PROVIDENCE — A top North Providence official has run afoul of state ethics rules in the hiring of his granddaughter for a town summer job, and the administration said that today will be her last day working at Town Hall.

The state Ethics Commission had said on July 29 that it was all right for the granddaughter of G. Richard Fossa to have a job — so long as every other applicant got one.

“Absent that, you don’t know whether favoritism played a role,” said Commission Chair Barbara Binder.

Fossa, a former North Providence mayor and a former member of various local agencies, is the chief of staff and former campaign manager for North Providence’s present mayor, Charles A. Lombardi.

At the commission meeting, Fossa said that “about everyone who applied worked,” but that he couldn’t say so conclusively. On Wednesday, he said in a telephone interview that “We hire everybody that applies,” although he added that applicants had to “qualify” for the jobs.

Yesterday, however, he told commission lawyer Jason Gramitt that he couldn’t give the assurance the commission wanted, Gramitt said.

“He was not able to represent that everyone who applied has been offered a job,” Gramitt said.

Rocco Gesualdi, the town’s director of administration, said that Fossa’s granddaughter, Briana Moretti, started work in the North Providence finance office on July 7. He said the summer job program employs 112 young people this year. Fossa said she has been paid $7.40 per hour for a 20-hour workweek.

Fossa had told the commission that he had nothing to do with his granddaughter’s hiring or supervision and that she got no special treatment in pay, assignment or period of employment.

North Providence residents get “first priority” for jobs, Fossa said, although he acknowledged that his granddaughter recently graduated from Smithfield High School.

Because of timing and the Ethics Commission’s procedures, Fossa apparently isn’t in any trouble, despite his granddaughter’s having worked through most of the job program.

That is because Fossa got a draft opinion conditionally approving his granddaughter’s job before she went to work, and because she will quit before the immunity the draft opinion provides is withdrawn.

When an official wants an advisory opinion about whether some activity complies with the Code of Ethics, the commission staff drafts an opinion based on the official’s description of the situation.

If the resulting draft opinion approves the action, as it conditionally did in Fossa’s case, the official is immune from prosecution until the commission itself can act on the opinion. If they agree that no ethics violation would result, that protection continues. If not, it ends.

Gramitt said that in Fossa’s case, it ends when Fossa is notified that there will be no advisory opinion approving his granddaughter’s job. Gramitt said he told Fossa that on the phone yesterday and that a letter making the message formal was also mailed yesterday.

The reaction at North Providence Town Hall was immediate.

“Tomorrow will be her last day,” Gesualdi said yesterday.

Ironically, there was a precedent for Fossa’s question involving Fossa’s longtime political rival, former town mayor and now Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis.

Fossa was mayor from 1995 to 1996, when Mollis defeated him. In a September 2000 debate during another campaign against Mollis, Fossa rebutted one of the then-mayor’s claims about taxes by referring to the mayor’s town-owned Ford sport-utility vehicle. “Mayor, you must have fallen out of your Expedition and banged your head,” he said. Fossa lost to Mollis in the primary election later that month.

In his ethics case, however, Fossa relied on a commission opinion in 2000, when Mollis asked whether his son could work in the job program.

The Ethics Commission said yes — with the same conditions it applied to Fossa: that all the applicants were hired, all got the same pay and were subject to the same requirements. A key difference was that Mollis promised that all applicants would be hired, along with his son.

blandis@projo.com