Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter One
Monday, March 09, 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 One: DePrete, RISDIC
Chapter One: Breaking Ground (1986–87)
Constitutional conventions can move mountains. The Philadelphia Convention of 1787 was called to strengthen the Articles of Confederation, but delegates went further and drafted the U.S. Constitution. On a smaller scale, Rhode Island’s 1986 Constitutional Convention unleashed historic changes that would reverberate for decades.
Preparations had already begun when two scandals shocked a state renowned for its indifference to corruption, souring voters both on Chief Justice Joseph A. Bevilacqua and on a powerful housing agency.
Bevilacqua had risen through the legislative ranks while serving as defense counsel for members of the New England Mob. The Providence Democrat became House majority leader in 1966 and won election as speaker of the House in 1969. Three years later he defended Raymond “Junior” Patriarca, son of the legendary New England crime boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca. In 1976, Bevilacqua’s colleagues in the General Assembly elected him chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
In 1985 the Providence Journal reported that Chief Justice Bevilacqua had continued his contacts with mobsters. State police surveillance confirmed his Mob connections, and even he acknowledged them. While a disciplinary panel moved with glacial slowness, the newspaper reported that Bevilacqua had met at least three times with women at the Alpine Motel, owned by organized crime figures, on Douglas Pike in Smithfield.
The Journal also exposed corruption in the state’s affordable housing agency, Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Finance Corporation (RIHMFC), a quasi-public entity created in 1973 as a self-supporting corporation to finance, purchase, construct, and rehabilitate affordable housing. Sons and daughters of favored politicians and business leaders landed cut-rate mortgages worth $2.9 million that were never logged into state computers. Moreover, RIHMFC’s executive director, Ralph A. Pari, had used an agency credit card for airfare, posh hotel rooms, expensive meals, and limousines. At least one junket involved a trip to Florida with a staff member and her daughters. Investigators charged Pari with racketeering, embezzlement, larceny, and obstruction of justice.
These scandals dominated news for weeks just before voters were to choose delegates for the constitutional convention that would recommend changes in the state’s Constitution. Candidates ran in each of the state’s one hundred representative districts, but were not listed by party affiliation. A total of 565 individuals gathered the requisite fifty signatures before the October 1 deadline. Many promised voters that they would address government corruption.
Turnout was low for the off-year election in 1985, but a broad mix of candidates, ranging from political novices to seasoned statewide campaigners, were elected delegates. Among them were several former legislators, a brain surgeon, a radio talk show host, and the president of an international relief agency. Homemakers, firefighters, a bus driver, and a sculptor would share responsibility for reviewing the state’s Constitution along with a dozen retirees and ten college students. James Langevin, a 21-year old quadriplegic from Rhode Island College, campaigned door-to-door in his motorized wheelchair and won.
These delegates had an extraordinary chance to reshape Rhode Island’s Constitution, setting their own agenda with no topic off limits. Amendments recommended by the ConCon, as it was called, would bypass the General Assembly and go directly to the ballot. A 1973 convention had eased the process for amendments, which voters could now approve with a simple majority at a
single election. Proposals from the convention might shape state government for generations.
Politicians promptly suggested topics. Lt. Gov. Richard A. Licht, a Democrat, proposed campaign finance reforms that would provide matching public funds for candidates who agreed to limit their spending.7 Then Republican Gov. Edward D. DiPrete hosted a reception for delegates. He urged them to present amendments that would strengthen the executive branch: four-year terms for statewide general officers and a line-item veto on the budget. DiPrete wanted the governor rather than the legislature to choose state Supreme Court justices. He also asked convention delegates to propose cutting the size of the General Assembly by half, creating an ethics code for all public officials and allowing citizens to create laws through voter initiative.
The convention assembled on January 6, 1986 and elected former Rep. Keven A. McKenna as its chairperson. McKenna came with solid experience both in a U.S. Senate office and in Rhode Island posts: he had served as an assistant attorney general, state legislator, and Providence Municipal Court judge. He in turn appointed a young lawyer named Anthony DeSisto to lead the committee on ethics.
While the convention began drafting its rules, leaders in the House filed a bipartisan resolution to impeach Chief Justice Bevilacqua.11 The impeachment inquiry, unprecedented in the state’s history, cast a long shadow over both the 1986 legislative session and the convention. Investigators brought Richard “Moon” DiOrio, a Mob associate under federal witness protection, to Rhode Island in disguise. Hidden behind a screen from the audience and photographers, the mobster testified he had seen the chief justice meet twice with Raymond “Junior” Patriarca, who had succeeded his late father as the boss of organized crime in New England.
