Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 39
Monday, November 30, 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 4
39
Ethics Meltdown (2000–02)
The meltdown of the Ethics Commission became inevitable on May 23, 2000, when five recently appointed commissioners — all attorneys — voted to replace the zero-tolerance gift rule with the most permissive gratuities rule in the United States. The new rule allowed any public official to accept gifts worth up to $450 in a year from any “interested person.”
Four members of the Ethics Commission — one lawyer and three non-lawyers — had pleaded for delay, arguing that the new rule was so poorly crafted that it would legalize virtually unlimited gifts to legislators, town council members, zoning board members, health inspectors, and police officers. But in a series of 5–4 votes, the new attorneys approved the new rule.
That night fourteen Common Cause board members and I signed an ethics complaint against Thomas Goldberg. Our complaint charged: “Thomas D. Goldberg used his public office to modify the conditions under which commercial lobbyists, including his brother and law partner Robert D. Goldberg, could provide entertainment and other gratuities to public officials.” The new gift rule, we argued, would financially benefit a small class of commercial lobbyists, particularly Bob Goldberg and the Goldberg brothers’ law firm.” Further, we charged, Goldberg had rejected private and public requests that he recuse himself.
One important fact did not appear in the complaint: Maureen McKenna Goldberg, the wife of Robert Goldberg and sister-in-law of Thomas Goldberg, sat as a justice on the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
On June 20, the Ethics Commission authorized its executive director, Martin Healey, to hire an independent prosecutor for the case. Healey searched for a Rhode Island lawyer who had experience with white-collar crime and would dare to face the Goldbergs. He found a former state prosecutor who was about to sign a contract when — seven weeks after the Common Cause complaint against Tom Goldberg — Operation Clean Government filed three complaints: one each against Commissioners Goldberg, Melvin Zurier, and Robin Main.
The OCG complaints complicated the case — legally, politically, and emotionally. Zurier and Main worked in large firms and had only peripheral connections to lobbyists; by contrast, Bob Goldberg’s lobbying looked like the family firm’s core business.
A serious legal issue emerged when the special prosecutor announced a conflict involving Zurier or Main and had to withdraw. Healey had to restart the search for an independent prosecutor. After several weeks, he phoned to tell me he was hiring Daniel I. Small, a former deputy U.S. attorney from Massachusetts. He said Small probed corruption in the office of former Boston Mayor Kevin White, and he had defended former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards. “He teaches at Harvard,” Healey added. “It may be better that he comes from Massachusetts.”
That made sense. Even with thousands of lawyers in Rhode Island, the top guns all knew each other. Small would not be intimidated by the fact that Goldberg’s sister-in-law sat on the state Supreme Court.
Small wasted no time in coming to meet with the Common Cause board members who had signed our complaint. He warned that no matter how clear the facts might seem, it would be tough to convince five commissioners that Goldberg had committed knowing and willful violations. “If I were picking a jury,” he said dryly, “this would be a non-starter.”
“We understand that,” said Burt Hoffman, who had been a newspaper editor in Washington and a top staff member for Democrats in Congress, “but they’ve left us no choice. Those hacks opened the door for corporate lobbyists to make out like bandits. Unless this gets prosecuted there’ll be no ethics left in the Ethics Commission.”
At the time I never imagined that Dan Small would come under fire over an obscure principle called pro hac vice, which roughly translated means “for this turn” or “for this particular occasion.” I paid little attention to the concept before Healey drew me into his office in September. “Nothing may come of this,” he said confidentially, “but I want to mention pro hac vice.”
Healey said he had been playing phone tag with Superior Court Judge Frank J. Williams who was then presiding over motions for out-of-state attorneys to practice in Rhode Island courts. “When we finally connected,” Healey told me, “Williams said he’d been calling for me to cover a class for him at Roger Williams Law School. When I asked him whether we needed to seek pro hac vice for a Massachusetts attorney to investigate a matter of probable cause before the commission, he said it wasn’t necessary at this stage.”
