Guest MINDSETTER ™ Art Norwalk: Vote Yes to Remove Jackson From Office

Saturday, April 29, 2017

Guest MINDSETTER ™ Art Norwalk

Kevin Jackson

On Tuesday, May 2, the voters of Providence’s Ward 3 – stretching from Mount Hope through Summit to Blackstone Blvd. – have a chance to advance the cause of honest government in the city.

These voters will be asked to decide if Kevin Jackson, the longest-serving member of the City Council, should be removed from office. Yes or No.

The issues that brought Jackson and his constituents to this critical decision point began with the councilman’s repeated failure to file campaign finance reports with the state Board of Elections and his failure to pay thousands of dollars in penalties for not filing. It was hard for people to imagine why he wouldn’t follow the law on finance reporting, until he actually filed a bunch of reports in late 2013 showing no campaign contributions or expenses. When staff at the Board of Elections ran a computer analysis of those reports, they found evidence that Jackson had, in fact, received donations and spent campaign funds. Hearing this evidence from staff, the board voted to refer the matter to the attorney general for “civil or criminal” prosecution.

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Inexplicably, it took nearly two years for the attorney general’s office to act on the Jackson matter. But once they referred it to the state police, it was only a few months before the shocking full story was laid bare. Examination of Jackson’s finances turned up what appears to be strong evidence that the councilman had embezzled over $127,000 from a non-profit youth sports organization he had founded years earlier (a group that had received significant taxpayer funding authorized by the city council when Jackson led its finance committee). A grand jury indicted Jackson for that felony, plus charges of using campaign funds for personal expenses and filing false reports.

The only things more surprising than his alleged looting of the sports group were 1) that Jackson did not immediately resign from the council, and 2) that a majority of his council colleagues seemed content to have him stay in office. Compare this with the cases of Gordon Fox and Raymond Gallison, both of whom had the decency to resign as leaders and leave office as state representatives soon after being accused of criminal conduct. Jackson did step aside as majority leader but has clearly retained influence on the council.

When it became clear that Jackson wasn’t going anywhere of his own accord, a small group of Ward 3 voters began exploring the idea of recall. The fact that it had never succeeded in Rhode Island in anyone’s memory did not stop them, and they began the process last summer. Despite trumped-up, frivolous legal challenges from Jackson and his lawyers at every step, the group succeeded in collecting valid petition signatures from over 20 percent of the ward’s voters and the stage was set to call an election.

In a last-ditch attempt to save their indicted colleague from the will of the voters, a majority of council members was reportedly poised to boycott a meeting on the last possible day to officially set the election. Through intervention by Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, the state Board of Elections called a meeting for one hour after the scheduled council meeting with the clear intention to set the recall election if the council failed to meet its responsibility. With no place to hide, the pro-Jackson council faction agreed to set the May 2 date, avoiding the embarrassment of having the state do their job.

Episodes like this attempt by the council leadership show that this case is about more than the alleged crimes of Kevin Jackson. The courts will decide his legal guilt or innocence (likely sometime in the distant future). But on Tuesday, May 2, the voters will decide, based on what they know and believe, whether Jackson is fit to serve on the council right now.

If Kevin Jackson is allowed to continue in office it will send a message that lawbreaking and backroom politics as usual are still OK in Providence.

A Yes vote to remove Jackson from the council sends a very different message: it says that citizens do care about the honor and honesty of their elected officials and are willing to stand up and be counted when their trust is violated.

Guest MINDSETTER ™ Art Norwalk: Vote Yes to Remove Jackson From Office

Related Slideshow: Jackson Files 58 Page Lawsuit

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