On a more mundane level, an electrical contractor for the court system testified that his firm had done unpaid work at homes that belonged to the chief justice and one of the women who had met him at the Alpine Motel. The motel’s manager told of coded registration cards, adding that a man had warned her not to talk to anyone about the mystery guest. Bevilacqua, like the mobsters he represented, did not have a checking account and did all of his personal business in cash.
As impeachment pressure mounted, Bevilacqua finally resigned on May 28, 1986. House Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey J. Teitz, who presided over the impeachment hearings, read Bevilacqua’s resignation letter into the record. The inquiry ended without the need for a vote.
The chief justice’s resignation reverberated through the constitutional convention, and the scandal emboldened those delegates who wanted a new process for selecting judges. Since the days when Rhode Island was one of thirteen British colonies clinging precariously to the Atlantic seaboard, all of the state senators and representatives had gathered “in Grand Committee” to fill each vacancy on the Supreme Court. In the 1970s there were twice as many representatives as senators, so speakers of the House easily dominated the selection
process. Convention delegates remembered that former speaker Bevilacqua had orchestrated his own election as chief justice.
One week after his resignation, convention delegates voted unanimously to recommend a new process for selecting judges. The proposed constitutional amendment would create an eleven-member judicial nominating commission to select well-qualified candidates for each judicial vacancy. Lawmakers would still meet “in Grand Committee,” but they would be required to elect each justice from the commission’s lists. The proposed new judicial nominating commission would also have power to discipline errant judges or to recommend impeachment.
Other proposals sparked fierce debate among delegates. Many saw voter initiative as a way around the legislature, which routinely stonewalled reform. In twenty-six other states, voters could sign petitions to place laws or constitutional amendments directly on the ballot. Rhode Island delegates battled over how many signatures to require and whether to limit the scope; the final resolution on voter initiative proposed to bar any that would affect state expenses, taxes, or collective bargaining.
The convention’s ethics committee remained all but invisible, shouldered off the front page by controversies over abortion and judicial impeachment. Its members recognized that only a strong ethics amendment could deter corruption and adopted a phrase from Hawaii’s constitution: “Public officers and employees must exhibit the highest standards of ethical conduct.” Committee members who researched the matter thought Hawaii had erred by creating separate ethics commissions for various parts of state government. For this reason they proposed a single ethics panel with one set of rules to bind every government official in the state, whether elected, appointed, or hired as employees. They envisioned a beefed-up version of Rhode Island’s ten-year-old Conflict of Interest Commission.
But who would write the new ethics code? Delegates knew they could not. Because language for the state’s Constitution should spell out only broad principles, they must assign the task of writing detailed rules to others. At the same time Rae B. Condon, director of the Conflict of Interest Commission, reminded delegates that the current code of ethics was weak and warned that the General Assembly would welcome a chance to undermine it further.
After a lively discussion, Peter V. Lacouture, the ethics committee’s attorney, suggested that the new commissioners be authorized in the Constitution to write the rules for public officials. In the words of delegate Roger Milette, having the commission draft the code would “take the fox away from the chickens.” In minutes, Lacouture and DeSisto drafted a constitutional amendment in three parts. The first part offered their ideal of ethical service: “The people of Rhode Island believe that public officials and employees must adhere to the highest standards of ethical conduct, respect the public trust and the rights of all persons, avoid the appearance of impropriety, and not use their position for private gain or advantage.”
The second section directed the General Assembly to establish an “independent non-partisan ethics commission.” Once created in law, the new commission would “adopt a code of ethics, including provisions on conflict of interest, confidential information, use of position, contracts with government agencies, and financial disclosure.” No one questioned what the verb “adopt” might mean. The delegates were determined that the legislature should not create a new code of ethics; only an independent and non-partisan ethics commission could write rules that the public would trust. These new rules would cover every government official in the state. The proposed constitutional amendment stated: “All elected and appointed officials and employees of state and local government, commissions, and agencies shall be subject to the code of ethics.”
Finally, the amendment would empower the new ethics commission “to investigate violations of the code of ethics and impose penalties including removal from office of individuals who are not subject to impeachment.”
At that moment, delegates on the ethics committee seemed unaware that they were proposing a model that might prove controversial. By conferring both the authority to create the new code and the power to enforce it, they were proposing the strongest government ethics agency in the United States. Committee members refined their three-part text and read it again. Then they
voted unanimously to send it to the full convention for a vote.
The committee also addressed the question of financing political campaigns. Their final resolution called on the General Assembly to set limits on campaign spending and to create a voluntary system of matching funds for statewide general officers.
