Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Two
Monday, March 16, 2015
Between 1986 and 2006, Rhode Island ran a gauntlet of scandals that exposed corruption and aroused public rage. Protesters marched on the State House. Coalitions formed to fight for systemic changes. Under intense public pressure, lawmakers enacted historic laws and allowed voters to amend defects in the state’s constitution.
Since colonial times, the legislature had controlled state government. Governors were barred from making many executive appointments, and judges could never forget that on a single day in 1935 the General Assembly sacked the entire Supreme Court.
Without constitutional checks and balances, citizens suffered under single party control. Republicans ruled during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Democrats held sway from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. In their eras of unchecked control, both parties became corrupt.
H Philip West's SECRETS & SCANDALS tells the inside story of events that shook Rhode Island’s culture of corruption, gave birth to the nation’s strongest ethics commission, and finally brought separation of powers in 2004. No single leader, no political party, no organization could have converted betrayals of public trust into historic reforms. But when citizen coalitions worked with dedicated public officials to address systemic failures, government changed.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThree 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: DiPrete and RISDIC
Chapter Two: Governor Pay-to-Play
In June of 1988 my wife and I moved to an old two-family house on the South Side of Providence. A Connecticut lawyer we knew had warned against our move to Rhode Island, rattling off stories of scandals involving politicians andmobsters. I nodded politely, knowing little beyond the state’s miniature size, famous beaches, historic homes, and picturesque lighthouses. My wife, Anne Grant, had already begun work in Providence as director of a center for battered women and their children. Our two sons were in college. At the age of forty-six, after twenty-odd years of serving as an activist pastor in New York City and Connecticut, I would try to make a living outside the church.
I began training as a copy editor at the Providence Journal, Rhode Island’sonly statewide paper. Each evening the newsroom thrummed with the subdued voices of reporters on phones, and I longed to join them. As keyboards clattered beneath their fingers, I struggled to learn computer systems and software: spotting typos, checking syntax, fixing punctuation, correcting to a style sheet, and writing headlines. But after two weeks my supervisor let me go—instead of fixing mistakes, I kept rewriting. I had majored in English but failed as a copy editor. Was I naïve to think I could find a secular job?
A few days later a notice came that our chimney’s brickwork was a safety hazard and unless we made repairs, we would be fined. A neighbor suggested that an envelope to the building inspector could solve our problem, but instead I tried my hand at masonry. I lugged tools, new bricks, and mortar to a crawl space above our third floor, opened the hatch, and peered out. One mistake on our steep roof could launch me into a quick slide from chimney to gutter and a dizzying drop to the ground. I tethered myself to a beam inside and began to chisel away crumbling mortar and broken bricks.
During a break, I straddled the ridgeline. Less than two miles away, the State House dome gleamed in the afternoon sunshine. That morning’s Providence Journal revealed that Gov. Edward DiPrete’s family had scored a land deal: a DiPrete partnership had bought 8.8 acres of rocky ground and sold it the same day for four times the purchase price. In a few hours, they cleared almost two million dollars thanks to a zoning change that doubled the number of apartments allowed. The denser development infuriated neighbors but turned an unfeasible project into gold.
From the peak of our roof, I wondered if DiPrete had left his office for the day. What did he think about the reporters who exposed him? Had someone tipped them off? Would he retaliate?
Closer than the State House I could see Federal Hill, home of the Patriarca crime family. A mobster named Vincent “Big Vinny” Teresa had testified before Congress that Raymond L.S. Patriarca controlled more than five thousand underworld operatives throughout New England, running his shadowy empire from a vending machine company on Atwells Avenue. Teresa, a protected federal witness, claimed the Mafia had turned Federal Hill into an armed camp, replete with spotters. He said Mob influence reached “the highest levels of politics, even in governors’ mansions and the halls of Congress.”
