Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Six
Monday, April 13, 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.
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.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTEach 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: DiPrete, RISDIC
Dashed Hopes 1991
Near the Common Cause office on Smith Street were two Chinese restaurants. Mandarin Garden was plain, quick, and cheap. Little Chopsticks charged more but offered the choice between a glassed-in patio facing the street and secluded booths inside. I met Michael Smith at Chopsticks in a booth at the back. He said he had wondered whether I would agree to meet anyone from the DiPrete administration.
I laughed. “You took me by surprise. not many DiPrete people call me.”
Like his mentor, Smith had deep brown eyes and a broad face. He could have passed for a younger cousin or a nephew. He said most of his former colleagues felt that DiPrete had done nothing worse than previous Rhode Island governors: “They would argue that the rules have changed, that this governor was being held to a higher standard.”
“What would they think if they knew you were having lunch with me?”
He chuckled. “They might say I always was an outlier.”
Michael Smith had served as DiPrete’s policy director and speechwriter. “I believe in campaign finance reform,” he said. “I didn’t get the issue onto his agenda until the very end. I sometimes drafted speeches calling for campaign reforms, but he struck those parts.”
“When did you become aware that DiPrete was steering contracts to campaign contributors?”
“Only when the stories broke in the newspaper,” he said. “Even then, I had found it hard to believe. However they pulled it off, they kept it close. I’m one of those Republicans who agree with Teddy Roosevelt that if political contributions are in any way extorted, ‘then the giving and receiving becomes not only improper but criminal.’”
“Don’t you mean Franklin Roosevelt?”
“I mean Teddy,” he said. “In his 1905 State of the Union address, he urged Congress to outlaw corporate contributions. He wanted both Congress and state legislatures to prohibit the use of stockholders’ money for political purposes.”
I admitted I had never heard that.
“You’re not alone. It’s rarely taught in schools.” He munched his chicken and cashews. “Theodore Roosevelt also called for full reporting of contributions, both to candidates and to political parties. He told Congress the result would be ‘wholesome.’”
Smith had kept an eye on the campaign finance reforms common cause had pushed without success over several years, and he had urged the governor to participate in the matching-funds program. “The blow-out of spending,” he said, “shows how badly rhode Island needs campaign finance reform.”
I mentioned that Rep. Jeffrey Teitz was developing a comprehensive campaign finance bill, interweaving his own ideas with separate bills Common Cause had developed. Teitz aimed to improve the reporting of campaign contributions, end the laundering of contributions through political parties, ban all corporate contributions, and outlaw the personal use of campaign contributions.
“All excellent and much needed,” Smith said. “That’s part of why I wanted to serve in government. I wish we could have passed campaign finance reforms when I was in the governor’s office. Now that the DiPrete administration is history, I’d like to help Common Cause. Call it contrition or penance, I’m ready to help.”
From its inception Common Cause had declared itself a “citizens’ lobby,” constantly pushing for laws and court decisions that would make government more open and accountable. In hopes of drawing attention to our 1991 legislation, that February we scheduled a press conference in Room 313, the mahogany-paneled hearing room used by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sponsors of our bills sat in a row of senators’ seats.
Cathy Speer, our board president, opened the event by announcing that Common Cause had filed an Ethics Complaint against then-Gov. DiPrete more than two years earlier, but the Ethics Commission had yet to move forward with a full investigation. One of our bills, Speer said, would require the commission to complete its preliminary investigation of a complaint within six months. If commissioners missed that deadline, they would have to dismiss the complaint and explain why.
The gag rule, which threatened a $10,000 fine, remained on the books but could not be enforced after Judge Raymond Pettine’s 1989 ruling that it was unconstitutional. I watched for reactions as she broke the news. If any in the hearing room were shocked, they hid it.
Speer segued to other reforms: lifting the secrecy of ethics complaints and removing hefty fines for complainants who might speak to the press. Although Judge Pettine had enjoined the commission not to enforce the gag rule, it remained in the law. Her deep alto timbre communicated more sorrow than indignation. “When the Ethics Commission finally begins an adjudicative hearing on our complaint — if it ever does — that will happen behind closed doors, because that’s what the law still requires. We think it’s time for the public to hear the witnesses and see the evidence in open session.”
Legislative sponsors took turns describing the bills they were introducing on behalf of Common Cause.
