Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 36

Monday, November 09, 2015

H. Philip West Jr.

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.

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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.

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 4

Referendum (1999–2000)

Carl Bogus was ready for a cosmic battle. The Supreme Court had rejected separation of powers and declared Rhode Island’s government “a quintessential system of parliamentary supremacy.”

With painful irony, the Roger Williams University Law School professor declared our courtroom defeat. “The legal battle is over,” Bogus wrote in an email. “Supreme Court briefs are beside the point. The court’s opinion is unequivocal and gratuitous. The four justices not only leave absolutely no doubt where they stand. They went out of their way to do it.” He could not imagine them changing their minds. “Even if they wanted to, how could they go about disowning what they have just written?”

He called for a full frontal attack on the General Assembly’s fortress, comparing our quest to Saving Private Ryan, a film about World War II that had won five Academy Awards.

Now the head of our separation of powers task force, Bogus began contacting professors of law, history, and political science at colleges and universities across the state. He wrote to them and followed up with phone calls proposing that faculty members publish an open letter, a full-page ad proclaiming separation of powers as fundamental in American democracy. He asked each signer for $35 toward the cost. Because faculty at the three publicly funded colleges might face retaliation, he concentrated on the seven private institutions: Brown, Bryant, Johnson & Wales, Providence College, Rhode Island School of Design, Roger Williams, and Salve Regina. He promised that if he got fewer than forty signers the ad would not run and no one would pay.

Among Bogus’s colleagues at Roger Williams, sixteen professors quickly signed on. Over the next six weeks he phoned faculty at the other schools but found many reluctant. Why were historians and political scientists at private colleges unwilling to endorse the core principle of American government?

Edward Achorn arrived at the Providence Journal as deputy editorial pages editor that summer of 1999. His inaugural column catalogued characters he had covered in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts: swindlers, power brokers, bullies, and corrupt pols. “I thought I was a jaundiced newsman,” he wrote, “my sense of outrage and astonishment forever blunted.” But his first week at the Journal left him dazzled. He called Rhode Island “a veritable Mardi Gras of scandal.”

I wrote to Achorn about reforms enacted in response to recent scandals and sketched the separation of powers challenge. Peter Hufstader and I met him for lunch at Trinity Brewhouse, near the Journal’s headquarters in downtown Providence. We gave him folders full of research on ethics and separation of powers. “He has a gift with words,” Hufstader said as we drove back to the office. “He could blow a bugle for the battles ahead.”

The state’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) was one of seven boards Common Cause originally targeted in 1995 for violating separation of powers. Four lawmakers sat on its thirteen-member board, two from the House and two from the Senate. With a freewheeling agenda to lure new businesses to Rhode Island, the quasi-public agency burned through budgets with little oversight.

In November 1999, Christopher Rowland reported in the Providence Journal that top staff at the EDC had used official credit cards to charge meals at upscale restaurants: 229 credit card bills covered hospitality for only twenty-eight clients. Most of the rest went for entertaining four General Assembly members who served on the EDC’s board, along with House Speaker John Harwood, Providence Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, and top staff in Gov. Almond’s office. Rowland listed the expensive Providence restaurants where EDC director John Swen routinely picked up the tab: The Capital Grille, The Boathouse, The Gatehouse, Capriccio’s, Raphael’s, J. Goff ’s, and the Westin Hotel’s International Yacht & Athletic Club. Swen violated state credit card rules by buying alcoholic beverages, and he could not provide receipts for seventy restaurant outings that totaled $4,408. The EDC paid $325 for staff parking tickets and covered Swen’s nearly $5,000 annual membership at the elegant University Club.

Records also revealed that the agency’s legal counsel, Richard Stang, had taken his son to Disney World and charged his $135 American Bar Association membership on an EDC credit card. Other dubious expenditures included tuxedo rentals, picture framing, flower purchases, a personal stereo system, pet supplies, and car repairs, most never reimbursed.

The burgeoning scandal reminded many of the Supreme Court slush fund and patronage that toppled Chief Justice Thomas Fay and Court Administrator Matthew Smith in 1993. Public rage quickly forced Swen and Stang to resign, and the quasi-public agency closed its credit card accounts. Gov. Almond, who by law chaired the EDC board, ordered a full audit. He demanded strict accounting procedures and banned all personal use of credit cards.