Patriarca had demonstrated his political clout in the 1960s. When his son Raymond Junior did poorly in college entrance exams for the University of Rhode Island, Patriarca had a superior court judge write a recommendation and Junior was admitted. When Junior had trouble changing a course, Patriarca intervened with then-Gov. John A. Notte Jr. An FBI wiretap on the don’s phone recorded a message that the governor was standing by and had the appropriate university official on the line — what course did Junior wish to take?
At our kitchen table, I scoured classified ads, highlighting titles and brooding over job listings. In August, a tiny ad announced that Common Cause sought an executive director for its Rhode Island office.
Eighteen years earlier in Brooklyn, I had joined Common Cause after a full-page ad in the New York Times featured John Gardner, who had resigned from the cabinet of President Lyndon B. Johnson in protest over the relentless escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In an open letter, Gardner invited Americans to help him form “a citizens’ lobby” to fight the power of wealthy special interests. He called the new organization “Common Cause.” Now I visited our local library and found John Gardner’s book about the organization. He wrote that citizens have a right to know what their government is doing, and they deserve a voice in its decisions. He also urged citizen-activists to avoid being co-opted by those in power, whether Republicans or Democrats. “If we are to be effective,” Gardner wrote, “we must often do things that evoke resistance and anger from people involved in the political machinery. Sometimes they will accuse us of partisanship. Occasionally they may even believe it.” Those words, written before the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, struck me as more crucial than ever and much needed in Rhode Island.
I mailed my résumé. On my way to the interview, I envisioned a staff of two or three people with computers, a fax machine, and a photocopier. The reality was different: two tiny rooms at the top of an airless stairway. I waited my turn in a shabby hall. The current director, who was leaving the organization, told me to draft a press release on a tiny Macintosh computer. “Work from these talking points,” he said. “Save it under your name. Here’s the job description.” The job description revealed two humbling facts. The executive director had no staff and would earn $19,500 — a third less than I had made as a pastor — and a successful candidate must possess a thorough knowledge of the history and government of Rhode Island. I chuckled to myself, for I knew neither. I decided to enjoy the interview. As I drafted the press release, I relaxed.
Four days later I had the job and flew to Washington for a national Common Cause conference. I was eager to meet Archibald Cox, the former Watergate special prosecutor who now chaired Common Cause’s national governing board.
A crowd packed an ornate room off the U.S. Senate chamber. No one knew me, but I recognized Cox from television and newspapers. In a bowtie and dark suit, he bent toward the microphone, reading an award in his distinctive New England inflection. Cox looked over half-frame reading glasses toward an elderly man in a wheelchair. The honoree had one leg partly amputated and gray hair slicked back from a broad forehead. I had never seen Mississippi Senator John Stennis in the flesh and could not fathom why he deserved to be honored.
While Cox lauded his work for congressional ethics and campaign finance reform, Stennis’s depleted figure awakened my memory of a cold darkness at the Lincoln Memorial, where I had kept vigil since midnight with Catholic and Jewish seminarians in April 1964. Three of us had stood beneath Lincoln’s bony hands, shielding our candles from the wind, pacing to keep warm, sometimes singing or praying awkwardly for passage of stalled civil rights legislation. As dawn spread its colors along the reflecting pool, beyond the Washington Monument, the Capitol dome glowed. Inside, John Stennis, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and others were reading segregationist screed into the Congressional Record. Our sense of justice was outraged. Would a handful of southern senators with their filibuster snuff out federal legislation to reverse generations of legally enforced racial oppression?
Applause snapped me back. Archibald Cox, a leader of the organization that had just hired me, was handing a framed award to the retired Mississippi senator. Cameras flashed, and all around me people were clapping. What kind of organization had I joined?
My first assignment at the dingy Common Cause office was to write an ethics complaint against Gov. DiPrete. A stack of newspapers, mostly the Providence Journal, lay on a small desk and Rae Condon stopped by to get me started. After running the state’s Conflict of Interest Commission for ten years, she now served on the Common Cause state governing board. Her short sandy hair, owlish glasses, and strong chin personified authority without pretense. She suggested that I work my way through the pile of newspapers, clipping and organizing anything related to DiPrete. “Newspaper accounts roam all over God’s creation,” she said, “but they’re full of details that reporters have dredged up.” Then she slid pages photocopied from a law book across the table. “Sorry the office doesn’t have a set of the General Laws, but most of what you’ll need is on these pages.” She guided me through a set of legal definitions and a list of prohibited activities.
