PROVIDENCE — Governor Carcieri has made two appointments to the state Ethics Commission, replacing members whose terms have expired.

He named Sister Deborah H. Cerullo, SSND, a Catholic nun who served as an assistant district attorney in both Massachusetts and New York, and J. William Harsch, a lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general in 2002 and 2006.

The appointments are for seats that are among Carcieri’s four direct appointments to the nine-member board. The governor appoints the other five members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders of the state House and Senate.

Sister Cerullo replaces George Weavill Jr. Her term expires on Sept. 1, 2011. Harsch, whose term expires on Sept. 1, 2012, replaces James C. Segovis.

Sister Cerullo graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 1976 and received her law degree from Boston University in 1980. She served as an assistant district attorney in Middlesex County, Mass., from 1981 until 1985, when she entered the School Sisters of Notre Dame.

From 1985 to 1986, Sister Cerullo worked as an investigator in the consumer fraud unit and as an assistant district attorney in Nassau County, N.Y. After earning a master’s degree in canon law at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, she taught law at the University of Notre Dame Law School and at Boston College Law School. Since 2003, Sister Cerullo has had a law office in Providence.

Harsch practices law and has been town solicitor for Tiverton and Jamestown. Before that, he worked in the federal Office of Management and Budget in the Carter administration. Harsch was also director of the state Department of Environmental Management from 1976 to 1977 and chairman of the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission from 1975 to 1976. He graduated from Williams College in 1960 and got his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1964.

The Ethics Commission is the body that enforces the state Code of Ethics, which applies to state and local public officials —including Carcieri, who has agreed to pay two fines himself to settle ethics cases brought against him.

Last March, Carcieri agreed to pay a $1,000 fine for soliciting donations from state employees during his 2006 reelection campaign, and in 2005 he agreed to pay $750 to settle a complaint stemming from his acceptance of tickets from Fleet Bank to watch a New England Patriots football game from the bank’s box at Gillette Stadium.

blandis@projo.com