Former Sen. John A. Celona, left, answers questions from prosecutor Stephen G. Dambruch, right. In the foreground, lawyers for former CVS executive Carlos Ortiz, left, look at a check made out to Celona. Ex-CVS vice president John R. Kramer, far right looks on.

The Providence Journal / Frank Gerardi

PROVIDENCE

Prosecutors charge that John Celona killed legislation opposed by CVS because he was on the drugstore chain’s payroll as a $1,000-a-month consultant.

But yesterday, a defense lawyer presented jurors in the federal CVS corruption trial with another possible reason –– that Celona was following orders from his boss, then-Senate Majority Leader William V. Irons, when he refused to allow hearings from 2001 to 2003 on pharmacy-choice legislation that could have cost CVS millions of dollars in sales.

Irons also had financial ties to CVS. The former Senate leader is an insurance broker who used his friendship with CVS chief executive Tom Ryan to help reap several hundred thousand dollars in commissions on health-insurance policies for CVS employees in Rhode Island. The commissions were paid by the insurer, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.

Irons resigned abruptly just before the 2004 session, after The Providence Journal disclosed Celona’s consulting job with CVS and began looking into Irons’ dealings with the Woonsocket-based drugstore giant, including trips that Irons took with Ryan on the CVS corporate jet to the 2003 World Series and the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.

Irons has since come under investigation as part of the federal corruption probe of influence peddling at the State House, Operation Dollar Bill, though no charges have been filed.

Irons’ financial relationship with CVS is not likely to come before jurors in this case, which is focused on whether ex-CVS executives John R. “Jack” Kramer and Carlos Ortiz bribed Celona to do the company’s legislative bidding.

Still, Irons’ position on pharmacy choice was a focus of Celona’s second day on the stand in federal court.

Under questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen G. Dambruch, Celona testified that he acted on legislation of interest to CVS at the direction of Kramer and Ortiz, and that he stopped supporting pharmacy choice in 2000 because he had just gone on the CVS payroll.

Yesterday, Kramer’s lawyer, Scott D. Corrigan, pursued Celona’s earlier testimony that Irons had told him to “take a walk” –– General Assembly parlance for skipping a committee vote on pharmacy choice in 2000.

“You took a walk because Senator Irons told you to take a walk?” asked Corrigan.

Celona agreed. Irons told him to do so just before the hearing, Celona testified, but didn’t explain why.

Corrigan introduced typewritten notes that the Rhode Island State Police seized from Celona’s computer, written after Irons had become Senate Majority Leader in 2001 and was considering making Celona chairman of the Senate Corporations Committee.

Celona pledged to Irons that “approval of all legislation must and will be cleared with you prior to passage.”

“My loyalty is and will be to you as a majority leader that I believe in,” wrote Celona. “I believe that I have the ability to cast a positive light both on you and on this new leadership team.”

Celona, the former North Providence senator now in prison for selling his office to CVS and others, testified that he wrote those notes in preparation for his interview with Irons for committee chairman before the 2001 legislative session, and that he repeated those sentiments to Irons when they met.

“You did what Irons told you to do?” asked Corrigan.

“Yes,” replied Celona.

Corrigan also directed Celona to his previous statements to FBI agents that, when he became committee chairman, he asked Irons how to handle pharmacy-choice legislation.

Irons told Celona that the bills should not receive a hearing because “no one was clamoring” for it, according to the notes.

“Is it true that, pursuant to that directive ... those bills never got posted for a hearing?” asked Corrigan.

“Not totally ... I personally didn’t want them, either,” answered Celona.

Celona acknowledged that Irons was also opposed, and noted that bills of that magnitude “will fly at a higher altitude” in terms of the ultimate decision of their fate. He also referred to another expression that a former Senate colleague, the late Roger Badeau, had coined for legislation that the leadership decides won’t pass –– NGN, for “not going nowhere.”

Earlier yesterday, Celona told jurors how he carried the ball for CVS at the State House –– blocking bills the company opposed, pushing and even sponsoring legislation it favored –– and also as a member of the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority.

In 2002, Celona used his position on the authority to champion a loan-forgiveness program for pharmacy students who agree to work in Rhode Island. The state was experiencing a shortage of trained pharmacists, an issue of concern to CVS.

According to documents introduced by the prosecution, Celona raised the matter at a loan authority board meeting on Jan. 10, 2002, then discussed it with Kramer a few weeks later at a function at Tom Ryan’s house honoring the new dean of the University of Rhode Island’s School of Pharmacy.

“Dear Jack: It was nice to see you last evening at Tom’s house,” Celona e-mailed him the next day, sending a copy to Ortiz.

Celona went on to say that RISLA was going to be starting a loan-reduction program for pharmacy students, and suggested Ryan as “the perfect person” to appear in public-service announcements promoting the program.

“I believe this would be good for RI and for CVS and would be a significant help in kicking off our pharmacy loan program,” concluded Celona.

In March, five days after RISLA voted at Celona’s urging to develop the program, Celona e-mailed Ortiz: “Dear Carlos. Good News! The student loan reduction program is officially passed.”