My assignment was to create a set of declarative statements linking what the governor was reported to have done with activities that were prohibited by the Ethics Law. She showed me how to break each event down into separate facts that might be proven by the sworn testimony of witnesses or with documentary evidence. “Keep each item as concise as you can,” she said, her inflection faintly Irish and plainly Rhode Island, “only one fact per statement.”
“One more,” Condon said and gave me another photocopy, her notes in a neat script trailing down the margin. “This ethics amendment came from the 1986 Constitutional Convention.” She scanned words that were upside-down from where she sat and planted her finger. “Notice here. ‘All elected and appointed officials shall be subject to the code of ethics. The ethics commission shall have authority to investigate violations of the code and to impose penalties, as provided by law.’” She was not reading the inverted words; she knew them by heart.
No other statewide panel, Condon told me, had the authority both to adopt and enforce a code of ethics for all public officials. “By granting the commission authority to ‘adopt a code of ethics,’ the voters established the Rhode Island Ethics Commission as one of the strongest such panels in the country, at least theoretically.”
I asked why she said theoretically.
The General Assembly was jealous of its prerogatives, she replied. Lawmakers had refused to believe that voters actually wanted an unelected commission to write rules that would carry the force of law. Nor would they relinquish authority over their behavior to an outside body, which is why the legislature had modified the old Conflict of Interest Law and passed it as the new code of ethics. The newly appointed Ethics Commission dutifully rubberstamped it.
Condon added that the fundamental question of the commission’s authority had never been tested in court — the ink was hardly dry on the page. She pointed to a note indicating that voters approved the amendment on November 4, 1986, less than two years earlier, so we were in uncharted legal territory.
“Would members of the new commission just turn their backs on what DiPrete has done?” I asked.
“They could,” she said. “It’s pretty frightening to pass judgment on the governor, particularly in a small state where everybody knows everybody.” In the ten years she headed the old Conflict of Interest Commission, no one had filed a serious complaint against a governor. She added that the commission could drop our complaint into a black hole.
“How?”
She explained that the law enacted in 1987 required that complaints be kept confidential. There was no time limit for the investigation and no procedure for forcing the commission to act. “They could dismiss a complaint without telling anybody but the respondent,” she said. “Meanwhile, any of us could be fined $10,000 if we talk about this.”
I asked if we really wanted to proceed with a complaint.
“Absolutely! If Common Cause doesn’t try to make the law work, this new Ethics Commission could become a joke.”
She then outlined for me what would happen after we filed the complaint. First, there would be a preliminary vote authorizing a professional investigator to interview witnesses and collect documents. The investigator would present those materials to a six-person investigative committee, which was responsible for deciding whether credible evidence indicated that DiPrete had violated the law.
“That investigative panel then votes whether to go forward. In civil proceedings like this, that’s called a ‘finding of probable cause.’ If this were a criminal case, that first step would be the indictment. Our goal,” she said, with a smile, “is to give the commission no choice but to go forward with a full investigation.”
She explained that if the investigating committee were to find probable cause, those allegations then went to an adjudicative committee that would actually try the case, as a court would do, only behind closed doors. Then, without reminding me that I was not a lawyer, Condon spelled out legal precepts I needed to know.
I said that writing a complaint would be tough without her, and she laughed.
“It’ll be tough with me, but there’s no better way for you to learn the Ethics Law.” She rose to leave and suggested we talk in a day or two. I immersed myself in Rhode Island’s Ethics Law and clippings from the Providence Journal. Fortunately for my ability to concentrate, the phone hardly ever rang.
