose she made herself a royal pain in the posterior for no purpose but to drive them out of business?”
I smiled down the long table at him. “We think a judge would read the law and say: ‘Look, the preponderance of the evidence doesn’t satisfy me that her petitioning is only a stall.’ ”
“But without criteria written into the law how can a judge predict the petitioner’s motivation?” Knowles demanded.
The bill said nothing about motivation. I tried to respond that a judge would decide whether evidence supported Fleming’s claim that she had petitioned a government agency to act purely on a matter of public concern.
“But help me understand here,” Knowles countered. “What if her motive really is to delay the project and make it economically unfeasible? What judge can judge that? Have you provided any standard in the bill?”
I had to admit we had not.
“So would Common Cause be amenable to adding a standard here? What if we were to add that a petitioning party who engaged in ‘a course of tortious conduct’ might not get a declaratory judgment to dismiss?”
I was caught flat-footed. In a chair along the wall, Steve Brown sat stoically.
I said I could not agree to change the bill’s text. I said only the sponsor, Rep. Suzanne Henseler, and the ACLU, which drafted the bill, could agree to such a change.
“But don’t you think it makes sense to add an exception? What if your supposed SLAPP suit victim had engaged in a course of tortious conduct?”
I had only a vague idea what he was talking about. “At this point,” I said, “I’d be reluctant.”
“At this point?” Knowles demanded. “Then, when? We’re nearly at the end of the session, and I’m not ready to recommend passage without some changes. You and Steve Brown stick around after this hearing.”
After the committee adjourned, Brown and I watched from our seats while other lobbyists stroked Knowles’s ego. Committee members made their way into his office for sandwiches and cans of soda. It was the ACLU’s bill, and any decision on compromise language would be Brown’s call.
Rather than inviting us into his office, Knowles met with us at his end of the committee table. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t pass this,” he said slyly. “I just can’t imagine it passing in this form.”
“So what exactly would you change?” Steve Brown asked.
“What if we inserted a requirement,” Knowles grinned, “that the SLAPPee, if you’ll allow me to coin a word, not have engaged in ‘a course of tortious conduct’?”
“Meaning exactly?” Brown asked.
“A course of tortious conduct,” Knowles repeated his phrase. “If they’re slamming the government agency with repetitious motions that keep hammering the unfortunate business owner as if he were a Simon Legree. . . .” He let it hang.
It was clear that Knowles would not move the very anti-SLAPP legislation he had supported in two prior years and which had finally passed the Senate. His price for passage would be additional language that those initiating SLAPP suits had not engaged in “a course of tortious conduct.”
“Let us get back to you,” Brown said. Afterwards in the empty hallway he said that clause would create a huge loophole in the bill.
“Would it be fatal?” I asked.
“In my mind, it would,” he said. “But I’ll call around to our committee and ask. They may say we should reject it outright. Or they may agree to pass the concept this year and — if there’s a problem — fix it later.”
The rotunda was empty as we descended the marble stairs. “My prediction,” Brown said as we stepped out into the humid night, “is that if this passes the way Knowles wants, a judge will decide Nancy Hsu has engaged in ‘tortious conduct,’ and we’ll wind up having to fight this one more time.”
We crossed Smith Street and turned in opposite directions toward our cars. From a traffic light down by the Moshassuck River, cars accelerated around the Roger Williams Memorial and up Smith Hill. Since the early days of Rhode Island’s “lively experiment,” idealistic people like Roger Williams and Steve Brown had struggled against those who scorned civil liberties. As sharply as Brown and I sometimes disagreed, I felt certain he would never betray principles we shared. But if Knowles’s amendment weakened the anti-SLAPP bill, would we spend years waiting for a remedy to protect the likes of Nancy Hsu Fleming?
The 1993 General Assembly session stretched deep into July and became the second longest in Rhode Island’s history. In spite of losing his post as chair of House Judiciary, Jeffrey Teitz had sponsored two significant reforms that became law. The first was a ballot question to let voters decide in 1994 on a constitutional amendment that would require any future casino to win voter approval both statewide and in the community where a gambling facility would be located. The second, called “State Vendors’ Disclosure,” required any corporation that received state contracts worth $5,000 or more to report political contributions of $250 or more made by its officers and their family members to candidates for statewide general office. The vendors’ disclosure law was the only plank in the RIght Now! platform that had not passed in 1992. It would finally become law a year later.
Final passage of the anti-SLAPP legislation came on July 19 after the ACLU agreed to Knowles’s “course of tortious conduct” clause. Gov. Sundlun signed it into law. Court challenges began almost immediately and would continue for years.
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 Slideshow: Rhode Island’s History of Political Corruption
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 Three
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Four
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Five
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Six
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Seven
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Eight
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Nine
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Ten
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Eleven
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Twelve
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Thirteen
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Fourteen
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 15
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 16
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 17
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 18
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 19
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 20
