The attorney general's election opponent files an ethics complaint over the donations by a company that was involved in the lead-paint lawsuit and which later reached an out-of-court settlement.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, June 30, 2006

BY SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch accepted $4,250 in campaign contributions from DuPont Corp. lawyers and lobbyists before and after reaching a $12-million settlement with the company in the state's lead-paint case.

Lynch's opponent in the upcoming election, J. William W. Harsch, filed a complaint yesterday with the state Ethics Commission, saying Lynch's acceptance of money from a company he was prosecuting is in "substantial conflict with his duties."

Harsch, a Republican, said his campaign discovered the donations while doing opposition research on Lynch, a Democrat.

"It is a total abuse of the office of attorney general," Harsch said in an interview. "It is one of the things that will occur if the office is being used as a stepping stone to higher office."

"I am the only attorney general in the country to force DuPont to pay any amount, much less millions of dollars," Lynch said in a statement yesterday. "For Bill Harsch to now assert that I was not fighting as hard as I could on behalf of all Rhode Islanders against the lead-paint producers is political opportunism at its worst, and the content of the charge is utterly baseless. There is no reason to return the contributions in question."

Lynch was attending the summer meeting of the National Association of Attorneys Generals in Idaho yesterday. In the complaint, Harsch says Lynch accepted $2,500 from Bernard Nash, one of DuPont's lawyers, and from Nash's wife. Also donating were three people from DuPont's lobbying firm, the Dewey Square Group: Francine Katz who gave $1,000; Joseph Eyer, who gave $500; and Olivia Morgan, who gave $250.

Lynch's filings with the state Board of Elections show the donations. All but one were made on Dec. 20, 2005, roughly six months after the June 30 settlement. Bernard Nash also donated $500 on June 30, 2004, a year before the agreement was reached.

Campaign finance reports show that Nash also donated $500 to the Rhode Island House Democratic Leadership Committee and $500 to former state Sen. Thomas Izzo, who sponsored the state's lead-hazard legislation. Izzo didn't return a phone call late yesterday.

Nash, a partner with the Washington, D.C., firm of Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin & Oshinsky LLP, called the complaint "rubbish."

"It defies logic. Would I put my career on the line at any price?" he told the Associated Press. "This is not big bucks."

He said the contributions were personal, and that he has given to attorneys general in Rhode Island and other states in the past. "Patrick Lynch is a friend of mine," he said. "I support him, and I support maybe 30 other AGs."

The Ethics Commission is prohibited from confirming a complaint unless it has formally been accepted, a process that can take up to three days.

Harsch has criticized the DuPont settlement for some time.

The state went to trial against four other companies that once manufactured lead-paint pigments. In February, a jury found three defendants -- Sherwin Williams, NL Industries and Millennium Inorganic -- had created a public nuisance. The companies face cleanup costs that could reach $3.74 billion.

Under the terms of the deal that Lynch negotiated with DuPont, the paint company would pay the $12-million settlement to the Children's Health Forum, a nonprofit agency based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on preventing lead exposure. That group would then distribute the funds for clean-up efforts and education campaigns.

When Harsch ran for attorney general four years ago, the state's first lead-paint lawsuit, which had been brought by former attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse, ended in a mistrial and Harsch expressed concern about pursuing another trial.

Harsch has said that Lynch's deal with DuPont will send money to certain institutions without any public input.

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