My research showed that DiPrete had won election as governor in 1984, promising to provide the best possible contractors for the state at the lowest price without any political involvement. As I studied the newspaper stories, he seemed to have done exactly the opposite. From one headline story to the next, financial advantages flowed to his family, friends, cronies, and campaign contributors. Those outside his circle, particularly taxpayers, got short-changed. I came back to the story I had read during the summer about DiPrete’s land deal, which had quadrupled the value of a property in Cranston and paved the way for a family firm, DiPrete-Laurienzo, to buy the land for $470,000 and resell it the same day to a Texas developer for $2.4 million. As a shareholder in DiPrete-Laurienzo, the governor stood to gain around $300,000 on the transaction. The rest went to family members and to a friend who was clearly what the law defined as his “business associate.”
Once the story broke, DiPrete cut his ties with DiPrete-Laurienzo but could not make the facts go away. Before the crucial zoning board vote, the governor had tantalized the board’s chair, George DiMuro, with the offer of a prestigious state position, and two months after the sale, DiPrete quietly named him to head the Coastal Resources Management Council.
Equally shocking were reports that DiPrete had intervened on two projects where another family firm stood to gain. Texas developer Kenneth Lokey, who had bought the Cranston land, was reportedly shifting his focus from southern states to New England, where occupancy rates were high and residential properties would sell.8 I wondered if Lokey had found the DiPretes or if they had found him. Had Lokey shrewdly bought some influence by paying the governor’s family corporation such an inflated price right out in the open? No one suggested that it had been a bribe. Meanwhile Dennis DiPrete, the governor’s son and head of another family firm, was working with Lokey on two other developments, Briar Hill and St. James Estates.
Providence Journal reporter Ken Mingis had written three stories about Lokey’s tangles with the Department of Environmental Management (DEM). Officials had cited the Texas developer for bulldozing a wetland and clear-cutting undergrowth next to a marsh. Mingis reported that DiPrete’s policy chief, Ronald DiOrio, had summoned two of the state’s top environmental officials to his office at the State House.
“I got called to the governor’s office two or three times on this,” the wetlands director told the reporter. “They wanted to know, ‘Why is this being held up? Aren’t you being nitpicky?’ It was clear they wanted it back on track. They would say, ‘Time is money.’”
On October 16, three weeks before voters would choose between DiPrete On October 16, three weeks before voters would choose between DiPrete and his challenger, Bruce Sundlun, the Providence Journal ran another high-profile story on its front page. According to reporter Peter Lord, DiPrete had steered a state environmental contract to one of his largest campaign contributors, an engineer named Domenic Tutela who had contributed over $18,000 to DiPrete campaigns during the last four years. Those contributions appeared to give Tutela an inside track. The DEM had received a federal grant of $100,000 to figure out why bacteria levels had soared at the state’s largest freshwater public swimming area, Olney Pond in Lincoln Woods State Park. Eight firms filed bids to conduct the study.
A team of DEM specialists analyzed their proposals. A Massachusetts company, Lycott Environmental Research, had the most experience with polluted lakes and submitted the lowest bid, $73,294. The experts rated two other firms qualified, and both had filed bids below the $100,000 EPA maximum. Domenic Tutela, however, bid $178,000, and his firm was experienced in sewage treatment, not freshwater science, so by rights he should have been out of the running. But Frederick Lippitt, DiPrete’s director of administration, named Tutela for the Olney Pond contract.
The reporter breaking this story had gotten hold of a memo to Lippitt from DEM director Robert Bendick. “I am concerned,” he wrote, “that the EPA will seriously question the awarding of the contract to a firm which (1) presented a bid $78,000 higher than the grant amount and over $100,000 higher than the technical committee’s first choice; (2) has no Clean Lakes Grant experience when other bidders have successfully completed dozens of such studies; (3) finished seventh out of eight firms in the technical committee’s ratings . . . .”
The DEM director’s list of concerns went on.
Nothing changed, however, until someone leaked Bendick’s memo to an EPA administrator in Boston. He contacted Lippitt, who phoned the governor at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans and asked DiPrete’s permission to revoke the contract with Tutela. The governor agreed, and Lippitt announced that he had “reselected” Lycott Environmental Research, the firm originally judged both the most qualified and the lowest bidder. To me, Lippitt’s call to New Orleans seemed to prove that DiPrete—not Lippitt—had picked Tutela. Why else would Lippitt have sought permission to pull the plug?