Celona also testified about an all-expenses paid trip he and other legislators –– then-House Speaker John B. Harwood and then-House Majority Leader Gerard Martineau –– took with Kramer and Ortiz to a national chain drugstore conference in Key Biscayne, Fla., in 2001, including a golf outing at the posh Doral Country Club.

And he elaborated on testimony last week from Kramer’s administrative assistant regarding Kramer’s efforts to help him procure tickets to The Oprah Winfrey Show in Chicago early in 2002.

Before Christmas 2001, Celona testified, Kramer asked him at the Governor’s Ball in Newport if he was “all set” with Christmas gifts for his wife. Celona said he was, but that his wife desperately wanted Oprah tickets, and he had not been able to get any.

Kramer offered to help, and eventually steered him to Lisa Churchville, the general manager of WJAR-TV (Channel 10), the local NBC affiliate that carries Oprah. Celona testified that he went to Channel 10 and picked up a brown paper package containing an Oprah hat and T-shirt, “so I could put something under the tree, which I did.” After the holidays, he got the tickets, too.

It was on the golf course in August 2003, Celona testified, that Kramer advised him that CVS would have to “sever” its relationship with the senator, in light of recent negative publicity over House Majority Leader Gordon Fox’s ethics problems regarding GTECH. (Fox paid a $10,000 ethics fine for his role in helping GTECH win a state lottery contract shortly before his law firm received legal work from the lottery company.)

The two men were riding in a golf cart, having just teed off on the first hole at the exclusive TPC Course in Norton, Mass., where CVS had a corporate membership. Kramer broke the news “as we were approaching the first green,” testified Celona.

Kramer did offer one last golf trip, said Celona –– an all-expenses-paid trip to a celebrity golf tournament in Newport Beach, Calif., where Celona testified that he got to mingle with such “sports heroes of the past” as ex-Boston Celtics basketball great John Havlicek, retired Boston Bruins hockey star Ray Bourque and former Baltimore Orioles baseball star Brooks Robinson.

Celona’s notes in 2001 pledging allegiance to Irons also touted his role in engineering Irons’ successful effort to depose Paul Kelly, the previous Senate majority leader.

Celona described how he used his “lifelong relationship” with Sen. Dominick Ruggerio to win his support and bring over other key votes to Irons, after The Providence Journal reported a potential deadlock in the race for majority leader.

“The day of Tocco’s funeral,” wrote Celona, referring to former Sen. William P. Tocco Jr., “I got the process moving from a North Providence breakfast diner with a telephone call with Sen. Montalbano present.” Without his intervention, Celona wrote, “victory might not have been accomplished.”

Celona wrote that he was a loyal soldier –– “can and have maintained a confidence level on issues of confidentiality.”

In an echo of his rough six-day 2006 appearance on the stand in the Roger Williams Medical Center corruption trial, Celona jousted with defense lawyer Corrigan during more than two hours of cross-examination over inconsistencies in his testimony in this trial, that trial and his frequent FBI interviews and grand-jury appearances.

Right off the bat, Celona fumbled over whether he received a draft copy of his consulting agreement at a January 2000 meeting with Kramer and Ortiz. Corrigan cited previous testimony in which he said he had, but Celona insisted he didn’t receive it until later.

Then they sparred over whether Celona had identified CVS as his prospective employer in a call to the Rhode Island Ethics Commission regarding the propriety of the arrangement. Celona testified on Monday that he concealed that fact, because he wanted “some cover.”

Confronted with previous testimony that he had mentioned CVS, Celona said repeatedly that it was an “abstract” phone call, and that he had posed the question to the person at the Ethics Commission as whether he could vote on legislation if he worked for CVS.

Corrigan asked him over and over to focus not on the “if,” but on whether Celona had mentioned CVS by name.

“Are you trying to avoid answering the question about CVS because yesterday you gave false testimony?” asked Corrigan.

“No, I’m trying to explain,” said Celona. “‘If’ is a big word.”

They also went around about whether, by the time Celona became Corporations Committee chairman in 2001, pharmacy choice was a non-issue, as he had told investigators, and whether Celona changed his stance on pharmacy choice because CVS admitted independent pharmacies into the network and not because he was being paid by the drugstore chain.

As testimony wound down for the day, Corrigan asked Celona if he had received advice from the Ethics Commission that “you could work for CVS as a consultant and participate in legislation affecting CVS as long as the legislation didn’t affect CVS alone?”

Yes, Celona finally answered.The Witness

Former state Sen. John A. Celona, the government’s star witness, was the only person to testify yesterday in the corruption trial of former CVS executives John R. “Jack” Kramer and Carlos R. Ortiz. One of Kramer’s lawyers, Scott Corrigan, of New York City, spent more than two hours cross-examining Celona about his testimony on Monday, as well as asking him about his past grand jury testimony. Corrigan will continue questioning Celona today. Celona, who is serving a 2 1/2-year sentence in federal prison is expected to remain on the witness stand for several days.

mstanton@projo.com