Other committees were wrapping up their resolutions and sending them to the convention floor. On June 26, the delegates gave final approval to a raft of constitutional questions for the November ballot. Question 14, the most contentious, proclaimed a “paramount right to life” and proposed a constitutional ban on public funding for abortions. Almost as controversial, Question 5 laid out a process for voter initiative that would allow citizens to gather signatures and place issues on the ballot without legislative approval.
Delegates also backed increasing terms for statewide executive officers and members of the General Assembly from two years to four, and they endorsed a pay raise for legislators, whose salaries were among the lowest in the country. Other questions proposed to ease a lifetime ban on voting by felons, establish crime victims’ rights, and guarantee public access to the shoreline.
The ethics committee recommended three proposals that were consolidated under the rubric of ethics in government: a new standard of impeachment, an independent ethics commission, and a voluntary system of campaign financing that was modeled on the matching-funds program for presidential campaigns. Despite their diverse content, these three proposals were bundled together as Question 6.
Weary delegates approved fourteen questions for the November 1986 statewide ballot and finally adjourned at 2:10 a.m.
The summer of 1986 slipped away with no visible campaigning except on the proposed abortion amendment. That issue quickly boiled over in the heavily Roman Catholic state. Mary Ann Sorrentino, the director of Planned Parenthood and a Roman Catholic, had lobbied against any amendment that might curtail or outlaw abortions. Her parish priest declared that she had “excommunicated herself” by her role in a clinic that performed abortions, and Bishop Louis E. Gelineau agreed. Gelineau later published an open letter encouraging voters to approve Question 14, titled “Paramount Right to Life/Abortion,” and called outlawing abortions “the most fundamental civil rights issue of our time.”
The medical community quickly weighed in on Question 14. The medical staff at Roger Williams Hospital warned that the proposed amendment “could interfere with the ability of physicians, patients and families to make appropriate medical decisions in the care of some critically ill patients.”
Before the convention, Gov. DiPrete and U.S. Sen. John Chafee had warned delegates not to distract themselves with volatile social issues like abortion. Now Question 14 filled front pages and drew media attention away from other proposed amendments.
To inform voters about all fourteen questions, leaders of the convention mounted a campaign that included billboards, bus shelter ads, regional forums, and voter information booklets. They sent two mailings to every household in the state. The first described the changes each proposed amendment would make in the constitution; the second gave the exact wording of each change.
Peter V. Lacouture, counsel to the ethics committee, urged voters to support Question 6, Ethics in Government. In a Providence Journal opinion piece, he promised that the amendment would “establish a new standard of ethics for public officials and reduce or eliminate the abuses that have made Rhode Island notorious in the past.”
However, U.S. Senator John Chafee, a moderate Republican who had served six years as governor, dismissed the whole convention as overly influenced by legislative leaders even though his son Lincoln had been a delegate. He urged voters to reject all of the proposed amendments. Gov. DiPrete also warned that the proposed new ethics commission would become a “fourth branch of
government” and urged voters to reject the amendment.
Finally, a week before the election, editorial writers at the Providence Journal took aim at both the proposed campaign finance reforms and the broad authority that would be conferred on the proposed new ethics panel. “This commission,” the editors wrote, “will be empowered to act as legislator, prosecutor, jury, judge, and executioner.” They argued Rhode Island should not put “such awesome power into the hands of an ethics commission which may not turn out to be quite so ‘independent’ and ‘non-partisan’ as this proposal anticipates.”
On November 4, 1986, state voters went to the polls in extraordinary numbers. In a nearly two to one landslide they re-elected the incumbent Edward DiPrete over Democrat Bruce G. Sundlun. And although Rhode Island was America’s most Roman Catholic state, nearly two-thirds of the electorate rejected the anti-abortion amendment. Never before had the predominantly Roman
Catholic descendants of Irish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and French Canadian immigrants rebelled so publicly against their bishop.
In a less dramatic revolt, voters ignored warnings from DiPrete, Chafee, the Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Providence Journal that they should reject Question 6 on ethics and campaign reform. Behind curtains in antiquated voting machines, a surprising 53.3 percent pressed the lever for “Ethics in Government.” Without exit polls no one could be sure what their votes meant, but voters made history by authorizing a panel of their peers to write and enforce ethics rules for all public officials. Many clearly agreed
with the widely quoted comment of delegate Roger Milette that it was time to “take the fox away from the chickens.” The convention’s innovative proposal to combat corruption became part of the Rhode Island Constitution.