In the same article Peter Lord reported that Tutela had landed other controversial contracts. For example, in the spring of 1988, a quasi-public sewage treatment agency called the Narragansett Bay Commission had solicited bids to design a new way of coping with the mix of rainwater and raw sewage that gushed into Narragansett Bay from antiquated pipes during heavy storms. As with the Olney Pond study, a technical committee had judged other firms better qualified and less expensive than Tutela. One bid for $599,710 was far lower than Tutela’s $753,034. The reviewers concluded that Tutela was “unable to deal with the specifics of this study.” Yet Eric Jankel, the Bay Commission’s executive director, said he had picked Tutela himself. “No one tried to promote this,” he insisted. “Nobody called me from the governor’s office about the selection.”
Peter Lord’s exposé supplied still more examples of Tutela contracts awarded during DiPrete’s first term as governor. In what now seemed a familiar dance, DiPrete’s director of transportation overruled a professional selection committee in order to award nine road and airport projects to Tutela and various partners. Consequently the Federal Highway Administration threatened to withhold federal funds, the transportation director resigned, and Atty. Gen. Arlene Violet, a Republican like DiPrete, launched an investigation. She found evidence of political favoritism but concluded that no laws had been broken.
It was hard to believe that there was no fire beneath all this smoke. The pattern seemed clear: administrators appointed by DiPrete overruled professional selection teams and awarded contracts to large campaign contributors. But how? Had he created a shell game that kept him at a deniable distance? Was proof hidden away somewhere that DiPrete had actually picked the contractors?
DiPrete had clearly flunked that test, but would a full-scale investigation show how he signaled his picks? Was there evidence that the governor or a “business associate” would “derive a direct monetary gain” by his official actions? Could we convince a majority of the Ethics Commission’s members, all recently appointed by DiPrete, that he had committed “a knowing and willful violation” of the law?
On the next day’s front page, DiPrete blasted the story of favoritism toward Tutela as “an outrageous distortion.” He insisted that it contained “no allegations of any wrongdoing whatsoever directed at me or my office.” DiPrete’s chief of staff, Norman J. DeLuca, acknowledged the facts but added: “We believe the headline, the sense of perspective given the story and the priority attached to it completely misrepresented how the state purchasing system works.”
Yet after publishing a dozen front-page stories about corrupt practices of the governor’s inner circle, the Providence Journal went on to defy logic by endorsing him for re-election. “We do not expect governors to be perfect,” the editors wrote, “but we do hold public servants to reasonably high standards. And in these instances, at least, Gov. DiPrete has fallen short of those standards.” I thought that would have settled it, but the editors continued, “As far as we can tell, the governor has fully and correctly acknowledged his mistakes. He has apologized for them, recognizing that the perception of wrongdoing is nearly as disturbing as wrongdoing itself.”
I was astonished at the chasm between the newsroom and editorial board. What amazed me even more was the fact that in the close election that followed, Rhode Island voters returned DiPrete to office. Out of 400,475 votes cast, DiPrete beat Democrat Bruce Sundlun by 6,625.
These stories provided the background and the ammunition for my ethics complaint. As I worked, Rae Condon proved herself a patient tutor, reviewing draft after draft. What was taking me three months I knew she could have completed in three days. Furthermore, the national office of Common Cause was skittish about state ethics complaints. “You need to fax us what you’ve written,” a senior staff member told me by phone. “Archie will review it.” Archibald Cox invited everyone in the organization to call him “Archie,” but he was still the precise and thorough Harvard law professor whose courage had brought down President Richard Nixon. “It won’t take him long,” she assured me. “He’ll make notes in the margin or add a memo. Without Archie’s clearance, you don’t file it.”
My draft complaint came back from Washington by express mail. “This is generally acceptable,” Cox wrote with a fountain pen. “I’ve marked several places where you might use somewhat less inflammatory verbs.”
