Assembly Must Permit A Ballot On Ethics Reach

About 10 months ago, state Rep. David A. Segal asked the Ethics Commission whether he could work for FairVote and still vote on bills that the advocacy group is lobbying for or against.

But the Ethics Commission isn’t about to tell Segal what he can vote on — not when a Superior Court judge last year dismissed ethics charges against former Senate President William V. Irons, saying the commission can’t prosecute legislators based on their votes.

And not when the state Supreme Court just issued a 3-to-1 ruling on Monday, saying the Rhode Island Constitution’s “speech-in-debate” clause gives legislators immunity from prosecution by the Ethics Commission for “core legislative functions” such as voting and speaking.

Segal, D-Providence, who until recently was a FairVote analyst, said he understands why he hasn’t received guidance from the Ethics Commission.

On his own, he has decided not to vote on any bill if FairVote had lobbied for it or if the group’s position on the legislation was obvious. (Among other things, FairVote favors electing the president by a pure popular vote rather than through the Electoral College). He believes he might have been able to vote on all of those bills because FairVote doesn’t benefit monetarily from the bills it backs.

In any case, Segal said, “We are in an awkward situation. A part-time legislature requires people to have incomes outside the legislature. By and large, people want to do the right thing, but reasonable people have different conceptions of what the right thing is. And it’s valuable to have an entity that can draw a bold line.”

A strong Ethics Commission is very valuable. And the General Assembly should place a constitutional amendment on the November 2010 ballot that would state — explicitly — that the Ethics Commission’s jurisdiction covers “core legislative functions” such as voting.

“It’s important to have a functioning Ethics Commission,” Segal said. “And I want to work to restore that as best I can.”

So he has introduced a joint resolution calling for a vote on a constitutional amendment that would say the Ethics Commission has jurisdiction over the General Assembly “notwithstanding” the constitution’s speech-in-debate clause.

John M. Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, said the “notwithstanding” language might not be explicit enough to accomplish Segal’s goal. And Segal said he’s open to changing the language.

But with House Speaker William J. Murphy in Switzerland for a State Legislative Leaders Foundation forum on health care, it remains unclear when the House will reconvene. “In theory, it could pass this year,” Segal said of his resolution.

In reality, Segal might have mountains to climb once Murphy gets back from a luxury mountain hotel outside Zurich. (Murphy says he is using campaign money and his own money to pay for the trip. I’ll be interested in hearing what he learned at sessions such as “The History of Democracy in the Principality of Liechtenstein” and, of greater relevance to Rhode Island, “Health Care Stew! Politicians, lobbyists, pharmaceuticals, doctors and hospitals: What is the right mix?”)

Before leaving for Switzerland, Murphy, D-West Warwick, was cool to the idea of putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot. He told The Journal, “I don’t care what state you are talking about, you are always going to have one or two people who are going to do the wrong thing. That’s human life. But the bottom line is: I can tell you that my members who are in the House of Representatives are here for the right reason, and I am just a little cautious to make a regulation for one person.”

If you yodel that quote in the Alps, it sounds like Murphy is saying: We’re all great guys up here at the State House. Trust us, we’re the government.

I agree that most elected officials “want to do the right thing,” as Segal put it. But I also think most Rhode Islanders know that we need active watchdogs, including an Ethics Commission that can monitor conflicts of interest in legislative votes.

We know that former House Majority Leader Gerard M. Martineau, D-Woonsocket, and former Senate Corporations Committee Chairman John A. Celona, D-North Providence, are behind bars for selling their offices to CVS and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.

We know that top officials such as House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence, and Governor Carcieri, a Republican, have paid fines to settle Ethics Commission cases in recent years.

And we know that voters amended the Constitution to create the Ethics Commission in 1986 following a series of scandals.

Newly appointed Chief Justice Paul A. Suttell, the lone dissenter in Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, noted the high court has previously said, “A page of history is worth a volume of logic.”

And he noted the court has previously described the context of the Ethics Amendment this way: “The years preceding this state’s 1986 constitutional convention were marked by scandal and corruption in both state and local government. As a result, the overwhelming majority of Rhode Island’s citizens were at the very least distrustful of their elected and appointed officials and of government as a whole.”