Voters also trounced proposals they saw as sympathetic to legislators: a legislative pay raise, four-year terms for legislators as well as statewide executive officers, and a new judicial selection process that would allow lawmakers to continue choosing justices of the Supreme Court. The legislative pay raise would have been small, but it went down by a huge margin. Sixty-four per cent of the voters rejected the raise, a larger percentage than any other ‘no’ vote except the anti-abortion question. This overwhelming defeat delivered a stern rebuke to lawmakers. Their pay would remain $300 per year—an amount worth only a fraction of its value when it became part of the Constitution in 1900.
Voters rejected a voter initiative amendment that reform groups said had been gutted in the convention.
The electorate approved a gender-neutral rewriting of the entire state constitution and backed an amendment that required judges to allow crime victims to address the court before sentencing. They approved amendments that barred felons from running for office for three years after completing their sentence, and liberalized access to the voting booth by allowing convicts—who had previously needed an act of the legislature to vote again—to register and vote after completing their probation and parole. Few Rhode Islanders seemed aware that their newly revised constitution marked a watershed, but the delegates who had been elected under the shadow of the Bevilacqua and RIHMFC scandals had glimpsed a distant hope and set a course to reach it.
As many had feared, the General Assembly moved quickly to extract the teeth from the new ethics agency. During the 1987 legislative session, two competing bills proposed “an independent non-partisan ethics commission.” One envisioned a watchdog that could bark and bite; the other provided a muzzle and leash.
Sara M. Quinn, a young lawyer at the Conflict of Interest Commission, drafted the tougher bill, which favored rebranding the existing body as the Rhode Island Ethics Commission. Her legislation ensured continuity, retained the nine current members, and allowed them to follow through with cases that were already under investigation.
Quinn departed from the old law in a significant way. Regardless of how notorious an official’s behavior was, the Conflict of Interest Commission could not investigate without a sworn complaint from someone with first-hand knowledge. Quinn proposed to empower this new commission to investigate information it might receive in other ways — through leaks, tips, and newspaper stories — just as other law enforcement agencies could. She also proposed to raise the fines for wrongdoing from $10,000 to $25,000 per violation and empower the new panel to make violators forfeit three times the amount they gained from corrupt practices.
Sponsorship became a problem. Quinn offered her draft to House and Senate leaders of both parties, but none would touch it. She finally persuaded Sen. Victoria S. Lederberg, a Democrat from the East Side of Providence, to sponsor the bill, but senate leaders responsible for assigning legislation to appropriate committees buried it. Instead of referring it to the Judiciary Committee, where such bills always went, they shipped it to the Joint Committee on Environment, where it sank into oblivion.
The second bill was more cautious. Rep. Jeffrey J. Teitz, a young Newport attorney who chaired the House Judiciary Committee, drafted what became a bipartisan leadership bill. Majority Whip Thomas A. Lamb and House Minority Leader Bradford Gorham became its co-sponsors.35 Teitz proposed to replace the nine-member Conflict of Interest Commission with a fifteen-member ethics commission. Like its predecessor, the new panel would have to wait for a sworn complaint. To process an ethics complaint against any public official, the new commission would divide into two panels: a six-person investigative committee to decide whether there was probable cause to prosecute, and a nine-member adjudicative panel to hear the evidence in a trial-like hearing.
Teitz’s bill, furthermore, kept the top fine at $10,000 and empowered the commission to make corrupt officials forfeit wrongful financial gains. Its list of “prohibited activities” was a detailed code of ethics—despite the convention’s declaration that the code of ethics should be written by the new ethics commission.
Common Cause executive director Marilyn Hines testified before Teitz and his committee that the code incorporated in his bill seemed to say, “Let’s not do anything to hurt a public official.”
Rae B. Condon, who had stepped down as director of the Conflict of Interest Commission, also blasted Teitz’s bill. To many across Rhode Island, Condon epitomized the battle against corruption. In a Providence Journal essay, she wrote that Teitz’s legislation “usurps the power granted the ethics commission by the people.”37 She also excoriated Teitz for “prescribing the internal structure of the commission, as well as the roles of its members and employees,” a move she warned would cripple the new body.
Many lawmakers attacked Teitz’s ethics bill as too stringent. On May 6, during
public debate on the House floor, the bill’s modest financial disclosure requirements
drew fire from Rep. Joseph L. Casinelli, who chaired the House Corporations Committee. He complained that the requirement to disclose outstanding debts would keep “quality people” from running for office. “I don’t feel anxious about any loans,” said Casinelli, who owned a drug store near the State House. “I feel it’s my business, and it bothers me that we have to go to this length to satisfy somebody’s prurient interest.” By a 90–3 vote, the representatives
voted to delete a requirement that public officials report loans they owed to financial institutions regulated by the state or federal government. The bill advanced to the senate, but this debate revealed the chasm between legislators and outside advocates of ethics reform.
