Ric Santurri: Michael Solomon’s Ethics Problems

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Ric Santurri, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

Last week, Providence Ward 1 Republican City Council Candidate Michael Long filed a complaint at the Rhode Island Ethics Commission, charging that City Council President Michael Solomon with 25 violations of the disclosure requirements. Long charged that Solomon failed to “meet the reporting requirements of the RI Ethics Commission regarding annual public disclosure by public official, and as such has violated the R.I. Code of Ethics.” (You can read the entire complaint here).

Solomon, considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for mayor, has responded that his filings were “incomplete” and that he will be amending the reports. There you go. No big deal, just a simple oversight that can be corrected; actually 25 oversights, according to the Long complaint.

R.I. public officials are required by state law, under penalty of perjury, to file an annual Yearly Financial Statement with the R.I. Ethics Commission. This statement's purpose is for public official's basic business dealings to be transparent, to ensure the official is not taking advantage of a public office to enrich himself, or to disclose if he is taking advantage of his public position.

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Solomon, who has admitted to having misfiled these ethics reports, wants the top job in a city with 1,400 employees, a $662 million budget, and what appears to be a billion problems. Even if you take Solomon at his word, that years of him filing inaccurate and incomplete ethics reports, under penalty of perjury, is a simple oversight instead of an attempt to conceal politically damaging information, do the people of Providence want, as their leader someone so careless and non-detail oriented as their leader? (You can read the actual Solomon ethics filings here).

There are two ways to look at violations of R.I. Ethics disclosure law. They could be innocent mistakes, due to the official's inability to understand the form, or they could be nefarious, due to the official wanting to hide damaging information about possible conflict of interest or financial gain at taxpayer expense. Of course, Solomon is going the Innocent Mistake route. “No one is trying to hide anything,” Solomon was quoted as saying last week in response to the Long ethics complaint.

“Innocent Mistake” 1 – Real Estate Owned

Solomon already took the Innocent Mistake route when he amended his reports in January 2012 to list the proper addresses of his real estate holdings.

The correction to Innocent Mistake I was apparently in response to a previously unpublicized inquiry to the R.I. Ethics Commission in December 2011 by former Providence resident, whistle blower, and politicians' worst nightmare Judith Reilly. Reilly correctly charged that Solomon's filings were incomplete because he didn't provide accurate addresses of real estate in which he had a financial interest. The exact wording on the disclosure form is: “List the address or legal description of any real estate, other than your principal residence, that you, your spouse, or your dependent child had a financial interest.”

Seems pretty cut and dry to me. If you own real estate in addition to your home, in any way, and in any percentage in a partnership, it has to be disclosed by address or legal description. When Michael Solomon originally disclosed in 2010 that he owned “two condo's, ” that certainly didn't meet the criteria of address or legal description in this section of the disclosure law.

Now, a cynic would have to think that a politician with aspirations for higher office would be reluctant to actually list the address of a property he owns that happens have a mortgage on it that is the biggest, longest held, and most problematic loan from the Providence Economic Development Partnership, a story broke by excellent investigative reporter Jim Hummel (go to the 6 minute mark of this video for the Solomon report). Even if it was an Innocent Mistake, wouldn't an official, when correcting years of ethics filing violations, want to meet the letter of the disclosure law by also listing the mortgages held on these properties, even if one of those mortgages was the controversial PEDP loan that was originated in 1988 for $500,000 and still has a balance of around that amount, after 26 years of sporadic payments?

Maybe Solomon could have misread this section, year after year, missing the word “legal” in “legal description.” That would explain why, on his 2010 disclosure form under the real estate section, Solomon wrote “6 UNIT BLDG, 3 UNIT BLDG, 2 CABANAS, LAND 3 ACRES, 2 CONDO'S.” Maybe this is not a deliberate attempt to disclose Solomon's interest in the controversial Conrad loan but, if so, what does it say about Solomon's ability to understand simple requirements? If Solomon doesn't have the acumen to understand something as simple and clear-cut as this, how is he going to run a $660 million dollar enterprise as mayor?

“Innocent Mistake” II – Family Debt

City Council candidate Long has charged 25 instances of violations of the disclosure law. 19 are violations where mortgage debts were not reported, including 13 regarding the controversial Conrad project. Long listed each loan's book and page recorded at the Providence Recorder of Deeds, and these look to be clear violations of the disclosure law. One would think that, when correcting his previous mistakes by not listing actual addresses, Solomon would have looked over the entire form with more care before submitting his 2012 and 2013 forms, under penalty of perjury, without listing any mortgages for these properties, as required.