Given that context, I have no doubt about what convention delegates intended to do when they produced the constitutional amendment that says “all elected and appointed officials … shall be subject to the code of ethics.”

But in Monday’s ruling, the court’s three-member majority noted that voters also reaffirmed the constitution’s “speech-in- debate” clause, which says, “For any speech in debate in either house, no member shall be questioned in any other place.”

In their opinion, Justice Francis X. Flaherty, Justice William P. Robinson III and retired Chief Justice Frank J. Williams turned to a different page in history, saying, “Speech-in-debate immunity is a venerable and important product of historical travails [and their resolution] in England.” They said “the importance of the privilege was not lost on the founders of this nation,” and it was included in Rhode Island’s first written Constitution in 1842.

All the justices agreed that the Supreme Court faced an “unusual constitutional conundrum,” with two constitutional provisions standing “in diametrical opposition to each other.”

The majority chose to resolve that conflict by saying that if we wanted to curtail the legislative immunity contained in the speech-in-debate clause, we needed to be a lot more explicit.

“Significantly, there is no indication in the language of the Ethics Amendment that it was intended to abrogate speech-in-debate immunity,” the three justices said. “And we are resolutely disinclined to abridge such a long-standing and widely accepted constitutional provision in the absence of an express and uncontroverted manifestation of electoral intent.”

Suttell would have resolved the conflict in a different way.

“I would hold that in matters concerning the ethical conduct of legislators, the Ethics Amendment creates a narrow exception to the immunity historically adhering to legislators in the performance of their legislative activities,” he wrote. “Such a construction of our Constitution, I believe, gives greater effect to the intent of the convention delegates and electorate in 1986.”

I think Suttell made a compelling argument, but the majority also took a reasonable approach.

So it’s time to write a new page in history (or to edit a page in history). “At worst, it was a sin of omission,” Marion said. “So we need to go back and correct that.”

Marion emphasized that fixing this problem would merely return the state to the status quo that existed between 1986 and 2008. Ethics Commission lawyers have noted that over the previous two decades, no legislators had challenged the commission’s constitutional authority to enforce the ethics amendment against them. Irons, an insurance salesman from East Providence, pursued such a challenge after the Ethics Commission found probable cause to believe he had broken the Code of Ethics by using his public office to financially benefit his business associate, CVS.

Marion noted the speech-in-debate clause was designed to shield lawmakers from other branches of government or from lawsuits filed by citizens, and he said lawmakers could still enjoy those protections while being subject to Ethics Commission jurisdiction over their legislative activities.

On Tuesday, Governor Carcieri called for the Assembly to pass a resolution to place a constitutional amendment on the November 2010 ballot to strengthen the role of the Ethics Commission. “I believe the intention of the voters was to hold all elected officials, including members of the House and Senate, to the same high level of ethical standards,” he said.

Robert Wechsler — director of research for City Ethics, a nonprofit that advises local governments on ethics program — wrote about the Supreme Court ruling on the group’s Web site, saying, “The thing to learn from it is to explicitly, in big CAPITAL LETTERS, put your ethics authority over legislators in the charter and say that it overrides all common-law and, if there are any, charter-based legislative immunities for local government legislators.”

Also, Wechsler said, “One wonders why, if the speech-in-debate clause is so venerable and, as the majority decision states, the public is ‘the ultimate beneficiary’ of it, the public cares so little for this clause. And one wonders why, when the public, disgusted with the misconduct of its legislators, votes by an enormous margin to effectively override the speech-in-debate clause, its will is ignored in favor of a provision that was designed to protect legislators from a king — a provision that, venerable as it may be, the Rhode Island public, if it could vote directly on it, would almost certainly repeal as it applies to all ethics and criminal enforcement.”

efitzpat@projo.com

High Court Rules for Irons

BY JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — In a case likely to have profound implications for government ethics and reform for years to come, the Rhode Island Supreme Court, by a 3-1 vote, has reaffirmed that General Assembly members have “absolute” immunity from questioning “by any other branch of government” about their votes and other legislative business.

