Irons

PROVIDENCE — Former state Senate President William Irons has sued the state Ethics Commission in an attempt to prevent it from prosecuting him on two charges that he violated the state’s ethics laws while in office.

Irons, who is accused of using his office for personal gain, raises the same legal arguments that the present Senate president, Joseph Montalbano, raised earlier this year, arguments that some involved in the dispute said could cripple some ethics enforcement if they carried the day. The earlier case was cut short in September when Montalbano agreed to pay a $12,000 fine, the third-highest penalty the Ethics Commission has imposed.

Irons argues that because he was a legislator at the time, he enjoys immunity from prosecution by the commission. He asks the Superior Court to halt the commission’s ongoing prosecution and acknowledge that he has constitutional protection from it. He also asks for a jury trial rather than a hearing before the commission, if it comes to that.

In April, the commission turned down a settlement proposal from its staff in the Irons case, an unusual development. Neither side would disclose the terms of the settlement, but past settlements have almost always involved fines, often several thousand dollars.

Commission lawyers said yesterday that the lawsuit puts Irons in the same position, with the same legal issues on the table, that Montalbano faced in September.

“It’s exactly the same thing that was raised in the motions hearing on Montalbano,” said Katherine D’Arezzo, the commission’s senior staff attorney and its prosecutor in the Irons case. The commission has found probable cause to believe Irons broke ethics laws. The next step would ordinarily be a trial-like adjudicative hearing before the commission, with commission prosecutors presenting evidence, Irons’ lawyer, John Tarantino, presenting his case, and the commission members deciding on guilt or innocence.

D’Arezzo said she expects that the court will approve a motion to delay the commission’s action on the Irons case until the court can address the issues he has raised.

The Irons case, like Montalbano’s, revolves around almost-identical provisions of the state and federal constitutions. Called the speech-in-debate clause, it has been taken at both federal and state levels to generally protect legislators from outside interference, including prosecution based on their legislative activities.

In Irons’ and Montalbano’s cases, it was their legislative activity that produced the alleged conflict of interest. Montalbano’s lawyer, Max Wistow, argued, for example, that while a legislator can be prosecuted for bribery, his vote itself, being protected legislative activity, can’t be used against him. That could dramatically undermine the Ethics Commission’s enforcement power where legislators are concerned.

In fact, at one point commission lawyer Jason Grammit said that if Wistow’s argument succeeded for Montalbano, “It would mean that Senator Montalbano could introduce a bill to give himself a million dollars, and there’s nothing anyone could do about it.”

Commission lawyers argued then that when the state’s voters created the Ethics Commission and Code of Ethics in a 1986 constitutional amendment, they overrode legislative immunity by saying the amendment applied to “all elected and appointed officials.” That would apply to the Irons case, too.

However, Montalbano’s agreement to pay the fine headed off a test of those conflicting positions in court. Irons’ suit reopens the possibility that the question will be addressed head-on.

In the case now before the commission, Irons is accused of breaking the state’s ethics laws by using his office for financial gain and by voting on pharmacy legislation where he had a substantial conflict of interest.

The charges stemmed from Irons’ participation in the Senate Corporations Committee’s consideration of pharmacy “freedom of choice” legislation in 1999 and 2000.

The Journal reported that Irons received $70,000 in commissions on a Blue Cross health-insurance policy for CVS employees in 2000 and 2001, and another $25,000 in 1999. That was a year that Irons, while chairing the Senate Corporations Committee that regulates health care, opposed a controversial pharmacy-choice bill that Blue Cross and CVS also opposed.

Yesterday, the commission discussed the Irons case behind closed doors but took no action, Chairman James Lynch Jr. said.

blandis@projo.com