Then, on a bone-chilling December 27, the Common Cause Rhode Island board met to consider my draft complaint. The building’s heat was turned off, and a dozen people in their coats huddled around folding tables. Rae Condon ran the meeting like a disciplinarian, reminding us that the law required strict confidentiality from anyone who filed a complaint against a public official. She passed out numbered copies and said she wanted them all back. For the next hour board members reviewed the complaint, one section at a time, asking questions as they went, as the weight I had been carrying for months settled on them, too.
Greta Abbott, probably the oldest member of the board, asked if DiPrete would receive a copy of the complaint with their signatures. “He will,” said Condon. “The Ethics Commission must notify him within seventy-two hours.”
Another asked if the governor could retaliate. “If you’re in a position where he could,” she replied, “you probably shouldn’t sign.”
No one suggested that Common Cause drop the complaint, however, and the board voted unanimously to go forward.
When Condon asked if they were ready to sign, several apologized and said that they could not. Finally, one at a time, seven members printed and signed their names: Greta L. Abbott, Albert L. Bensusan, Elizabeth M. Dennigan, M.L. Farrell Fletcher, Deborah G. Kohl, Edward J. Oliver, and Cathleen S. Speer. I did the same. Condon notarized our signatures and embossed each page with her seal. She collected the copies of the complaint and warned us again that the legal penalty for talking about it could be a $10,000 fine.
We were all shivering in the unheated room. The governor would soon have a copy of this complaint with our signatures on his desk. It would be the first ethics complaint filed in 1989 and the first ever against a sitting governor of Rhode Island.
Lawyers representing DiPrete quickly filed a motion to dismiss our charges. “The complaint,” they wrote, “is simply a summary rehash of newspaper articles covered by the media. The complainants here have not made any allegation whatsoever based on personal knowledge that the Governor has knowingly and willfully violated the Rhode Island Code of Ethics.” The governor’s motion to dismiss our complaint was signed by two lawyers: John J. Partridge and Normand G. Benoit. Both names were familiar; our small database showed both had donated generously to Common Cause, and a decade earlier, Partridge served as president of its board. I assumed that both were Republicans close to DiPrete, and wondered if our charges against him would end their financial support. A saying echoed in my mind that people in Common Cause recited often: “No permanent friends, no permanent enemies.”
On a raw day in March Rae Condon phoned, asking if I wanted the good news first or the bad. “The good,” I said. She said the six-person investigating committee had rejected the DiPrete lawyers’ motion to dismiss and ordered an investigation on four of our allegations.
The bad news was that the panel had dismissed all charges that specified actions DiPrete took before June 25, 1987, the day he signed the law that established the Ethics Commission. DiPrete’s attorneys had argued that the commission had no jurisdiction over events prior to his signature, and the investigating panel agreed.
I asked if we had any recourse, and she said she would file a motion to have the dismissal considered by the entire fifteen-member commission. It was doubtful that the full commission would reinstate, but those procedural matters were important nonetheless.
“So why did they contact you instead of the office?” I asked.
She laughed. “Because I’m your lawyer.”
I hung up feeling even more thankful that she had come to Common Cause when she left the old Conflict of Interest Commission. Her father, Francis B. Condon, had served for thirty years on the Rhode Island Supreme Court, his last seven years as chief justice. She had absorbed his love for the law and his determination to practice it honorably. Her work on the conflict commission had made her iconic. I knew that without her, the complaint could never have come this far.
I woke up after midnight, wondering if I could make a living at Common Cause. None of my predecessors had stayed more than two years. But we had moved to Rhode Island and I had landed the job at Common Cause just as reporters were breaking stories of DiPrete’s apparent pay-to-play. Could I have
picked a better time to start? And what better teachers than Rae Condon and Archie Cox?