To the dismay of good-government groups, the high court upheld a decision issued late last year by Superior Court Judge Francis Darigan that said former Senate President William Irons could not be called to account by the Rhode Island Ethics Commission for voting on a bill in 1999 and 2000 that affected two of the clients of his private insurance company, CVS and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Rhode Island,
In an unusual wrinkle, all three justices on the prevailing side — Justices Francis Flaherty, William Robinson and retired Chief Justice Frank Williams — claimed co-authorship of the majority opinion in the most closely watched case in this court session. In most cases, one justice is assigned to put the court’s decision into words. Justice Paul Suttell, soon to become the Chief Justice of the court, signed his own dissent. Acting Chief Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg recused from the case, citing a friendship with Irons’ wife, Mary.
Robert Arruda, the Operation Clean Government member who, along with Beverly Clay, brought the original ethics complaint against Irons in 2004, called the court’s decision “appalling,” saying it “ignores the rule of the people.”
Irons said it is proof that “our society gets it right. In the long run, the majority of people see it, follow it (and) understand it.
“I don’t know what else (someone) would need to believe in my innocence,” Irons told The Times shortly after the decision was announced. “I am at peace, and I know that I never did anything wrong. And I’m happy this day has come.”
Asked about a possible public perception that he “got away with something,” Irons acknowledged, “I know there will always be people who say that. For some people, someone being exonerated is not enough, but the U.S. Attorney and the Justice Department spent years of grand jury time and eventually concluded there was nothing to follow. I don’t know what more anyone can say.”
In a sense, the court found itself at the point of collision between the irresistible force of a 1986 constitutional amendment that called for all elected officials to be accountable to state ethics law and the immovable object of a “speech in debate” clause with roots in 15th century English common law that provides legislators immunity from encroachment by other branches of government. Irons and his attorneys argued the speech in debate clause while Ethics Commission attorney Jason Gramitt asserted that voters changed the constitution to hold legislators accountable for misbehavior and that intent should trump the immunity.
In the eyes of three of the four justices, the speech in debate clause won
“We cannot accept an invitation to read into the Ethics Amendment an unexpressed repeal of such an ancient and venerable hallmark of our form of government as is the immunity provided in the speech in debate clause without a clear and explicit directive for such an exception in the language of the Ethics Amendment itself,” the 18-mage majority decision states. “Because no such language is present, we decline to recognize any partial repeal of speech-in-debate immunity.
“Because we hold that the Ethics Amendment does not create an exception to the speech in debate clause and, because the alleged actions of Senator Irons were core legislative acts entitled to speech-in-debate immunity, we hold that the Ethics Commission may not question him with respect to those acts,” the ruling continues. “We do not accept the Ethics Commission’s argument that such a holding on our part emasculates the entire Code of Ethics with respect to members of the General Assembly. Indeed, the Ethics Commission remains responsible to enforce the Code of Ethics against legislators when they are engaged in activities other than core legislative activities.”
Among the activities for which lawmakers can be held to account the court listed were “speeches delivered outside of the legislature; political activities of legislators; undertakings for constituents; assistance in securing government contracts; republication of defamatory material in press releases and newsletters; solicitation and acceptance of bribes; and criminal activities, even those committed to further legislative activity.”
Agreeing with the majority that the two constitutional provisions “stand in diametrical opposition to each other,” Suttell in his dissent came down on the side of the 1986 Ethics Amendment.
“In light of the very specific intent of the framers to adopt a comprehensive ethics amendment and in view of the history of the times and the state of affairs in 1986, it is my opinion that the express application of the ethics amendment to “[a]ll elected * * * officials” necessarily implies a limitation on the full reach of the speech in debate clause. In other words, I would hold that in matters concerning the ethical conduct of legislators the ethics amendment creates a narrow exception to the immunity historically adhering to legislators in the performance of their legislative activities.
“Such a construction of our constitution, I believe, gives greater effect to the intent of the convention delegates and electorate in 1986 than an interpretation that places legislators beyond the reach of the ethics commission for violations of the code of ethics with respect to their performance of legislative activities,” Suttell wrote. “It would also preserve the full measure of protections accorded legislators by the speech in debate clause as to questioning from any person or entity except the ethics commission.”
The justices seemed to hint at an invitation of their own, for voters to once again amend the constitution to reverse the court’s ruling.
“If the citizens of Rhode Island wish to empower the Ethics Commission to investigate and prosecute legislators with respect to their legislative actions, notwithstanding the operation of the speech in debate clause, they most certainly have the power to do so,” the decision states.
Arruda said the ruling represents “a dark day for Rhode Island, and Rhode Island is already suffering through pretty dark days. It’s a terrible, terrible decision. It gives the General Assembly carte blanche.”
A new constitutional amendment, as suggested by the court “is absolutely necessary here,” Arruda said, while at the same time worrying that attempting to get one passed would be “an exercise in futility. I don’t see it happening. It is very depressing.”
Gramitt, the Ethics Committee attorney, took the ruling in stride, although he did allow “we hoped for a different result.”
He said the significance of the decision is that “it removes such a visible aspect of our enforcement authority. These types of cases are the ones that bring out the reporters and TV cameras, so it is what people think about when they think of our cases. But in fact those kinds of cases against legislators are a small part of what we do. It’s high-profile and significant, but maybe 1 percent of what we do.”
Ethics Commission Chairman Barbara Binder said the court “has taken away a critically important tool in the Ethics Commission’s arsenal for ensuring that legislators engage in the highest ethical standards.
John Marion of Common Cause of RI “will spend much of its time” in the near future, advocating for a constitutional amendment to make the Ethics Amendment apply to legislators, the speech in debate clause notwithstanding. He noted there is already language for a proposed constitutional amendment introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. David Segal of Providence that would do just that.