Rep. Frank Gaschen outlined four. “As Cathy mentioned,” he began in a reedy voice, “one would require the speedier finding of probable cause. There’s no reason for the commission’s preliminary investigation to take two years.” He never mentioned his 1986 effort to require that Rhode Island credit unions get federal insurance. Thin and with prematurely graying hair, he now seemed prescient, even heroic, as he described his bills. “I wish these had become law last year. I hope they’ll fare better amid the RISDIC scandal than they did before it.”
Seven other sponsors at microphones took turns explaining their bills. Myrth York, a lawyer and first-year senator from the East Side of Providence, described how lawmakers traded their duty to the public for permanent state jobs. “My revolving door bill would make it illegal for any member of the General Assembly to seek or accept any state employment while they serve in the Senate or House and for one year after they leave office. In simple terms, it would stop the revolving door from elective office to a judgeship with a high salary and life tenure.”
York was new to the Senate and understood that her bill would enrage legislative leaders. A reporter asked if she had any trepidation about filing controversial legislation that would probably never pass.
“Why should I be afraid?” she asked. “The voters sent me here to challenge a dysfunctional status quo. And I believe that — sooner or later — this will become law in Rhode Island. I believe we will abolish the revolving door. If we don’t start now, when will we start?”
Most of our sponsors had filed similar Common Cause bills in previous years and were ready to try again.
After the event, Scott MacKay, a reporter for the Providence Journal, approached me. “So why didn’t you go public with this complaint against DiPrete before now?” he asked.
“Some of us would have liked to,” I told him, “but we’re nonpartisan. We never endorse candidates, and our board didn’t want to be seen as politicizing our complaint against DiPrete.”
As winter melted into spring Rep. Bob Bianchini seemed ever more isolated. After years at the epicenter of political power, he had become a pariah. He walked alone from committee hearings and sat alone at his desk on the House floor before the gavel came down. Whatever they felt about his responsibility for RISDIC, other lawmakers and lobbyists kept their distance, at least in public.
Bianchini bumped into me in a doorway. “I’d like to have breakfast with you,” he said, as if he were expecting me. I knew him only superficially; we had met several times and shaken hands after a hearing. I brushed him off, and a few weeks later, I put him off again. The third time, he caught up with me in the dimly lit hallway outside the House Finance Committee’s basement hearing room. “So can we get together?” he asked again. “I’d like you to hear my perspective.”
We finally met on a May morning for coffee and bagels at a secluded shop he suggested in Richmond Square. I wondered if his hair had grayed in the course of the spring or if I had never noticed before. His goatee was perfectly trimmed.
“I appreciate your coming,” he said. “I wanted you to hear my side of this.” He had a folder full of photographs and news clippings that went back to the 1960s. In one glossy print, he stood in the doorway of a storefront credit union with several other men. Their hair and sideburns were full, their expressions confident. He described them and their movement. “We were frustrated with the commercial banks and red-lining,” Bianchini said, referring to the reluctance of traditional lenders to invest in inner-city properties. “We knew there had to be some way of getting money into the hands of blue-collar people who hadn’t inherited. We knew that given half a chance, most of them would pay it back.”
Bianchini and I were about the same age and, if I could believe him, we had shared the same idealism a quarter of a century before. He had set out in practical ways to build the institutions that would help the poor and working class to earn their own way.
“So where did it go wrong?” I asked.
His brow furrowed. “I’ve asked myself that, and I’m not sure. We thought we were creating a system that was unique and specific to Rhode Island. We built a deposit insurance system that worked really well for years. We intended to protect the little guy. and in the end, I don’t think people will lose their money.”
I asked why RISDIC kept running TV ads that showed its seal chiseled out of granite, emphasizing its enduring stability.
“That wasn’t false,” he said. “We never deceived anybody. Our insurance protected all of the individual institutions. even Joe Mollicone’s abuses could have been covered.”
At some point, however, Bob Bianchini had started shaping laws to gain an advantage for RISDIC. Was he a noble character who started with good intentions? Had he blinded himself to the risks RISDIC posed? and I was even more perplexed over the larger question: how had Rhode Island’s government allowed so many conflicts of interest to flourish for so long and do such great damage?
I later learned that Bianchini had represented the House speaker on Rhode Island’s Unclassified Pay Plan Board, which set salaries for bank regulators. No wonder they failed to blow the whistle on RISDIC.