Healey described for me the technicalities of pro hac vice in Rhode Island, where thousands of lawyers competed for a small market and did not welcome outsiders. We both knew the Supreme Court’s Committee on Character and Fitness had stalled Healey’s own application to practice law in Rhode Island for more than a year. Healey said he had not mentioned Small’s name to the judge or the fact that this investigation involved members of the commission. “Williams told me to come back later if the case went up to Superior Court. He said, ‘Don’t worry for now. It’s just chickenshit.’ ”
I laughed. “He actually said it was ‘just chickenshit’?”
“He did. Would I put those words in his mouth?”
We both laughed. It was September, and neither of us had any idea how crucial Williams’s unforgettable phrase would become.
The Goldbergs waged a scorched earth campaign, and a Supreme Court interpretation of a law enacted in 1991 — ironically at the urging of Common Cause — helped them. The ethics complaint Common Cause filed against Edward DiPrete in January 1989 had languished for more than two years. DiPrete served a term as governor, lost the 1990 election, and left office. In June 1991, twenty-nine months after we filed the complaint, commissioners finally agreed there was probable cause — the civil equivalent of an indictment — to prosecute the former governor.
To speed this process for future complaints Rae Condon drafted legislation that would require the Ethics Commission to complete its preliminary investigation within 180 days. To accommodate legal stalling and procedural delays, our bill allowed two additional sixty-day extensions “for good cause shown.” Our proposal became law in 1991 and seemed to keep investigations moving. In 1994, a Superior Court judge interpreted the law as allowing investigators 300 days to complete their report.
Problems had emerged in 1998 when the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled on a case in which investigators submitted their report before the 300-day deadline, but the commission voted on probable cause at its next meeting, just beyond the 300th day. The high court overturned an obscure case but wiped out several high-profile cases in which probable cause hearings occurred after the three hundredth day. As a result, the Ethics Commission had to dismiss cases against former House Speaker Matthew Smith, former Secretary of State Barbara Leonard, a former lottery commissioner, two town administrators, and former Providence Retirement Board Chair Stephen T. Day. In the Day case, members of Fire Fighters’ Local 799 had filed a complaint against their former president for steering Providence pension funds to money managers who plied him with expensive meals, sports tickets, trips, and hotel stays. Under law, the Ethics Commission might have levied a $25,000 fine for each of forty-three specific charges.
Let off by the scheduling technicality, Day crowed to reporters: “Say goodbye to the Sham Squad!”
The 300-day rule became a target for the Goldbergs. Thomas Goldberg refused to answer Dan Small’s questions, while his brother Robert sued to quash subpoenas for information about their firm. With a rhetorical flourish, Bob Goldberg complained to the attorney general that Small had “knowingly and flagrantly violated the rules and regulations of the Commission to the detriment of my client. He has done so in a deceitful manner.” He fired off similar complaints to disciplinary groups responsible for attorneys in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
In a memo defending the need to subpoena documents Small wrote bluntly that the Goldberg brothers were deliberately delaying the investigation. But when Small gave the Providence Journal a copy of his legal memo on the need for a subpoena, Robert Goldberg blasted him for releasing confidential material related to a complaint.
The Goldberg brothers clearly meant to run out the 300-day clock. Between December 2000 and February 2001, the Ethics Commission spent countless hours in executive session — not dealing with the substance of the complaints against Thomas Goldberg, but with barrages of litigation Robert Goldberg launched. Reporters and the public left outside closed doors could only wonder what was being debated about complaints filed against Goldberg by Common Cause and Operation Clean Government.
Documents on the question of whether Daniel Small could investigate the complaints against Thomas Goldberg became public when the case went to Superior Court. At the end of January 2001, Judge Michael A. Silverstein ruled that other available sources should have been subpoenaed first. “Based upon the papers before this court,” Silverstein wrote, “the information can be obtained from a non-party in this matter, specifically the respondent’s brother, Robert Goldberg.”
Bob Goldberg reveled in Silverstein’s ruling. “From the outset,” he told a reporter, “we have said there were other ways to do this without subpoenaing Tom. Now, how many state dollars later, the judge told them the same thing.”