Open Records Bill Passes House, But Supporters Now Oppose It

by Russell J. Moore

After a two-year struggle, the House of Representatives passed an open records bill that supporters say did more to weaken the law than strengthen it.

The bill’s supporters, a diverse group including the Rhode Island Press Association (RIPA), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Common Cause Rhode Island and the League of Women Voters had been involved in a tense, delicate negotiation with the Attorney General’s office, state police and the Rhode Island Chief of Police’s Association for months.

The groups involved struck a deal all sides could live with that mandated arrest records that included time, name, age, address and charge be released within 24 hours. Originally, supporters hoped to have the arrest location included in the report but law enforcement officials thought it would intimidate witnesses.

But when the bill reached the House floor on Saturday, the bill became something the original supporters decided they could no longer live with.

The House bill mandates that law enforcement officials must release details of an arrest within 24 hours of a request for a police report but excludes narrative reports.

At that point, the bill became something weaker than is currently in place, according to Scott Pickering, president of RIPA and managing editor for East Bay Newspapers. Attorney General Patrick Lynch has consistently interpreted the current law to include narrative reports.

“The common response from police departments around the state would be a half sheet of paper saying who was arrested, at what time, along with their addresses and ages,” said Pickering.

He says without the narrative reports, the public would have no way of knowing the most significant details of an arrest.

But Representative Peter Kilmartin (D-Pawtucket), a police officer, said he thought the Senate bill would be a burden to police departments. The 24-hour request, he said, would be difficult for understaffed police departments to comply with.

Kilmartin also said releasing narratives could lead to botched investigations or giving law enforcement incentives to document less information.

“If an investigation is ongoing, the legislation as proposed may have an effect of forcing detectives to not put anything in writing,” said Kilmartin. “And I’m a guy who thinks there should be as much documentation as possible.”

The House bill is currently in limbo. House Sponsor Edith Ajello (D-Providence) asked that the bill be kept on the floor and not transmitted to the Senate. It is still unknown whether or not it will arrive back in the Senate chambers.

If it does, Senate Sponsor J. Michael Lenihan (D-North Kingstown, East Greenwich, Warwick) would be in the awkward position of lobbying against his own bill, he said yesterday.

“I would urge that the bill simply be not brought up or brought back to committee,” said Lenihan. “I would have trouble supporting that bill.”