“Innocent Mistake” 3 – Business Ownership Interest - Regulation

The other six charges by Long are also serious violations of the ethics disclosure law. On the last section of the RI Ethics Disclosure form, officials are required to disclose any instance where they have a business interest of $250 or more that year with a municipal agency where the official “exercise(s) direct or legislative control.” Michael Solomon was on the board of the PEDP while having a mortgage with that agency, and that mortgage was not disclosed for years.

According to WPRI's Dan McGowan, Solomon was “appointed to the PEDP board by Cicilline in September 2008. Meeting minutes show Solomon never attended a meeting where the board discussed the loan for the Conrad Building. He was absent for all but one of the 19 meetings he was scheduled to attend between 2008 and 2011.” One way to avoid conflict of interest, I guess, is to miss 94 percent of the meetings.

How does this guy go around touting his wanting to help small businesses start up and thrive in Providence if he missed 94 percent of the meetings of the city agency charged to help these businesses get off the ground? Did helping small businesses (besides his own) only become a priority now that Solomon is running for mayor? To be fair to Solomon, he was being a hypocrite well before he announced his candidacy for mayor. In October 2011, at the tail end of his 94 percent missing PEDP meeting streak, he told GoLocalProv “(w)ith high unemployment and vacant space throughout our city, economic development needs to be a top priority for the City of Providence.” While bemoaning that many of these PEDP loans could turn troubled, Solomon failed to mention that he was the loan program's biggest troubled debtor, a story broke the next year by Jim Hummel.

To me, this is the most troubling of the Long ethics charges. Before the Solomon Conrad PEDP loan story was broke by Jim Hummel in 2012, it wasn't common knowledge that Solomon was indebted to the same agency upon which he sat on the board. If Solomon accurately filled out his ethics disclosure forms all those years, as required by RI law and attested by him to be true and accurate under penalty of perjury, the public would have known about the distressed Solomon PEDP long before Hummel broke the story.

Solomon Benefiting Politically From Non-Disclosure

With full disclosure as required by R.I. law, there is a good possibility that Michael Solomon may have never gotten elected to the city council in the first place. Solomon first won the Ward 5 seat in 2006 by only 165 votes, after not disclosing that he was the city's biggest PEDP debtor. Here is Solomon's inaccurate 2005 report, which cannot be charged as an ethics violation since the Ethics Commission can't go back more than six years by statute. Solomon misidentifies the address of the Conrad building on Westminster Street by listing the wrong address number for the property. Was it just a convenient mistake, or a purposeful attempt to evade scrutiny about the bum loan? I can't believe the people of Ward 5 would not have had a problem with a politically connected insider skirting a half-million dollar debt to the city for almost two decades (at the time). The people who live in Mt. Pleasant and Elmhurst are hard working, highly taxed, and certainly wouldn't have reacted well to a candidate asking for their vote while being delinquent on a half-million dollar city loan.

There is also a good possibility that Solomon would have never emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination if this loan were disclosed. One can argue that the non-filings were merely errors or oversights, but it is difficult to argue that Solomon hasn't benefited by not disclosing this information. Michael Solomon built his career as an elected official in Providence with a huge cloud hanging over his head, this sketchy PEDP Conrad loan, which didn't become public knowledge until the beginning of 2012. By not following ethics laws regarding public disclosure of financial interest over the years, Solomon has largely escaped scrutiny and has been able to build a political career that now sees him on the doorstep of becoming mayor of Providence.

Michael Solomon should not profit politically by breaking R.I. law, and must be penalized for violating R.I. ethics law countless times throughout his political career when filing inaccurate and incomplete disclosure forms under “pains and penalty of perjury.” The R.I. Ethics Commission must act swiftly and decisively on this ethics complaint. Public officials shouldn't personally benefit from skirting RI ethics law. The R.I. Ethics Commission needs to hold Mr. Solomon to the letter of the law, and needs to hand down the most stringent penalties allowed by law, to both not allow Solomon to benefit from his non-compliance, and to dissuade other public officials from shirking the disclosure requirements in the future.

Ric Santurri is a Providence real estate investor and broker.  A graduate of the URI School of Journalism, he has been involved in RI politics for over three decades.  The past few years, Ric has been keenly focused on Providence, mainly budget and tax policy, politics and elections, and quality of life issues.  Feel free to send comments, tips, and info to [email protected].

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