Goldberg’s charge that Small was practicing law illegally went up to the Supreme Court, and Martin Healey traced the events in an affidavit. The Ethics Commission had authorized him to hire an outside prosecutor, and he had chosen Small “because of his qualifications and experience in investigations of this type.” Healey noted that he had contacted Judge Williams, who had been in charge of the formal and special cause calendar in Superior Court, about pro hac vice for Small. “Without providing specific information about the cases at issue,” Healey wrote, “I advised Judge Williams that the issue involved an attorney whose office, practice, and admission to the bar were outside the State of Rhode Island, but who would appear before the commission on a complaint matter.”
Healey added: “Judge Williams advised me that since there was no matter pending before the courts he did not see a basis for bringing such a motion. He further advised me it was his recommendation that the attorney’s status be disclosed to the commission — which I told him had been done — and that if an objection were lodged at some future date, it might be appropriate for his court to deal with the matter.” Healey noted that he also communicated Williams’ comments to the vice chair of the Ethics Commission, Richard E. Kirby.
In February 2001, five months after his “just chickenshit” conversation with Marty Healey, Superior Court Judge Frank Williams became Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. When the question of pro hac vice for Daniel Small came to the high court, he and Associate Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg recused themselves.
On March 1, two justices — Victoria S. Lederberg and John P. Bourcier — issued a one-page order denying pro hac vice permission for Daniel Small to continue work on the ethics complaints. They gave no explanation and provided no written opinion, even though critics correctly noted that the Supreme Court had routinely granted permission in similar cases. One legal article later blamed the two for failing to give adequate reasons for denying pro hac vice in an important case.
Justice Robert Flanders dissented and later wrote that he did not remember the high court ever withholding pro hac vice “merely because the attorneys involved may have rendered legal services to the clients in question before they sought or obtained court approval to represent them in connection with pending or contemplated judicial proceedings.” Flanders noted that parties “should not be allowed to use ‘kill the messenger’ litigation tactics as a transparent ploy” and observed that by denying a reasonable request the court had fanned “a small brush fire into a raging conflagration.”
Robert Goldberg charged that Healey had engaged in “criminal acts” by paying Small roughly $40,000. His motion landed in the lap of the high court’s Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee. The panel’s chairperson told the Providence Journal: “It is an awful waste of court resources, our time, the attorney general’s time and the time and resources of public officials to get involved in these things, when the only real practical result is that one party to a controversy may get some advantage over another.”
Wasteful or not, the strategy served its purpose — stalling the investigation to death. The Common Cause complaint against Tom Goldberg hit its 300-day limit and died, but the Ethics Commission held an emergency meeting to extend the OCG investigation for another sixty days.
On March 13, the Ethics Commission fired Daniel Small and voted not to pay his outstanding bill. Healey recommended that J. Richard Ratcliffe, the former assistant attorney general whose sleuthing brought indictments against key operatives in the DiPrete administration, be hired to salvage the case. The commissioners voted instead to hire William C. Maaia, a decent lawyer who had little experience investigating conflicts of interest or white-collar crime. I told reporters I was troubled by the commission’s choice of Maaia over Ratcliffe.
Robert Goldberg responded with a sarcastic question about Healey: “He did such a good job with the first one, he wants to hire another?”
Providence Journal columnist Bob Kerr wrote: “A majority of the commission members did what they could to further the impression that the investigation was being sent to a place the sun doesn’t reach.” A Journal editorial noted that the clock was ticking on the ethics complaints and asked: “What is one to make of all this? Simple: The powerful do not want an aggressive Ethics Commission holding officials accountable.”
Dan Small ended his investigation with a dramatic public act. After being accused, denigrated, and denied payment, he appeared at the commission’s open session on March 20 to demand $60,000 on his contract. He declared that out-of-state lawyers had often done special work for Rhode Island commissions without seeking or obtaining pro hac vice permission. Then, without warning, Small drew a thick printed document from his briefcase and plopped it at the center of the commission’s table, declaring there was ample probable cause that Commissioner Thomas Goldberg had violated the law.
Tom Goldberg leaped to his feet, shouting that Small was violating his rights and the commission’s rules against public disclosure of an investigative report. Small waited for quiet. He then announced that he did not think there was probable cause against Zurier and that that his investigation on Main was not complete.
