Out of the influence-peddling scandal that landed former state Sen. John Celona in prison a decade ago came a law requiring that any entity with a paid State House lobbyist report "anything of value'' given to a legislator or "major decision-maker," including the governor's chief of staff.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Out of the influence-peddling scandal that landed former state Sen. John Celona in prison a decade ago came a law requiring that any entity with a paid State House lobbyist report "anything of value'' given to a legislator or "major decision-maker," including the governor's chief of staff.
That includes a paycheck, gift, loan, financial favor or special discount valued at more than $250.
Once again, the reports show a significant number of Providence lawmakers on the city payroll. The count is 12 out of a total of 21 lawmakers whose House or Senate districts include portions of Providence. The cost to city taxpayers of their salaries: $770,082. More on that later.
A filing by the Adler Pollock & Sheehan law firm — which had 10 lobbying clients last year, including the Credit Union Association of Rhode Island and Invenergy — disclosed $250,450 in compensation to lawyer and state Rep. Stephen Ucci, D-Johnston.
Lobbyist Bill Fischer disclosed $4,096 in payments to state Sen. Josh Miller's now-closed restaurant Local 121 for his wedding rehearsal dinner.
The filing by Brown University shined a light on something a bit different: a property flip.
In July 2017, the university purchased a two-and-a-half story, federal-style Colonial house at 37 George St. — assessed by the city at $843,600 — from Gov. Gina Raimondo's chief-of-staff Brett Smiley and his husband, James DeRentis.
The university paid them $1.1 million, according to city records.
Brown had to publicly disclose the payment to Smiley and his spouse, as an entity that had paid lobbyists at the State House last year: Al Dahlberg, the university's assistant VP for government and community relations; Gayle Wolf and Peter McGinn. The targets of their lobbying included a bill, which Brown opposed, to let the city tax real estate owned by tax-exempt institutions if the property is not an essential part of the institution’s mission; and a second one it supported to clarify the powers of campus police. (Neither bill passed.)
Earlier this month, the university sold the George Street home that it had purchased in July to Laura Lopez Sanders, an assistant professor of sociology at Brown, and William Aylward Sanders for $880,000, according to the city assessor's office.
University spokesman Brian Clark explained the transaction this way: "Brown purchased 37 George St. in Providence from Brett Smiley and Jim DeRentis at a fair market value of $1.1M in July 2017 for our Brown to Brown Home Ownership Program ... which encourages faculty and staff home ownership in College Hill."
"This month, we sold the home to a Brown faculty member for $880,000, successfully adding it to the list of more than 15 Brown to Brown properties, many of which have been renovated, sold and added to the city’s tax rolls,'' he said.
Clark said the reduced price reflects a key feature of the home-ownership program: Brown has buyback rights if the property is needed in the future for academic expansion, and first dibs on repurchase if the owner wants to sell or leave Brown employ.
"As consideration for Brown's buy-back options,'' Clark said, "the sale price of each Brown to Brown property is set at 80 percent of the current market value. In this instance, the $880,000 sale is 80 percent of the home’s market value of $1.1M."
In a real-estate notes column last summer, The Journal reported that Brown's purchase of the George Street home was one of three real-estate transactions last summer between the university, Smiley and DeRentis, an agent with Residential Properties.
Brown sold them a historic home at 193 Hope St., which it had received as a gift, for $1.3 million. On that same August 2017 day, the university bought a two-story carriage house next door for $725,000 that it sold to them for $525,000. The two properties sold as a package, as the earlier owners had hoped, for a combined $1.825 million, according to Clark.
"The transactions at 193 and 195 Hope St. were separate and distinct from the purchase of 37 George St. Brown put those properties on the market after receiving a gift of real estate. ... All three properties — 37 George, 193 Hope and 195 Hope — remained on the tax rolls at all points,'' Clark said.
Smiley summed up the summer whirlwind this way: "Jim and I were happy to sell our house at 37 George St. to Brown University. Given that our house was very close to campus and within their institutional zone, we were not surprised at their interest. As it happened, our new house at 193 Hope St. was purchased from Brown. They were interested in returning it to a family in the neighborhood and we’re excited to be embarking on a new restoration and renovation project.”
On the Providence payroll
Most of the other lobbying-disclosure reports reflect the day jobs of Rhode Island's part-time legislators who, as a rule, meet late afternoons and nights three days a week, six months a year.
In its filings with the secretary of state, the City of Providence — which is one of a handful of municipalities with paid lobbyists at the State House (including the $3,000-a-month team at Government Strategies) — reported the following payments to state lawmakers in 2017:
Senators Maryellen Goodwin, $47,556; Paul Jabour, $47,024; and Ana Quezada, $55,016; and Representatives Grace Diaz, $59,655; Anastasia Williams, $51,119; Daniel McKiernan, $31,481; Deborah Fellela, $48,759; John Lombardi, $36,728; Raymond Hull, $131,662; Scott Slater, $101,928; William O'Brien, $79,517; and Marcia Ranglin-Vassell, $79,639.
Ranglin-Vassell is a school teacher; O'Brien is an attendance officer in the city school system. Fellela is a secretary to the principal of the Robert F. Kennedy Elementary School; Hull is a city police sergeant. Slater is a longtime budget analyst for the city; Quezada is listed as a Renewal Inspector III in the city's Department of Inspection and Standards; Williams is a compliance officer in the Office of Economic Opportunity; Goodwin, the Senate majority whip, is the chief clerk in the city’s Planning and Development Department.
Diaz, who is also the vice chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, recently "transitioned to MBE/WBE Outreach Director'' in the mayor's office, with a higher-paying $62,327-a-year salary, according to city spokesman Victor Morente.
McKiernan and Lombardi are part-time Providence Municipal Court judges, and Jabour is a clerk in city Probate Court.
Studying line-item veto
A new legislatively appointed commission is poised to begin a study of the potential pluses and minuses of giving the governor power to veto individual items in the annual state budget bill.
In recent weeks, House and Senate leaders have both made their appointments to the 12-member commission created at the end of last year's legislative session as a compromise move in the long-running battle over a line-item veto. A second area of study: runoff elections if no candidate for governor gets more than 50 percent of the vote.
Senate President Dominick Ruggerio has appointed Democratic Senators Frank Lombardi and James Sheehan, GOP Sen. Thomas J. Paolino, and retired District Court judge John Cappelli. Lifespan lobbyist David Balasco was appointed to the seat reserved by the legislation for "a representative of a large Rhode Island public service employer that has significant knowledge of the state budget process."
House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello has appointed House Democrats Kenneth Marshall and Gregg Amore and Republican Blake Filippi; as well as Robert Mancini, president of the Rhode Island Society of CPAs, and retired University of Rhode Island Prof. Edgar LeDuc. The legislation reserved one final seat for a former statewide officer. Mattiello and Ruggerio chose former attorney general James O'Neil.
As of late last week, that left one empty seat on the commission, which has scheduled its first, organizational meeting for Wednesday.
The panel's mission: "A comprehensive study of the policy, political, and fiscal considerations of a line item veto in Rhode Island, including but not limited to an examination of the constitutional balance of power between the three branches of government ... in a modern society and economy."
Findings and recommendations are due April 5.
For what it's worth: 36 of the current 37 senators have co-signed a bill to put a proposed line item veto on the November ballot.
The House, not the Senate, has primary responsibility for writing the budget, so passage of a line-item veto would diminish that power. The lone Senate holdout is Sen. Stephen Archambault, who was out of town when the signatures were being collected last week, according to Senate spokesman Greg Pare.