Amid the never-ending cascade of revelations about the RISDIC debacle, one tenacious reporter caused a spectacular splash by holding Rhode Island’s new governor to a campaign promise. during a candidate forum the previous fall, the Providence Journal’s Katherine Gregg asked Sundlun about opening up the state’s sealed pension records.
He replied unequivocally: “Public pensions are publicly funded for public employees with taxpayers’ dollars. Clearly, they should be public records.”
In January of 1991, when nearly everyone was absorbed in the RISDIC collapse, Gregg reminded the new governor of his campaign pledge and Sundlun launched his push to open the records. He directed his staff to unseal the pension records of current or former government officials who had used special pension bills to purchase pension credits at less than full actuarial cost.
The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, whose union leaders had gamed the system, sent their lawyers racing to Superior Court for an injunction to stop Sundlun’s disclosure. Superior Court Judge Robert D. Krause issued a temporary restraining order and scheduled a hearing on the merits of the case. General Treasurer Anthony Solomon, who chaired the State Retirement Board, sided with the unions and blocked the release of pension-related documents.
One January day early in this legal drama, Gregg and her colleague Bruce Landis took a fateful walk from the Providence Journal headquarters across Fountain Street to the office where the State Retirement Board had just moved and was still getting settled. Amid the chaos Gregg and Landis confronted Solomon’s press secretary, Frank Prosnitz, who gave his reasons why the records would remain sealed despite the governor’s order. While they were arguing, Gregg noticed a thick computer printout in a green wastebasket by Prosnitz’s desk. Instinctively, she reached down and pulled it out. “What’s this?” she exclaimed, clutching it tightly. In her possession was a list of sixteen thousand pension checks issued that month.
The press secretary, a former reporter, protested but did not try to wrestle the discarded document away from her. Along with him, the two reporters struck out all Social Security numbers; they then carried their trove of data back to the newsroom. For years, Gregg had been reporting on special pension bills that routinely passed in the last hours of each legislative session, teasing out vital details from arcane legislative language. Now she could attach names and precise amounts from the discarded printout.
While the union, Sundlun, and the Providence Journal honed their legal arguments, Gregg wrote about the ugly underside of what she called “a pension system gone awry.” The newspaper published her series, “Set for Life — Special Deals,” as a barrage of twelve blockbuster stories that ran in swift succession from March 31 to April 3, far too quickly for those whose cover she blew to sue the paper. She listed insiders who had bought pension credits at fire sale prices. Most had relied on special bills that allowed them credits for years on the payrolls of unions, private companies, and even governments in other states.
Former Sen. William O’Neill admitted to Gregg that some special pension bills were legitimate but others were “kind of pukey.” He added: “They get passed when everyone is tired, half asleep, drinking Diet Coke at 3 a.m. That’s how it happens.” Moreover, “every year it seems to get worse and worse. Even the good people begin to think this is the way it works. There’s nothing wrong with it. The fund is capable of handling it.”
Favored insiders had received legal permission to buy pension credits at a small fraction of what ordinary state workers had to pay. One University of Rhode Island professor bought credits for six years at an Ohio school, paying only $2,020 for benefits that would have cost $72,521 if he had paid the real actuarial cost. Another bill had allowed Richard Blaine, a retired House Minority Leader who now sat on the Ethics Commission, to buy credit for two years on the Scituate zoning board. Those credits made him eligible for a lifelong legislative pension of just over $12,000 per year, which grew with a cost-of-living escalator.
Gregg noted that these special pension bills hit their peak in 1987, when 834 workers paid just under $2.2 million for pension credits that would cost taxpayers $39.9 million through the year 2016. For example, a University of Rhode Island baseball player from the 1950s who went on to a career in state govern- ment enriched his retirement with the help of a special bill that allowed him to buy pension credits for part-time work at the college gym. His special deal added $1,399 a year to the $30,780 pension he earned during his professional career. “I found out that other guys had done it,” the former athlete told Gregg. “Those jobs we had at URI, they were state time.”
Gregg also reported that Donald McKiernan, the Senate’s fiscal advisor and an expert on state pensions, had retired at age 50 with three pensions: one for $48,609 and two totaling over $62,000 that would kick in when he turned fifty-five. McKiernan was a former teacher, Providence City Councilman, and city treasurer in Warwick and Providence. By paying $678.70 for 18 months of credit, McKiernan boosted his pension by $2,691 per year for life. “They didn’t do that just for me, believe me,” McKiernan told Gregg. “I wasn’t the only one who bought that time.”