After months of maneuvers and rhetoric from lawyers on the Ethics Commission, Dan Small had laid a case on the table. Whether his findings would ever become public, his dramatic act exposed the sham. Predictably, Bob Goldberg phoned reporters to accuse Small of “plain bad-faith conduct.”
Justices Bourcier and Lederberg had not explained why they denied Small permission to prosecute the case, but when controversy boiled over they rushed to justify themselves. Bourcier told reporter Jonathan Rockoff that Small had wrongly practiced law for the Ethics Commission without obtaining proper permission. “Had he come here before engaging in criminal activity in this state, I would have approved it,” Bourcier said in an interview. “Had this guy come here with clean hands, we would have permitted it.”
Martin Healey reported his conversation with Judge Frank Williams about pro hac vice many months earlier, who had told him it was not necessary at the investigative phase. Healey told Rockoff he had rechecked his own notes and that he had discussed his call with Judge Williams with several people at the time they spoke about pro hac vice.
Small confirmed to Rockoff that they would have sought written permission if they had any “inkling” that it was necessary before he investigated allegations in the pending complaints.
The reporter went to Williams, who fudged: “Even if I had said ‘no problem,’ ” the chief justice said, “my opinion is worthless in comparison with the statutes and regulations of the Supreme Court.”
Sara Quinn, now a lawyer for Operation Clean Government, related the history of outside lawyers brought in for special investigations by state commissions without first seeking or obtaining pro hac vice permission. Even Alan I. Baron, one of the “Baltimore Bullets” who investigated the RISDIC collapse, said, “I don’t think I ever appeared in court, which is normally when you file for permission.”
On March 23, Justice Victoria S. Lederberg weighed in with an extraordinary opinion piece in the Providence Journal. “Almost all pro hac vice motions are unopposed and are granted by this court,” she wrote. “In Small’s case, however, the motion was vigorously opposed by allegations that Small violated rules of practice and criminal statutes of the state.” Lederberg quoted the decision of Superior Court Judge Silverstein, which ruled that without a written order from Williams, “I am not prepared to deal with Mr. Small’s request for pro hac status.” She condemned any suggestion that she and Bourcier had denied Small permission because of their relationship with Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg.
The coup de grace came when Chief Justice Frank J. Williams wrote personally to each member of the Ethics Commission and enclosed an op-ed piece he was submitting to the Providence Journal entitled: “Ethics flap is Mr. Healey’s fault.”
Williams wrote that while he presided over the Superior Court’s Formal and Special Cause Calendar, he had spoken twice with Healey about hiring an out-of-state counsel to practice before the commission. He added that since the Ethics Commission was not a court, and since there was no action filed in the Superior Court, “I could not consider any application to permit this Massachusetts lawyer to practice in Rhode Island — particularly if it were only before the commission.”
In an interesting twist, Williams argued that Healey’s own experience trying to obtain pro hac vice in 1995 should have alerted him to the problem. Without acknowledging the rule’s ambiguity about outside lawyers who never appear in court, Williams laid all the blame on Healey: “The failure by Mr. Healey to follow proper protocol for admission for Mr. Small is the sole reason for this unfortunate imbroglio.”
The chief justice could not have issued a clearer invitation to fire Healey, and three lawyers on the ethics panel set out to do it. On April 3, vice chair Richard Kirby spoke of Williams’ newspaper piece as grounds for firing the executive director. As if it were planned, Francis Flanagan moved to terminate Healey and James Murray seconded the motion.
James Lynch, the retired Army colonel, said he could not support Flanagan’s motion. “If we have a problem with our executive director, we should tell him what the problem is and give him a chance to correct it.” He reminded commissioners that they had been talking about opinion pieces in newspapers. “The only specific that’s changed is this letter from Chief Justice Williams, and it’s clear to me that he may have contributed to the misunderstanding at the heart of this crisis.”
Healey sat at a small square table near the commissioners, his face drained of color. He listened as commission counsel William J. Conley said the director was an “at-will” employee, that he had a right to know the basis of his termination, and that he must have an opportunity to respond.
