Operation Clean Government charges the Senate president with a conflict of interest over his failure to list legal work done for the Town of West Warwick.

12:40 PM EDT on Tuesday, June 20, 2006

BY KATHERINE GREGG
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano violated the state ethics code by failing to disclose his role as a paid legal consultant to the Town of West Warwick in the yearly disclosure statements he is required to file as a public official, according to an ethics complaint against him yesterday.

The complaint was filed with the state Ethics Commission by the citizens' group Operation Clean Government in the wake of a newspaper report about what Montalbano described as his "inadvertent" failure to disclose that he had been on the consulting payroll of the town at the center of the State House casino debate since 2003.

On the day of the June 1 Senate vote on the proposed casino-referendum, The Providence Journal reported that Montalbano & Montalbano had been paid a total of $86,329 by the town since 2003.

That included legal fees and expenses for helping the town clear titles to 14 properties, including two that abut the 86-acre site in the James P. Murphy Industrial Park in West Warwick, which Harrah's Entertainment has identified as the location of the proposed Harrah's-Narragansett Indian casino.

One such June 2005 bill included $3,500 in legal fees, $2,585 in court filings fees and other expenses.

On the day that news story appeared -- and moments before the Senate began debating the casino bill -- Montalbano filed amended reports with the Ethics Commission reflecting his years-long role as a legal consultant to West Warwick.

But Operation Clean Government President Robert P. Arruda said the after-the-fact filing of the amended complaint does not erase, or mitigate, Montalbano's undisclosed conflict as he both voted on and shepherded the bill through a Senate committee to the Senate floor.

Financial disclosure statements, required of numerous state and local officials, give a limited description of the officials' financial interests. They are intended to allow the public to discover potential conflicts of interest, where officials' public duties could affect their private interests.

Montalbano was in a position, throughout, "where he could lose income or gain income based on the position he takes on that very public issue that the Town of West Warwick is advocating for," Arruda said.

As a lawyer and a Municipal Court judge in North Providence, Arruda said, Montalbano, "above most", should be aware that "you need to be careful" when filing an official document.

Drawing from both the newspaper article and Operation Clean Government's own research, the complaint notes that Montalbano did not disclose -- on his 2004, 2005 and 2006 filings with the Ethics Commission -- his initial appointment as planning and zoning attorney for West Warwick, or his subsequent role as a per-job legal consultant.

The Town of West Warwick adopted the resolution that instigated the General Assembly's debate and votes this year to place a proposal on the November ballot to change the state Constitution to give exclusive casino rights to the proposed Harrah's-Narragansett casino.

The complaint focuses on these alleged lapses:

Prior to disclosing his "employment relationship with the town of West Warwick, Montalbano, who serves ex officio on all Senate Committees, attended and participated at the hearing [by] the Senate Committee on Constitutional and Gaming Issues and voted in favor of the joint resolution."

Montalbano did not deliver to the Ethics Commission or have recorded in the Senate Journal "a statement of conflict of interest" before voting on the casino legislation on June 1.

"Montalbano's participation and votes in favor of the joint resolution while employed as legal counsel for the town of West Warwick was in substantial conflict with his proper duties as the president of the Rhode Island Senate."

Arruda yesterday said Operation Clean Government also delivered to the Ethics Commission a packet of information about the tangled history surrounding the town's acquisition of the two privately owned lots on the fringe of the proposed casino site.

Montalbano, D-North Providence, did not respond to requests for the comment on the complaint signed by both Arruda and Operation Clean Government director James V. DeCesaris of Cranston.

The Ethics Commission can levy fines of up to $25,000 per infraction.

In September, a Johnston state representative, Joseph J. Voccola, agreed to pay a $500 fine to settle an ethics complaint that accused him of failing to list his interest in a piece of property, at 3 Citation Court in Lincoln, on his financial disclosure statement filed with the commission.

Voccola has described the omission as "a stupid mistake" and said he wasn't trying to hide anything. He said that when he filed his disclosure statement in March, covering the year 2004, he mistakenly copied the information from his 2003 statement.

Voccola, who is also a lawyer, owns the Lincoln property with his wife, Donna. The complaint against him was filed by Barbara Galligan, also of Johnston.

kgregg@projo.com / (401) 277-7078