Like a grand jury, the Ethics Commission first probed our charges behind closed doors, but things were happening. An investigator called our office with preliminary questions. Then a lawyer named John Roney phoned to suggest that Rae Condon and I sit down with him at his office on Wickenden Street in the old Fox Point neighborhood of Providence. Condon said it was a good sign that the commission had hired Roney as an independent prosecutor to present the case, for she respected his integrity and tenacity.
Roney’s office in an historic clapboard house had windows facing south toward Narragansett Bay. Sunlight reflecting from the hardwood floor brightened the quaint conference room where we settled into old wooden chairs. “I think you’re aware,” he began, “that the investigating committee dismissed those parts of your complaint that alleged wrongdoing before June 25, 1987.”
Condon nodded. “We still believe the commission has jurisdiction. We were careful to charge the governor with things that constitute identical violations under the old and new laws. Under administrative law, the successor agency retains responsibility for the previous statute.”
Roney understood, but reminded us that the commissioners were new. He thought they were being cautious so as not to overstep their authority. “Be that as it may,” Condon went on, “we intend to move that those charges be reinstated. Six members sitting as an investigating committee should not be making a policy decision for the entire commission about matters that predate their appointment.”
Even with those items gone, Roney told us that four substantial matters remained to prosecute. First, DiPrete had awarded the Olney Pond environmental contract to Domenic Tutela after Tutela’s company contributed $20,500 to his campaigns. Second, the governor got his campaign chair, James L. Taft Jr.,
hired to sue a contractor for abandoning work on the Jamestown Bridge. Third, DiPrete had appointed George DiMuro, who finessed the Cranston land deal, to head the Coastal Resources Management Council. And finally, the governor’s policy chief had intervened with top environmental officials in order to speed up wetlands permits for St. James Estates.
I asked how DiPrete signaled his choices to those subordinates who eventually announced the contracts.
“We’re working on that,” Roney said. “I’ve interviewed a number of the primary decision-makers, and they’ve described what they call the Architects and Engineers Committee, which they usually call just the A&E committee.” DiPrete had issued an executive order in 1985 that set up the selection process. The state purchasing agent and someone from the Department of Administration always participated; for each contract, they brought in specialists from the relevant departments. “It may sound legitimate,” Roney concluded, “but in practice, it got pretty loosey-goosey.”
Roney had interviewed Frederick Lippitt, DiPrete’s director of administration, who all but acknowledged that the governor himself made the final selections. Lippitt said the A&E committee usually gave him a cover sheet that listed three or four qualified firms for each project. The firms would be listed
in alphabetical order, with a box by each name. It did not give prices they had bid. For each project, the committee also prepared a second sheet that listed the Rhode Island state contracts those firms had gotten in the past five years and their dollar amounts.
Condon leaned back in her chair, smiling.
“These two forms,” Roney continued, “went to Lippitt’s desk, and it looks like Lippitt passed them on to DiPrete. I think the governor checked the box by his choice and sent the list back to Lippitt, who then announced the contract award.”
Condon shook her head. “They’re nothing if not clever,” she mused. “And DiPrete admits this, too?”
“I haven’t interviewed him yet,” Roney said.
I asked about the link to campaign contributions.
“That may be harder to prove,” Roney said. “I assume the governor knew from other sources who had been contributing large amounts, but that doesn’t prove he picked them for that reason.”
“That’s not the point,” Condon interjected. “As soon as he checks the name on a paper, he performs an official act to send financial benefit to a business associate.”
Roney looked puzzled. He asked how she could equate campaign contributors with business associates.
“The definition of ‘business associate,’” Condon answered, “carried over from the old law to the new. It is still ‘a person joined together with another person to achieve a common financial objective.’ They contribute generously and get state business.”
“That may be a stretch,” Roney said, “but it’s worth a try.”
The enforced confidentiality made the burden of our ethics complaint feel heavier with each passing day. But unknown to me and without public fanfare, the Providence Journal, the ACLU, and several community activists had filed suit in U.S. District Court to strike down the ethics gag rule. Their case involved a neighborhood activist who had filed an ethics complaint against the mayor of Warwick and talked about it on the radio. Federal Judge Raymond J. Pettine, who had a long record of knocking down restrictions on free speech, issued an injunction to stop the Ethics Commission from enforcing the confidentiality rule. From the bench, he called the section “a pretty broad statute that prevents
people from discussing even matters that have already been disclosed.”