In all likelihood, the bill will be held in the House and expire once the session ends. Interviews with supporters of the bill made it clear that they would make another go of it in the next legislative session.

Lenihan made it clear he wasn’t happy.

“I’m more than disappointed. I’m disheartened. This is a bill we’ve been working on for two years and an issue I’ve been working on for 10 years,” said Lenihan.

He’s not the only one.

“This is very frustrating. There were a significant number of groups who worked very hard on this. To see it unravel out of the blue was very troubling,” said Steve Brown, executive director for the Rhode Island Chapter of the ACLU.

Brown took issue with those who amended the bill, particularly the notion that narratives would jeopardize ongoing investigations.

“The notion that drug kingpins aren’t going to be aware of the arrest of their comrades until they read a police narrative is absurd on its face,” said Brown.

But Kilmartin had his own critique of the ACLU.

“I don’t think the ACLU cares what happens. All they care about is having all the information out in the open regardless of what could happen to investigations,” said Kilmartin.

High Court Rules in Irons’ Favor on Ethics Prosecution

By Mike Stanton

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island legislators can be prosecuted for ethics violations involving their political activities, questionable acts on behalf of constituents or businessmen –– but not, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled Monday, for their official legislative votes or actions.

In a historic and long-awaited decision, the court ruled 3 to 1 in favor of former Senate President William V. Irons, who had been accused of acting on pharmacy legislation despite collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance commissions involving the CVS drugstore chain and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.

Retired Chief Justice Frank J. Williams and Justices Francis X. Flaherty and William P. Robinson III ruled that the Rhode Island Constitution’s speech-in-debate clause gives legislators immunity from prosecution by the state Ethics Commission for their official votes or legislative duties.

Related links

Extra: R.I. Supreme Court ruling in William V. Irons vs. R.I. Ethics Commission et al

The decision upheld a ruling last year by Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan Jr. dismissing ethics charges against Irons.

Justice Paul A. Suttell, who was confirmed last week by the General Assembly as the next chief justice, was the lone dissenter. He argued that Rhode Island voters intended to carve out a narrow exception for ethics violations when they adopted a 1986 constitutional amendment creating the Ethics Commission.

Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg recused herself because she is a friend of Irons’ wife.

John A. Tarantino, a lawyer for Irons, hailed the decision as a victory not only for his client, but for Rhode Island.

“The public should be pleased by this decision,” he said. “They may not like the result, but if the Constitution is upheld and it’s what the people enacted, the system works.”

Tarantino said that Irons was pleased and relieved by the decision, which ended a five-year legal struggle during which he also was the target of a federal State House corruption probe, Operation Dollar Bill. While former Sen. John A. Celona and ex-House Majority Leader Gerard M. Martineau were convicted of selling their office to CVS and Blue Cross, authorities ultimately chose not to charge Irons.

Corrupt legislators can still be prosecuted by the Ethics Commission, said Tarantino; the key difference is that now their actual vote or official action can’t be used as evidence.

Jason Gramitt, an Ethics Commission lawyer, said that the decision will make the commission’s job policing legislators more difficult.

“It’s a significant decision,” he said. “It removes such a visible aspect of our enforcement authority. For now, we will not be questioning their core legislative activities.”

In proving a quid pro quo between a legislator’s official actions and some undue influence, the commission won’t be able to use the official act at the center of the illicit bargain.

Tarantino said that proof could come through other evidence: a letter, a phone call, a meeting. “You just can’t use the vote as evidence.”

Said Gramitt: “You still can’t sell your office. To prove that, however, we have to prove an agreement. But whether they kept their end of the bargain [by voting a certain way], we can’t use. We’ll have to look for more smoking guns.”

While legislators are still bound by other aspects of the state Code of Ethics, for instance on gifts and outside employment, Gramitt said the commission will stop issuing advisory opinions to lawmakers regarding whether they could vote on certain issues.

John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, lamented the decision for ignoring what he said was Rhode Island voters’ historic intent in creating the Ethics Commission and for gutting the agency’s powers to police corruption at the State House.

“Today the Rhode Island Supreme Court dealt a sharp blow to ethical government in Rhode Island,” said Marion. “By doing this, one of the main tools that the people of the Rhode Island deemed necessary for policing the ethics of Rhode Island government has been removed.”