As explosive as these developments were, many were astonished when Senate Majority Leader Paul Kelly announced that the Senate would investigate credit card abuses at the EDC. Over the holidays, Kelly appointed a high-profile Senate select commission to study quasi-public corporations. Kelly’s written charge spelled out an unprecedented mission: to examine the quasi-publics’ managerial systems and ensure public accountability. “Our intent,” he said, “is not to go on a witch hunt. It’s to look at the whole quasi-public agency situation. We want to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.”

Kelly’s announcement struck like lightning in December. Never before had the General Assembly probed wrongdoing in quasi-public bodies where its own members sat and might be embarrassed.

Kelly appointed Senate Finance Committee Chair J. Michael Lenihan to lead the panel, and Judiciary Chair M. Teresa Paiva Weed to serve as vice chair. Lenihan announced hearings on seven Wednesday nights in January and February of 2000 and summoned twenty-nine public and quasi-public bodies. In advance of their testimony, executives were to provide their annual reports and answer six pages of questions about their internal accounting, administrative control, auditing, purchasing, public debt, personnel, ethics, travel, motor vehicles, entertainment, and credit cards. Lenihan also asked about agencies’ compliance with the state’s Open Meetings, Public Records, and Administrative Procedures laws. Cable television would allow people across the state to watch the proceedings.

On a snowy January night, Lenihan and Paiva Weed took center seats against a gleaming mahogany backdrop with American and Rhode Island flags behind them. Five other senators and the commission’s counsel flanked them in the top row while fiscal and policy advisers sat below. Lenihan announced in a somber voice that Swen and Stang, the former director and lawyer of the EDC, had refused to appear. Never one to vent, he summarized unsuccessful efforts to contact them.

The Airport Corporation, an EDC subsidiary, was present and ready to respond. Executive Director Elaine Roberts, unpretentious with close-cropped hair and wearing a dark suit, delivered thick tabbed binders full of answers and supporting documents. Roberts described the airport’s evolution. She inspired confidence as she presented details of labor relations, budgeting, accounting software, audit procedures, and internal controls.

“What is your policy with regard to credit cards?” Lenihan asked.

“There is no formal policy,” Roberts answered, “but there is no allowance for personal use in any way. All of our credit cards have receipts documenting every purchase.”

“Do you think it would be wise, where you have no formal policy, to establish one?”

“Absolutely,” Roberts said with no trace of defensiveness. “We’ll get caught up with that.”

Without highlighting the fact that no lawmakers or legislative appointees served on the Airport Corporation board, Lenihan showed how policies, routines, and scrutiny discouraged fraud. As Paiva Weed and other senators asked questions, the panel demonstrated a new standard of oversight at the State House.

On January 26, Sherry Giarrusso-Mulhearn testified before the Lenihan Commission. Tall and self-confident, she had replaced Thomas Wright as executive director of the state’s Solid Waste Management Corporation. Under her leadership, the quasi-public had been renamed the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation.

Giarrusso-Mulhearn had gotten credit cards for herself and three other top staff at the trash agency. Like the EDC executives, she had charged questionable items, such as lunches at expensive Providence restaurants, flowers for secretaries, Christmas gift certificates for staff, a candelabra for an employee who married, and bar association dues for the corporation’s counsel. She hoped these “employee incentives” would head off efforts to form a union, and testified that they were “reasonable, appropriate, and not excessive.” When Paiva Weed asked whether the state should enact uniform standards for business expenses at agencies like hers, Giarrusso-Mulhearn answered that she would welcome a clear rule.

Former Rep. Vincent Mesolella seemed uncharacteristically meek when he arrived to testify about the Underground Storage Tank Review Board (USTRB), the lesser of two quasi-publics he had controlled during his time in the House and since his departure. Since 1996, the USTRB had been collecting a penny-per-gallon surcharge on gasoline and diesel fuel to pay for the cleanup of leaky underground tanks. Four factors made this fund a prize: decisions were made in utter secrecy, contractors were paid huge amounts of money, the work was quickly covered over, and Mesolella was accountable to no one but Harwood.

Mesolella and Lenihan had twice locked horns over funds. At the end of the 1997 legislative session, Mesolella had managed to shoehorn an article into the budget that raised his agency’s annual allocation for “administrative costs” from $150,000 to $550,000. With Harwood’s support, Mesolella’s appropriation became a steamroller that Lenihan could not stop.

A year later, again without public hearing or Senate consent, the House inserted $550,000 into the budget for the same purpose. This time Lenihan told Senate Majority Leader Paul Kelly that if the Senate allowed this boondoggle, he would resign as chair of the Senate Finance Committee. In the session-ending struggle, the USTRB administrative budget was cut back to $350,000.