During her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Marilyn Hines also argued that the bill’s section on prohibited activities would violate the constitutional amendment. She reminded senators that the voters had commanded the General Assembly to “establish an independent non-partisan” ethics commission that would then “adopt a code of ethics” for public officials.
Sen. Gregory J. Acciardo of Johnston, a Democrat on the committee, countered that the amendment could also be taken to mean that the General Assembly should pass the code and that the new commission could then simply adopt and enforce it.
“I’ve had it up to here with independent commissions,” declared Sen. Ann H. Hanson, a Barrington Republican. “They create their own fiefdoms. Please don’t get all wrapped up in a bunch of fifteen wonderful people who are going to solve all the problems of the world. Often they create the problems.”
“The people passed this amendment,” Hines insisted.
“Fine,” shot back committee chair, John J. Bevilacqua, son of the former chief justice. “We’re acting as we interpret that amendment.”
The full Senate passed Teitz’s bill and sent it to Gov. DiPrete, who signed it without fanfare. With DiPrete’s signature the nine-member Conflict of Interest Commission was abolished and a shaky transition to the new fifteen-member Ethics Commission began. Although the new law contained a section on transition, no one knew when new commissioners would be appointed, who they might be, or whether they could fulfill the high hopes many had for them.
As a disappointing finale, the Conflict of Interest Commission was forced to dismiss a complaint against Rep. Robert V. Bianchini of Cranston. While he wielded authority as vice chair of the powerful House Finance Committee, Bianchini routinely protected the interests of Rhode Island’s homegrown credit unions. He earned his living as president of the Rhode Island Credit Union League, the industry’s trade group. As a member of the House leadership, Bianchini could trade favors and twist arms beyond the dreams of any lobbyist. Rhode Island knew the credit union insurance system, the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation, by its acronym: RISDIC. In the spring of 1986, while the Constitutional Convention was at work, Cumberland Rep. Francis A. Gaschen, a Democrat, had proposed legislation that would require all Rhode Island credit unions to obtain federal credit union insurance. The bill would have put RISDIC out of business and eliminated the need for Bianchini’s employer, the Rhode Island Credit Union League. Gaschen’s bill landed on the docket of the powerful House Finance Committee, where Bianchini served as vice chair.
Instead of admitting a conflict of interest and stepping aside, Bianchini arranged two sumptuous dinners for committee members with the head of RISDIC. Both men made a case for killing the bill requiring federal credit union insurance, and Bianchini dominated the hearing where Gaschen’s legislation was scuttled.
Robert Bergeron, the manager of the Woodlawn Credit Union, was furious. He had known for years that a number of Rhode Island’s thrifts were overextended and underinsured. He believed that RISDIC was a sham, and depositors desperately needed safeguards that only federal credit union insurance could provide. After watching Bianchini use his influence to crush Gaschen’s bill,
Bergeron filed a complaint with the Conflict of Interest Commission. As required by law, commissioners investigated, heard testimony, and weighed the evidence behind closed doors. Throughout the proceedings, neither reporters nor the public knew Bianchini had been charged.
The prosecution failed on a technicality. The Conflict of Interest law required five affirmative votes to find that a public official had violated the law. But of the nine commission members, one was an old friend of Bianchini’s who had recused himself, and another had been appointed too late to hear the evidence. That left seven members to decide whether Bianchini had “knowingly and willfully” violated the requirement to disclose his business interest and recuse himself from further participation.
After hearing witnesses in a closed-door adjudicative hearing, four commissioners voted that Bianchini had violated the law while three—including the president of the Warwick Municipal Employees’ Credit Union—voted that he had not. Without the five required votes, Bergeron’s complaint against Bianchini was dropped.
Since the law required that complaints be kept confidential until the end, reporters had no advance word and were unprepared. When his acquittal became public Bianchini told them: “I never once believed I was in conflict. I certainly never intended to violate the spirit or the letter of the law.” His dismissal landed on the front page of the Providence Journal for a single day in July 1987 and then vanished. Few readers would remember the story, and even fewer could have imagined what Bianchini’s actions would eventually cost them.
But Robert Bergeron told reporters that the system had not worked. In fact, it had failed the public four times: when government leaders did nothing to protect the public from an unstable insurer called RISDIC, when Bianchini acted blatantly to kill Gaschen’s bill, when legal strictures turned a majority vote of the Conflict of Interest Commission into dismissal, and when mandated confidentiality hid the wrongdoing from public view.
Three more years would pass before the credit union insurance system Bianchini had protected would fall like a house of cards. RISDIC’s collapse would devastate Rhode Island.
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.