Marion called on the legislature, when it comes back into session later this summer, to pass a bill sponsored by Rep. David A. Segal, D-Providence, that calls for a referendum on a constitutional amendment placing legislators under the authority of the Ethics Commission, notwithstanding the speech-in-debate clause.

The Supreme Court said Monday that the voters could change the Constitution to do so.

House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, did not respond to requests for comment.

THE LEGAL STRUGGLE over the future of Rhode Island ethics enforcement is rooted in a historical concept that dates to the 15th-century English Parliament, carried through the American Revolution of 1776 and was enshrined in the first Rhode Island Constitution, in 1852.

The so-called speech-in-debate clause was designed to allow lawmakers to freely express themselves without fear of retribution. The Rhode Island Constitution says no legislators “shall be questioned in any other place” regarding their official votes or actions. But in 1986, after a Constitutional Convention, Rhode Island voters approved an amendment creating the Ethics Commission –– and a legal quagmire that justices waded through in Monday’s 28-page decision.

The majority opinion, by Flaherty, Robinson and Williams, quoted Thomas Jefferson that this important legislative immunity exists “in order to give to the will of the people the influence it ought to have.”

Notwithstanding the 1986 ethics amendment, the majority wrote, Rhode Island voters “reaffirmed” the speech-in-debate clause when they “adopted a neutral rewrite” of that provision the same year. The intent of the clause, the majority said, is not to protect legislators from being prosecuted for acting to benefit themselves, but to protect the public by allowing elected officials to carry out their duties without fear of prosecution.

“We wish to stress in the strongest possible terms, however, that it in no way grants a legislator the right to transgress the Code of Ethics or any other law,” the majority wrote. Unprotected actions include political activities, efforts for constituents, assistance in securing government contracts, soliciting and taking bribes and criminal activities –– “even those committed to further legislative activity.”

Here, the majority said, Irons’ actions involved “core legislative acts.”

The majority and Suttell agreed that the 1986 amendment created a conundrum –– pitting the speech-in-debate clause against the power of an independent Ethics Commission.

“If the citizens of Rhode Island wish to empower the Ethics Commission to investigate and prosecute legislators with respect to their legislative actions … they most certainly have the power to do so,” the majority wrote.

Suttell countered in his dissent that the 1986 ethics amendment carved out an exception to the speech-in-debate clause “to achieve a framework for more responsible and accountable governance.”

“In essence, the majority chooses to accord greater import to ‘an ancient and venerable hallmark of our form of government’ than to the more newly minted ethics amendment,” Suttell wrote.

Although he retired early this year, Williams has continued to hear cases while his replacement was chosen; since Suttell already sat on the court, his ascension still leaves a vacancy on the court.

mstanton@projo.com

Separation of Powers Prevails!

On Thursday, June 25th, the Rhode Island Senate provided advice and consent to four current members of the Coastal Resources Management Council. Three of those members had never previously received the Senate’s approval. From the Senate Journal:

Upon motion of Senator Connors, seconded by Senator Algiere, the following measures on today’s Consent Calendar, by unanimous consent, are read and passed, upon a roll call vote with 34 Senators voting in the affirmative and 0 Senators voting in the negative as follows:

YEAS- 34: The Honorable President Paiva Weed and Senators Algiere, Bates, Blais, Connors, Cote, Crowley, DaPonte, Devall, DiPalma, Doyle, Felag, Fogarty, Gallo, Goodwin, Jabour, Lanzi, Lenihan, Levesque, Lynch, Maher, Maselli, McCaffrey, Metts, Miller, O’Neill, Perry, Picard, Pichardo, Ruggerio, Sheehan, Sosnowski, Tassoni, Walaska.

AYS- 0:

This seemingly unremarkable event is a huge victory in the march toward Separation of Powers in Rhode Island. Common Cause has long advocated that the 2004 Separation of Powers amendments are self-executing in nature. With this vote, the Governor and Senate took steps to bring the council into compliance with those amendments, all without new authorizing legislation.