Gregg’s “Set for life” series reminded readers already furious over RISDIC how costly corruption could be. She pointed out a $1.1 billion discrepancy between the funding stream and the soaring obligations to retirees.
Lawmakers scrambled to file legislation that would open pension records for public review. Bills filed by Rep. Jeff Teitz in the House and Sen. John Bevilacqua in the Senate proposed to open state pension records, including the purchase of retirement credits. Language in the bills ensured public access to employees’ salaries, fringe benefits, overtime, and job descriptions. Even as I testified in support of these bills, however, I found it hard to believe they would ever pass. One reporter’s investigative stories had removed the cover of a cesspool that many had thought would never see the light of day, but would her disclosures end Rhode Island government’s culture of deep-rooted secrecy?
On April 24, 1991, Judge Robert D. Krause issued a landmark ruling on the teachers’ union suit that had aimed to keep pension records confidential. Krause flatly rejected the union’s claim that the Access to Public Records law created a “substantive right of privacy” or that the plaintiffs could use the law to deny access to records of wrongdoing. In what seemed a trumpet call for change, the judge wrote that the recipients of such uncommon benefits had no privacy interest “which would in any manner outweigh the citizenry’s predominant interest in knowing how its public fisc is being administered, and whether it is being administered in evenhanded fashion.” Then he added, “If ever a court were justified in reading a statute, not narrowly as through a keyhole, but in the broad light of its intended purpose, it is here.”
Pawtucket Mayor Brian J. Sarault always struck me as a man made for politics. Throughout the spring of 1991, he appeared often at the State House. Among lobbyists and lawmakers in a crowded hallway, he stood out — taller than most, broad across the shoulders, handsomely telegenic, impeccably dressed. His booming baritone rose above the din. Sarault sought passage of legislation to allow off-track betting parlors. Narragansett Park, Pawtucket’s once-glorious track where Seabiscuit, Whirlaway, and War Admiral had galloped long ago, had fallen on hard times and closed in 1978, and Sarault needed new gambling revenues. He promised the state a share of any OTB take from television simulcasts of races in other venues. On June 3, he announced to a crowd of cheering supporters that he would run for a third term as mayor of Pawtucket, fighting for reform under the motto “Progress, not politics.”
Nine days later FBI agents arrested Sarault in his office on charges of extortion. Rep. Robert A. Weygand of East Providence made his living as a landscape architect. As the story emerged, the mayor had called Weygand to his office at Pawtucket City Hall and offered a deal. Weygand would bill an extra $5,000 on a contract for Slater Park, kick back $3,000 in cash to Sarault, and keep $2,000.
Weygand hid his shock, told Sarault he would be in touch, and left. As he drove from Sarault’s office, Weygand dictated the details into a microcassette recorder before they faded from memory. He told his wife, then went to his friend and mentor, Sen. James P. McStay of East Providence. They contacted the state police and then the FBI, whose agents prepared to snare Sarault.
Trembling, Weygand returned to Pawtucket city Hall with an envelope full of marked bills. He wore a pager that concealed a tiny transmitter; a recorder was taped inside his thigh. FBI agents warned that Sarault might casually stroke his back to check for a wire. From a van outside agents listened to the conversation and heard Weygand pass the envelope. as Sarault walked the young architect toward the door, he threw an arm across Weygand’s shoulder and ran it down his spine.
Weygand escaped down the broad stairs, just as two FBI agents strode up to the mayor’s office. They found Weygand’s envelope in a wastebasket and the cash in Sarault’s pocket. They arrested the mayor and drove him to the massive gray federal courthouse in Providence for arraignment on three felony charges.
Sarault’s lawyer denounced the charges as nothing more than allegations, but the mayor’s arrest shocked Rhode Island, reinforcing the public’s sense of widespread corruption. Five months later, Sarault would admit to racketeering in fifteen extortion schemes. His kickback routine had corrupted a half-dozen city departments. Pawtucket’s suave mayor would eventually plead guilty, go to federal prison for five years, and be required to pay $80,829 in restitution.