Now Mesolella — no longer a representative but still close to Harwood and still running the USTRB fund — came before Lenihan’s commission without his usual bravado. Michaela Brockmann, the fund’s executive director, took the seat beside him. Like a model playing down her glamour, she wore a pin-striped navy blue suit with a white shirt and patterned tie, her sandy blond hair pulled back in a bun. Mesolella fidgeted like a student summoned to the principal’s office, taking his glasses off and putting them on again and again.

“A memo from your legal counsel,” Lenihan said with elaborate respect, “says that you are an ‘autonomous entity.’ I would like to explore your perception of where that puts the agency.”

Mesolella nodded. “I think we are neither a quasi-public nor a department of state government. We were created by an act of the General Assembly, but we have no provision to incur debt, none whatsoever. Unlike other quasi-publics that have already appeared before you, we have no user fees. Our revenue is strictly based on a one cent per gallon gas tax, a restricted receipt account administered through the Clean Water Finance Agency. We have no cash, no cars, no credit cards, no checking account.”

Lenihan asked if the underground storage board complied with the state’s Open Meetings and Open Records laws.

“Yes, Mr. Chairman, we do.”

“What about the Public Corporation Financial Integrity and Accountability Act?”

Mesolella had heard that question asked of other quasi-public leaders, and he answered with exaggerated politeness. “Not unlike those who have come before you, we were unaware of that particular act. We are now aware of it, and we will make every effort to comply with any provisions that we can.”

Lenihan read from a letter by the state’s auditor general about two disbursements, totaling $120,590, that had been misclassified as an administrative expenditure.

Brockmann took responsibility for the mistake. “I prepared the invoices myself,” she said. “It was strictly a human error.”

Lenihan asked why disbursements for leaky tanks could not be done by the Clean Water Finance Agency.

Mesolella replied that it would cost four times as much. “To answer your question directly, there’s no reason why the state government can’t take over this operation or any other quasi-public agency, but it would be better to leave us as an independent body.” He pursed his lips and nodded his head, as if to reinforce his point, adding, “We’re very proud of our work.”

Without theatrics, Lenihan had prompted Mesolella to acknowledge publicly that there was no need for his board to exist outside state government.

Mesolella had good reason to avoid a confrontation. He was again drawing fire as head of the Narragansett Bay Commission (NBC), the quasi-public empire that processed sewage for the northern half of the state. When ratepayers fell behind on sewage bills, the bay commission routinely sold liens on their homes. To regain title, homeowners had to pay fees and charges many times their original obligation. At one NBC meeting early in 2000, a woman waved her mother’s bill for $174.75 at Mesolella. “Where do you get off selling someone’s property out from under them?” she yelled. “I don’t know how you sleep at night.” Quasi-publics chaired by lawmakers or legislative appointees often rode roughshod over ordinary people. Victims complained, but few Rhode Islanders recognized the underlying pattern.

During his hearings, Lenihan routinely asked public agency leaders about the Public Corporation Financial Integrity and Accountability Act, legislation he had led in enacting. Its central premise was that weak accounting systems multiplied opportunities for fraud. That law made the leaders and executives of agencies responsible for establishing and maintaining effective systems of internal control. Of twenty-three agencies that came before the Lenihan Commission, a dozen had failed to conduct regular audits. The hearings showed how many quasi-public executives were ignorant of laws that governed their operations; their agencies exercised vast government powers in a netherworld without adequate accountability. Inexorably, the Senate probe showed that Rhode Island’s peculiar paradigm — where legislative appointees sat as voting members and presumably reported back to House and Senate leaders — provided no effective oversight.

The Lenihan Commission’s final report questioned the very existence of the Underground Storage Tank Board and the Housing Resource Commission. It asked why these quasi-public agencies “should not be folded into another department or agency of state government.” The report noted that Rhode Island law lacked any legal definition of “quasi-public corporation,” but these bodies exercised the same executive functions that the Common Cause separation of powers task force had identified five years earlier. The credit-card scandal involving the Economic Development Corporation and Resource Recovery Corporation and other agencies was only the tip of an iceberg.

Questions remained. Would other senators bother studying the report? Would Senate leaders recognize that having legislators on executive boards invited abuses? Would they stop appointing lawmakers to perform executive functions?