Supreme Court Extends “Speech in Debate” Immunity to General Assembly

Today the Rhode Island Supreme Court carved out a special immunity from ethical oversight for the General Assembly. In ruling in favor of the plaintiff in William V. Irons vs. Rhode Island Ethics Commission, the Court has decided that the Rhode Island constitution’s “speech in debate” clause shields members of the General Assembly from prosecution by the Ethics Commission on their “core legislative functions” such as voting and speaking.

“Today the Rhode Island Supreme Court dealt a sharp blow to ethical government in Rhode Island” says John Marion, executive director of government reform group Common Cause Rhode Island. The case was a result of an appeal of a Superior Court decision by the Rhode Island Ethics Commission. The Superior Court ruled that former Senate President William Irons was immune from prosecution based on the “speech in debate” clause of the Rhode Island Constitution. Marion added, “By doing this, one of the main tools that the people of the Rhode Island deemed necessary for policing the ethics of Rhode Island government has been removed.”

Common Cause Rhode Island calls on the Rhode Island General Assembly to put on the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment that restores the power of the Ethics Commission to investigate, and if necessary, prosecute members of the General Assembly for any wrongdoing that may occur. Given that the General Assembly has yet to adjourn for 2009, and in the words of Speaker Murphy last Saturday, “we’re a full-time Legislature now” we feel it is incumbent upon them to pass legislation that lets the people decide if members of the General Assembly deserve immunity that no other elected officials in the state enjoy. By passing House bill 6070, or any similar bill that may be introduced as a result of this decision, the Assembly can accomplish this prior to the end of the legislative session and let the people decide in 2010 whether legislators deserve immunity. As Justice Suttell points out in his dissent in this case, it is important to look at the history of what the voters desired in passing the 1986 ethics amendment. Since the majority of the Court disagreed with what we feel the voters wanted, it is time again to let the voters decide.

Common Cause Rhode Island is pleased with the decision of the majority to not take up the question of whether those prosecuted by the Ethics Commission have a right to a separate jury trial. We feel that Judge Darigan’s decision on this matter was correct, and any attempt to remove the ability of the Commission to decide the matters before them (after first providing immunity under “speech and debate”) would be the equivalent of taking two legs out of a three legged stool.

Common Cause filed amicus briefs on behalf of the Ethics Commission in the case.

4 Incumbents Recommended for Coastal Board

By Peter B. Lord

Journal Environment Writer

Governor Carcieri, in an effort to bolster the shorthanded Coastal Resources Management Council, has submitted the names of four of its members to the Senate for reappointment.

The Senate Committee on Environment and Agriculture was expected to review the nominations Thursday evening.

But even if the nominees are approved, the council is still down to just seven members, the number it needs for a quorum. Many officials are concerned that a skeletal council won’t be able to review and vote on critical projects looming in the near future, particularly a $1.5-billion coastal wind farm and its related developments.

Since January the council has canceled several meetings because it couldn’t enlist enough council members to attend. What’s worse, existing council members will have to recuse themselves when conflicts arise, and one recusal would leave the committee unable to operate.

One council member is W. Michael Sullivan, director of the state Department of Environmental Management. The DEM is involved in many cases that come before the council. Also, Chairman Michael Tikoian recuses himself whenever attorney Joseph DeAngelis brings cases before the council, and DeAngelis is involved in many cases.

The Senate has approved one bill that would reconstitute the council and allow for more members. A House committee Thursday was set to consider an entirely different bill. Time is running out to get either one through both sides of the legislature.

Meanwhile, Common Cause Rhode Island is arguing that the governor has the authority to simply appoint more members.

Carcieri on Wednesday presented the names of Paul Lemont, Ray Coia and Donald Gomez. They all serve on the council, appointed at a time when the Senate’s advice and consent was not necessary. Amy Kempe, Carcieri’s spokeswoman, says the governor is resubmitting them to the Senate now as a courtesy. A fourth council member, Bruce Dawson, had previously been appointed to the council and had received Senate approval.

Gomez’s term was not up, Kempe said, but the Senate asked that his name be resubmitted as a courtesy.

plord@projo.com