Although not in any official role as prosecutor, Commissioner Frank Flanagan was in effect prosecuting Healey. Asserting that Williams’s version of the pro hac vice phone calls was true and Healey’s false, he accused Healey of not telling the commission that his own 1995 pro hac vice case was a roadmap and charged that he had not followed through on getting the special counsel admitted. Finally, he blamed Healey for not detailing Small’s bills for the investigation, adding that the commission needed to have more confidence in its executive director. “To use a navy phrase,” the former JAG declared, “this ship has run aground, and it’s time to right the course.”
Healey responded without visible anger. He described the challenge of investigating complaints against three members of the commission, adding: “I perceived it as my responsibility to act as a buffer between the commission and the investigation.” He insisted that the amount of Small’s contract was a public record and that he had said so on at least one occasion when commissioners asked. Minutes of the December meeting showed that he had reported the expenses and commissioners had not asked for more information. Case by case Healey summarized the problems that contributed to the overturning of several commission decisions, not least among them the lack of a hearing room in the mid-1990s.
Then he described his two phone conversations with Frank Williams, a man he had considered his friend. “I’ve searched my mind,” he said, “and I stand on my recollections of those conversations. I took notes, a staff member was present for part of one conversation, and within ten minutes I related what he said to people in the office.”
From the center chair, Richard Kirby declared his personal affection for Healey. “What this comes down to is that Marty Healey is a fine lawyer, but there are philosophical differences between him and members of this commission. Passion, conviction, and zeal have clouded his judgment.”
Commissioner Paul Verrecchia, the chief of security at Brown, said he could not remember one instance when Healey had not leveled with them. He said complaints against members of the commission created a dilemma: “We felt awkward about micromanaging. Maybe he should have hit us in the head, but that’s not the way he works.”
I listened, took notes, counted votes. Zurier, Main, and Goldberg had recused themselves, and only six commissioners remained. Less than a year earlier, Flanagan, Murray, and Kirby had voted with Goldberg to get rid of the gift ban. Now their measured words, like a drum roll, presaged a firing.
Mel Zurier sat behind me in the audience. He had undergone his own shock of recognition when he compared their vote on the hastily amended $150/$450 gift rule to the Dred Scott decision. Their vote for a recklessly permissive gift rule had begun the meltdown of the Ethics Commission.
Lynch and Verrecchia had voted no on the new gift rule. Their comments indicated that both would vote against firing Marty Healey. The one unknown was a newly appointed dentist, the first non-lawyer appointed in years, Diane T. Monti-Markowski. If she voted no, there would be a 3 to 3 tie, and the motion to fire Healey would fail. I held my breath.
When her turn came, Monti-Markowski explained that she was new to the commission and did not want to make a mistake. She abstained.
Still seated at his table, Healey sucked in air. It was over.
Afterward, in comments to reporters, he dismissed the reasons given for his firing as pretext. The author of the original zero-tolerance gift rule said sadly that he had been fired for doing his job too well. “Nobody likes a watchdog.”
Providence Journal political commentator M. Charles Bakst, who sat through the Healey firing, wrote that it had been years since he “felt such alarm about ethics in Rhode Island.” He added: “It was obvious that the commissioners who wanted to fire Healey were not interested in such small details as, um, facts. For example, they did not question Williams over discrepancies between his version and Healey’s version of their conversations.”
I told reporters I blamed the chief justice: “It’s clear that Marty has been made a scapegoat and that Judge Williams’s op-ed piece was as close as you could come to a directive to fire him.”
Williams tried to deflect blame by again slamming Healey for failing to obtain pro hac vice at the start. “The problem was not what the court did, but what the Ethics Commission did not do,” the chief justice told the Providence Journal. Williams insisted that he spoke out because watchdog groups were attacking the court’s integrity: “Just because you get an adverse ruling doesn’t mean there is a vast conspiracy. They ought to look at the source: the commission and its staff.”
Besides his opinion piece blaming the meltdown on Healey, the chief justice did interviews on talk radio shows, defending himself and his fellow justices.
Law professor Carl Bogus, a member of the Common Cause board, took Williams to task in a Providence Journal commentary. The justices had been stung, he wrote, by a firestorm of criticism. But they had failed to issue a written opinion when they disqualified Small. “They may routinely grant pro hac vice applications without opinions, but here they were taking the more unusual step of denying an application — and doing so in a case of great public interest.”