I phoned Rae Condon to ask if we could now speak publicly about our complaint against Gov. DiPrete. “Until there’s a final ruling,” she said, “it wouldn’t accomplish anything. I understand how eager you are to get this out in the open. But going public could play into their claim that Common Cause was politically motivated in filing against DiPrete.” I knew she was right.
The Rhode Island Foundation occupied a historic farmhouse across from Providence’s North Burial Ground. Doris Donovan, a program officer, led me into the conference room with a huge fireplace. She said the foundation might be interested in helping Common Cause engage the public in conversation about government ethics. “We need to steer clear of anything that smacks of partisan politics,” she said, “and we couldn’t participate in any personal attacks.”
The project became a series of six half-hour public television shows on ethics in Rhode Island, produced by Common Cause in cooperation with the League of Women Voters and supported by the Rhode Island Foundation. It appeared on six Wednesday nights, from November 1 through December 13, 1989. Panelists included journalists, academics, clergy, and politicians who took questions from a live audience.
DiPrete arrived at the studio only moments before our program on open government was to go on air. As technicians mounted a microphone on his lapel, we shook hands. He smoothed his wave of thinning hair that cartoonists had caricatured mercilessly, portraying him as the Gerber Baby. He had large brown eyes and a round face. His tight-lipped smile always turned down at the ends.
The topic for that broadcast was the confidentiality of ethics complaints. Former Atty. Gen. Arlene Violet, also a Republican and a former Sister of Mercy, offered her opinion that if a complaint were dismissed, the Ethics Commission should have clearance under the law to acknowledge the dismissal and give the reasons.
“Governor,” asked moderator Deborah Horne, a WPRI-TV news anchor, “do you think the Ethics Commission staff members should be able to talk about a complaint?”
DiPrete smiled confidently. “I would say that once the commission votes to dismiss the complaint as unfounded, it should be a matter of public record. I don’t think anybody needs to be ashamed of saying that a commission consisting of very honorable people has found that they hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Brown University historian William McLoughlin, a citizen plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to overturn the ethics gag rule, stood up in the audience. “Governor, public officials are there because we elect them, and they should be responsible to us. If they are brought up on charges, they have a right to a public hearing, and we have a right to hear it. I wonder, Governor, would you support the public’s right to hear the matter if a case is brought to a hearing?”
“I wouldn’t have any problem,” DiPrete replied, “as long as the facts on both sides are made known. I think the public is capable of making a decision as long as the facts are there.” He maintained a perfect façade, with no hint that a complaint might be pending against him. He did not stay for refreshments.
©2014 H. Philip West Jr.
H. Philip West Jr. served from 1988 to 2006 as executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006, chronicles major government reforms during those years.
He helped organize coalitions that led in passage of dozens of ethics and open government laws and five major amendments to the Rhode Island Constitution, including the 2004 Separation of Powers Amendment.
West hosted many delegations from the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program that came to learn about ethics and separation of powers. In 2000, he addressed a conference on government ethics laws in Tver, Russia. After retiring from Common Cause, he taught Ethics in Public Administration to graduate students at the University of Rhode Island.
Previously, West served as pastor of United Methodist churches and ran a settlement house on the Bowery in New York City. He helped with the delivery of medicines to victims of the South African-sponsored civil war in Mozambique and later assisted people displaced by Liberia’s civil war. He has been involved in developing affordable housing, day care centers, and other community services in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
West graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., received his masters degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and published biblical research he completed at Cambridge University in England. In 2007, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Rhode Island College.
Since 1965 he has been married to Anne Grant, an Emmy Award-winning writer, a nonprofit executive, and retired United Methodist pastor. They live in Providence and have two grown sons, including cover illustrator Lars Grant-West.
Note that this online format omits notes which fill 92 pages in the printed book.