My mother had turned ninety in January. I was with her in Florida on July 27, when the Rhode Island Supreme Court slammed the door for a second time on separation of powers. I arrived home from the airport to absorb the news: A three-justice majority had ruled that General Assembly leaders could legally appoint lawmakers to six of nine seats on the state’s Lottery Commission. Adding insult to injury, they reinforced the principle that the General Assembly could exercise any governmental authority it wished unless the state’s Constitution expressly forbade it. Again Justice Robert Flanders filed a stinging, eloquent, futile dissent.

Our phone rang. A nurse told me my mother had suffered a serious fall. I booked the first available flight back to Jacksonville and arrived at her bedside just before she died. During a crucial time in Rhode Island my attention was far away, arranging her memorial service, closing her accounts, disposing of her possessions.

Meanwhile, Gov. Almond seized on an arcane provision in state law that allowed him to place an advisory question on the ballot. He asked voters if the state should convene a constitutional convention to address separation of powers.

When I returned and read its text, I saw that he had overstated our case. “Should a Constitutional Convention be called,” he asked, “to expressly establish that Rhode Island government consists of separate and co-equal legislative, executive, and judicial branches similar to the governments established by the United States Constitution and by the Constitutions of all 49 other states?” That final claim that the constitutions of “all 49 other states” established separation of powers went too far. State constitutional texts and practices differed: some, like the U.S. Constitution, separated powers without an explicit clause, while several others with constitutional clauses still lacked a robust separation of powers. But only Rhode Island had a “broad powers” clause that allowed the legislature to do whatever it liked unless specifically prohibited in the Constitution.

Regardless of what I thought, Almond’s question had gone to the secretary of state before a printing deadline. Separation of powers would be Question 6 on the November ballot, solely as an expression of public opinion. What backlash would it provoke from defenders of the status quo? And could we use the Supreme Court’s decisions to mobilize public support?

Late in summer and with no money, we began organizing support for Almond’s ballot question. Without a convincing majority in November, the push for separation of powers would lose all credibility. As it turned out, John Hazen White, the industrialist who had spent lavishly on RedAlert! ads in the Providence Journal, agreed to help. On a sweltering August afternoon, leaders of the six groups that had been working for separation of powers found our way into the cool, brightly lit training room at Taco, Inc., White’s factory in Cranston. We needed a clear message, a credible coalition, and money to produce lawn signs and hundreds of thousands of flyers.

As we sipped iced tea, I reported that leaders of several chambers of commerce and other groups had said they would participate but were on vacation.

“Did you invite organized labor?” Greta Abbott asked. Still a member of the Common Cause board, she was a part-time lobbyist for the League of Women Voters.

I said I had not tried: organized labor clearly preferred a safely Democratic General Assembly over the process that might emerge under separation of powers. Labor would not support Question 6 any more than they had backed downsizing the legislature.

“You were right,” declared Bob Arruda, who now led Operation Clean Government (OCG). “Since when have labor leaders in this state ever cared about real reform?”

Arruda was quick and fierce. Under his leadership, the cadre of OCG volunteers had launched a nonpartisan candidate training school, begun producing a monthly public access program on cable television, and filed dozens of ethics complaints against public officials. On top of that, Arruda ran a business called Quality Behavioral Health. His stamina amazed me.

“Separation of powers is the crucial reform,” Arruda declared. “OCG intends to rally our members and throw our full energy into winning a huge majority for Question 6.”

With less than three months before the November election, we planned a campaign that would require few meetings and fewer subsequent decisions. Our goal was to educate the electorate statewide. Organizations in the Question 6 coalition would mobilize their own members to distribute flyers and lawn signs. OCG would organize an October rally, while Common Cause coordinated press coverage and outreach to other groups. With data from Peter Hufstader’s research, I had drafted a flyer that followed the Q&A format of our previous campaigns.

“I like this,” Arruda said, “particularly this chart that shows 5,549 jobs in quasi-public agencies where legislators serve on boards. They’ve created endless golden opportunities for patronage!”

Since he walked through the door five years earlier, Peter Hufstader had been translating headline stories into policy questions and linking scandals to abuses of power. He contrasted the Senate’s scrutiny of quasi-public bodies with the work of a House panel that had earlier investigated the Department of Environmental Management through a process that environmentalists blasted as a witchhunt. Many believed Hopkinton Rep. Brian P. Kennedy’s goal was to transfer powers from the Department of Environmental Management, an executive agency, to the Coastal Resources Management Council, which was controlled by the legislature.

Hufstader drafted a report — Democracy Betrayed: Conflicts of Interest and Failures of Oversight in Rhode Island State Government — that summarized the recurring scandals in quasi-public bodies that lawmakers had created and run but failed to oversee. Separate chapters analyzed abuses in the state retirement system and in five quasi-public boards. Rampant conflicts of interest and pervasive secrecy multiplied the costs paid by taxpayers and ratepayers.