But his plea and punishment lay months in the future as the General Assembly lumbered slowly toward adjournment in June 1991. Despite the ongoing RISDIC scandal and Sarault’s arrest, only a handful of anti-corruption bills seemed to have any chance of passage. Meanwhile Katherine Gregg’s “Set for life” exposé had led to court decisions on pension records. Superior Court Judge Robert D. Krause had ruled in April that public employee unions lacked standing to block Sundlun’s move to open the pension records, and in May the Rhode Island Supreme Court declared in a three-paragraph order that the unions had no standing to challenge Sundlun’s order. On May 28, Sundlun ordered more than 49,000 pension records opened to the public, the first such disclosure since the retirement system was created in 1936.
With disclosure virtually inevitable, General Assembly leaders knew they must pass something, but what? Competing versions of an open records bill had been inching forward all spring. Senate Majority Leader John Bevilacqua had sponsored legislation that was encumbered by a provision requiring a costly notice by certified mail to anyone whose records were requested. House Judiciary Chairman Jeff Teitz had filed a bill that preserved the confidentiality of most current pensions and would have released data only for future retirements. In the final hours, both chambers passed a compromise bill that preserved the confidentiality of medical records, student records, and individual job evaluations, but it allowed public access to the names, salaries, fringe and pension benefits, and similar data. Hundreds of supposedly respectable public servants had been padding pensions for themselves and their cronies. almost single-handedly, Katherine Gregg forced a change in the state’s access to Public Records Law.
The question remained whether the General Assembly would finally pass other needed reforms.
To my surprise, our legislation to establish a time limit for Ethics Commission investigations began moving. Under the bill, the filing of a complaint would start a stopwatch for an initial inquiry: would these allegations constitute a violation of the ethics law? Under our legislation, the commission would have to decide on probable cause or dismiss the complaint within 300 days. Our bill took flight in the last hours of the session, on its way to becoming law, but all the rest seemed stuck.
Amid everything else he was doing, Rep. Jeff Teitz had woven together a comprehensive campaign finance reform bill from his own ideas and a half dozen separate bills that Common Cause had developed over several years. His legislation aimed to improve the reporting of campaign contributions, end the laundering of contributions through political parties, ban all corporate contributions, and outlaw the personal use of campaign contributions. He explained the details to members of his House Judiciary committee, and they passed his bill on May 30, 1991. to my delight, Gov. Sundlun declared his support, and the entire House passed it a few days later, as lobbyists speculated about when the session would finally end.
Senate Judiciary chairman Thomas A. Lynch listened to my plea for a hearing and vote on Teitz’s bill. Lynch was tall, had chiseled features, and watched me with expressive eyes. “I’ll look at it,” he said agreeably, “but it’s late in the session, and I’m not making any promises.”
“Anything to do with the sponsor?” I asked.
We both knew that Senate Majority Leader John Bevilacqua resented Teitz for leading the 1986 impeachment inquiry against his father, chief Justice Joseph A. Bevilacqua, who had resigned under a cloud and died a few years later. “Don’t go there,” Lynch warned. “I’ve cleared your ethics bills for hearing. More than that I can’t promise.”
Good to his word, Lynch led the Senate Judiciary as it approved two ethics reforms drafted by Rae Condon. Lynch had sponsored one for the speedier finding of probable cause. He reminded his committee that Common Cause had filed an ethics complaint against former Gov. DiPrete. “Twenty-nine months without a simple finding of probable cause,” Lynch declared, “is too long. My bill requires them to reach probable cause in a year. If they can’t do that, let them dismiss it and explain to the public.”
With Lynch’s push, the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed on a roll. They approved his bill and two more Common Cause bills in quick succession. One would establish a stringent new standard for public officials who had routinely represented private clients before their own boards. It prohibited self-represen- tation except in cases of hardship, and only then after consultation with the Ethics Commission. A second, filed by freshman Sen. Walter Gray, dramatically expanded the ban on nepotism. Lynch’s committee also recommended a bill by Jeff Teitz that would require state vendors to file reports on their campaign contributions to state general officers.
Sitting among lobbyists under a colonial portrait in the committee’s wood-paneled hearing room, I wanted to cheer. Despite the scandals of RISDIC and public knowledge of insiders’ pension padding, most of our bills simply died. Our revolving door bill aimed to stop members of the General assembly from seeking or accepting state employment during their time in office. I could not get a vote in either judiciary committee.
On what would clearly be the last night of the session, Sen. J. Michael Lenihan asked me if Common Cause would favor a parliamentary maneuver that might win passage of Teitz’s comprehensive campaign Finance reform. Lenihan had played on Brown University’s football team, and he offered a gridiron choice. “It’s beyond hopeless,” he said. “Either we try a Hail Mary, or we come back next year and start over.”