Bogus also noted that the justices had other ways “to vindicate the principle that out-of-state lawyers may not practice before Rhode Island commissions without prior permission. Small could have been sanctioned, fined, or perhaps been made to forfeit fees for prior work, for example.” He concluded that the justices’ media efforts were bound to fail: “By leaving the bench and thrusting themselves into the hurly burly of political debate, the justices made themselves appear even more politically interested and opened themselves up to further questions and criticisms, fair or unfair.”
The Providence Journal also printed my op-ed on Healey’s ouster. I wrote that after commissioners enacted the zero-tolerance gift ban, Gov. Almond and legislative leaders packed the panel with well-connected lawyers who rescinded the gift ban and opened the floodgates to gifts from lobbyists. Watchdog groups filed complaints against commissioners, and Healey had needed to find independent counsel. He hired Small, but the Goldbergs stonewalled and filed false charges. Worst of all, Williams hid his own role in the controversy and scapegoated Healey.
I proposed a series of reforms aimed at restoring the Ethics Commission, but the damage had already been done. Many Rhode Islanders, even Common Cause board members, said the time had come to scrap the Ethics Commission and start over. I wrote that reconstruction — particularly the hiring of a new executive director — would be hard. Who would take the job after what happened to Healey?
A few members of the General Assembly recognized the urgency of rebuilding the commission. Over several years, Rep. David Cicilline had introduced bills to strengthen it, and now he filed new legislation that would open the process and set standards for appointments. “There’s been a real loss of confidence in the way the Ethics Commission is operating,” he told reporters. “The public has grown very frustrated with watching this process.” Cicilline pushed without success to get his legislation onto the House floor for a vote.
Common Cause honored Martin Healey at our annual meeting that November, when we brought together the likely candidates for governor in the election still one year away. Five prospective candidates sat near the front, ready for our town hall meeting — Republicans James S. Bennett, Donald L. Carcieri, and Bernard A. Jackvony, with Democrats Antonio J. Pires and Sheldon Whitehouse — when Healey’s award was announced.
Resembling a slim, grown-up Harry Potter, Healey made his way through a ballroom filled with round tables. People began clapping, then rose to their feet and cheered him. I read a framed citation that praised “his professionalism in office, his personal integrity, and his courage in the face of relentless attack.” As I handed it to him, applause washed over him again.
“Thank you,” he called out, his boyish tenor full of emotion. “I don’t think I can tell you how much that meant to me.”
He outlined the problems he had faced in investigating complaints against members of the commission and his decision to hire Dan Small. He sketched stalling tactics that ran out the clock and ended with the opinion piece by Frank Williams. Making light of the ugly drama, Healey told us how he tried to answer his 8-year-old daughter’s question about why he was coming back to Providence for our event. “I said, ‘Your Daddy is going to get an award,’ and she said, ‘Is that like a trophy?’
“I said, ‘Well, sort of,’ and she said, ‘What for?’
“And I said, ‘There were some people who are supposed to make sure other people obey the law, whom a lot of people thought broke the law themselves, and they didn’t want that to be investigated. And I told them that they had to play by the same rules as everybody else, and they didn’t like that, but I insisted on it.’
“ ‘Then somebody else who was supposed to enforce the law didn’t tell the truth about some conversations he had with me, and people tried to make me change my story about that, and I wouldn’t. And people didn’t like that.’
“ ‘Then the people I worked for wanted the investigator I had hired to go away. They wanted me to fire him, and I wouldn’t do that. I insisted they play by the same rules as everybody else.’ So, I said, ‘That is why I am getting an award.’
“At that point, my son, who is six, piped up and asked, ‘Why are you getting an award again?’
“My daughter, without missing a beat, said: ‘Daddy’s getting a trophy because he’s stubborn.’”
Our audience burst into laughter and thunderous applause.
Healey turned his attention to the likely gubernatorial candidates who were about to come on stage for a town hall conversation. “Whoever becomes the next governor hopefully will take more seriously than Gov. Almond did the people he puts on what is a very important agency.”
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.
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