In his final chapter, Hufstader focused on the Lottery Commission ruling. “The state Supreme Court,” he wrote, “has now declared that it is constitutionally permissible for the state legislature to delegate its legislative authority to a board controlled entirely by its own members.” Only two boards — the Unclassified Pay Plan Board and the Lottery Commission — currently had legislative majorities, but the Supreme Court had changed the rules. “The Lottery Commission ruling,” Hufstader wrote, “has become an invitation for the General Assembly to seize additional opportunities for letting contracts and hiring staff. Rhode Island’s General Assembly and Supreme Court have now joined forces to embrace a practice that has been repeatedly struck down by federal courts and by other state courts, the delegation of legislative authority to a small group of legislators.”

Common Cause published Democracy Betrayed in September for release during a clambake at the Bristol estate of Stanley and Martie Livingston celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Common Cause. Now in their seventies, the Livingstons were life-long Rhode Islanders and embraced separation of powers as the most crucial reform. Stan Livingston waved us into a parking space on their lawn. “Don’t let this lottery decision get you down,” he said as we pulled boxes brimming with copies of Democracy Betrayed out of the back seat and trunk.

A huge white tent and clambake pit stood at the top of a lawn that sloped westward down to Narragansett Bay. The crowd swelled to more than three hundred. Atty. Gen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who had raised the issue in 1992, embraced me. Rep. David Cicilline, the lead sponsor of separation of powers resolutions over several years in the House, worked his way through the crowd.

Topher Hamblett brought his father Stephen Hamblett, publisher of the Providence Journal, whose vision of good government shaped the editorial pages.

The sun sank slowly behind a dark shoreline across Narragansett Bay. After dinner, toasts, and speeches, I held up a copy of Democracy Betrayed and introduced Peter Hufstader as our unpaid research director. “We have these for each of you.” Applause and cheers swept the crowd.

I thanked several dozen public officials, pointing to them in the crowd. I praised Sheldon Whitehouse and David Cicilline for their leadership. “Separation of powers should be the cornerstone of our government,” I said, “but these leaders have paid a high price for supporting it. The General Assembly may never forgive them, but history will prove them right.”

Beneath my public optimism lurked a gnawing sense that we had already been crushed on the issue that had now been our highest priority for six years. As if to confirm our defeat, I noticed Chief Justice Weisberger, the author of two majority opinions denying separation of powers, seated in the crowd, his deeply lined face fixed in a public smile.

“I apologize,” I said with a wave toward him. “I need to make one more introduction. Chief Justice Joseph Weisberger is here.” I did not mention his majority opinions against separation of powers, but when Weisberger waved to the crowd, people responded with tepid applause. They knew.

On a bright October Sunday afternoon, Operation Clean Government hosted a rally for Question 6. Groups in the coalition gathered at the Community College of Rhode Island’s modernistic Warwick campus, where hundreds found seats in a circular, raw concrete theater. Speeches were short and focused on convincing neighbors, friends, and family to vote yes on Question 6. “They may think the election’s only about picking a president,” yelled Bruce Lang, a founder of OCG. “Convince them that separation of powers matters just as much!”

Though the Rhode Island Supreme Court had already issued two adverse rulings, this crowd was fired up. People streamed past tables, picking up lawn signs and boxes of flyers destined for windshields in supermarket parking lots, church bulletins, and high school football games. We had no money for television, but these old-fashioned election tools would make our campaign visible across the state.

That November Question 6 won a nearly 2-to-1 victory — 218,139 approved, while 111,292 voted no. In every city and town overwhelming majorities declared their support for a constitutional convention to address separation of powers. Our win would not launch a convention, but we hoped it would pressure the General Assembly to place the question of a convention on the 2002 ballot.

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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.

Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 36

Related Slideshow: Rhode Island’s History of Political Corruption

Buddy Cianci

Joseph Bevilacqua

Thomas Fay

Brian J. Sarault

Edward DiPrete

Plunder Dome

N. Providence Councilmen

Charles Moreau

Joe Almeida

Gordon Fox

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Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 36

Related Slideshow: Rhode Island’s History of Political Corruption

Buddy Cianci

Joseph Bevilacqua

Thomas Fay

Brian J. Sarault

Edward DiPrete

Plunder Dome

N. Providence Councilmen

Charles Moreau

Joe Almeida

Gordon Fox

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