“Hail Mary?” I asked. I knew what that meant in football but not in the State House.
“Lynch will bring the State Vendors’ disclosure bill to the floor,” Lenihan said. “We could prepare a floor amendment that would incorporate the entire Comprehensive Campaign Finance Reform Bill.”
“Won’t one of the lawyers downstairs tip Bevilacqua and give him time to rally his troops?”
Lenihan smiled mischievously. “We can draft the amendment and make copies ourselves. We think Bevilacqua’s people have Teitz’s state vendors’ disclosure bill tagged for a trade against one of their bills being held hostage in the House. It may be one of the last bills considered, probably after one o’clock in the morning. By then, some of Bevilacqua’s troops may have gone home or be off the floor.”
Midnight passed, then one o’clock and two. With Lt. Gov. Roger N. Begin presiding, the Senate dragged through its calendar. Most bills passed by routine majorities with little debate. After each final vote, senators dumped the mostly unread papers between their desks. Finally, Lynch presented Teitz’s House bill on political contributions by state vendors. From the majority leader’s seat on the center aisle, John Bevilacqua moved passage. A second came automatically from the majority whip.
In the instant before the lieutenant governor could call for a vote, David Carlin, the former Senate majority leader, rose. “Mr. President, I have an amendment.”
Several senators shouted, “Second!”
Senate pages with glazed eyes began distributing copies of the amendment along the curved rows of desks.
I took a hasty head count. More than a dozen of the fifty seats were empty. Bevilacqua might lack the votes to block Carlin’s amendment. The stunt seemed to be working.
Carlin explained the amendment. A sociology professor, he was a Don Quixote figure, full of idealism and whimsy. He had served briefly as Senate majority leader before Bevilacqua’s realpolitik toppled him. Carlin was a conservative Catholic and Teitz was Jewish, but their Newport districts overlapped, and they often backed each other. Carlin spoke passionately about why it was crucial to fix Rhode Island’s broken campaign finance system without delay.
“Mr. President,” Lynch interrupted, waving the copy he had just received, “I move to table this amendment. This is a large and complicated piece of legislation. It looks superficially like a bill that came over from the House very recently, but the Judiciary Committee hasn’t had time for a hearing on it, and I’m not even sure what this is.”
“I second that,” Bevilacqua roared from his seat.
“Mr. President,” Carlin shouted, “This is identical to the campaign Finance reform bill that the House passed and that has been amply described in the newspapers.”
From the rostrum, Begin declared that a motion to table was not debatable. He pounded the gavel. “Clerk will unlock the machine. Please cast your votes. To table: press green. To continue with the matter before us, vote red.”
Everyone was exhausted, but green and red lights blinked on the electronic board beside the columns of senators’ names. Sixteen were green to table, but twenty-one shone red. Lynch’s motion failed. The seats of key Bevilacqua backers were empty. Debate would continue. For an instant, I believed we had won.
“On Sen. Carlin’s motion to amend.” The lieutenant governor paused. “Are you ready to vote? Vote green to amend. Vote red to defeat the Carlin amendment.” Red and green lights flickered on, the tally computed instantly above the bill number. Green lights were 24, only 17 red.
Teitz’s massive reform was poised to go. The Senate would cast a final vote. Then the amended bill, now slightly different from what had passed the House, would be hand-carried back across the rotunda for final passage.
Lynch was on his feet. “Mr. President, I move passage of the amended bill.” Seconds boomed all around the domed chamber.
In a momentary pause, I heard voices in the rotunda. I looked across into the House. Members were shaking hands in the aisle. Many were heading for the elevator or streaming down the broad marble stairway. The House had just adjourned.
“Wait!” I wanted to shout. “Come back! You need to vote on campaign finance reform!”
“Moved by Sen. Lynch and seconded by Sen. Marciano,” the lieutenant governor called. “Please cast your votes. Yeas, green. nays, red.”
Green lights flooded the tote board, and Begin banged the gavel. Teitz’s Campaign Finance bill had passed an instant too late.
I raced into the rotunda and around to the House door with a heavy sense that the House could not be called back. The House and Senate had approved slightly different versions. Neither had passed both chambers, and neither would become law. Had we been tricked?
©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.
Note that this online format omits notes which fill 92 pages in the printed book.
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