PROVIDENCE — State Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III yesterday denied parts of the ethics complaint filed against him the day before and said that one element of it, his failure to disclose his union jobs in an Ethics Commission filing, was an oversight.

Ciccone, a Providence Democrat, was the target of a complaint filed by Operation Clean Government President Arthur C. “Chuck” Barton III the day before accusing him of sponsoring legislation favoring his union, not disclosing that source of income, and potentially benefiting unionized employees by participating in a legislative investigation of the Carcieri administration’s hiring of temporary workers.

Ciccone said he has two paying union jobs, one as a field representative of Local 808 of the Rhode Island Laborers International Union and another as business manager of the local. He acknowledged that he omitted them from his last two years’ financial disclosure reports, which are intended to let the public detect conflicts of interest among public officials.

“I made a mistake,” he said. “It was inadvertent.”

However, he disputed two other accusations. The legislation he supported, he said, would affect unionized school teachers, which his union does not represent. And he challenged the claim that his involvement in the investigation by the Senate Committee on Government Oversight, where he is vice chairman, amounts to a conflict of interest because the committee is investigating the hiring of temporary state employees.

Barton’s complaint argues that the issue before the commission bears directly on the number of persons who will be members of local unions represented by Ciccone’s union, meaning that Ciccone is using his office to benefit his “business,” the union.

Ciccone, however, said that’s “quite an inference to make.” The oversight committee, he said, set out to look into state government purchasing. The committee focused on the temporary jobs issue, he said, in part because the Carcieri administration wouldn’t provide the documents the panel wanted on the subject.

blandis@projo.com