irons

PROVIDENCE — A judge yesterday dismissed ethics charges against William V. Irons, saying that the former state Senate president is protected by the state Constitution from prosecution based on his legislative activities.

The decision was a major setback for the state Ethics Commission, which has successfully prosecuted several legislators, imposing fines of $10,000 and more. If the ruling is upheld, it could mean that the commission could no longer prosecute members of the state House and Senate for ethics violations based on their votes or other legislative activities.

Commission lawyer Jason M. Gramitt said he was disappointed by Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan’s ruling. He said he expects that the commission will file an appeal.

John Arruda, the past president of the watchdog group Operation Clean Government who filed the ethics complaint against Irons in 2004, called the ruling “absurd” and said it would “open up the possibility for so much abuse” by legislators. He said it would leave legislators free to benefit themselves and their friends through conflicts of interest, “and our Ethics Commission can now do nothing.”

Irons’ lawyer, John Tarantino, said the decision means Irons is no longer a target of investigation for the first time in 4½ years. Two weeks ago, Irons got word from federal prosecutors that he was no longer a target of a State House influence-peddling investigation that led to prison terms for two other legislators, John Celona and Gerard Martineau.

An insurance salesman from East Providence, Irons abruptly resigned after two decades in the state Senate on Dec. 31, 2003. He had opposed controversial pharmacy-choice legislation that CVS, the pharmacy giant, wanted killed. The Journal disclosed that Irons had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions since 1997 on a Blue Cross policy covering CVS workers in Rhode Island. At the time, Irons chaired a Senate committee that handled health care and voted on legislation of interest to CVS.

The Ethics Commission found probable cause to believe that Irons broke the Code of Ethics by using his public office to financially benefit his business associate, CVS.

The next step would ordinarily have been a trial-like adjudicative hearing before the commission, with commission prosecutors presenting evidence, Tarantino presenting Irons’ case and the commission members deciding on Irons’ guilt or innocence. Irons, however, went to court in an attempt to block the commission prosecution.

Tarantino’s main legal argument was based on the “speech in debate” provisions that appear in both state and federal Constitutions. The legislative immunity they provide dates to political struggles in 17th-century England, where it was instituted to provide legislators with powerful protection against outside interference, including from other branches of government.

Here, it has been taken by both federal and state courts to generally protect legislators from prosecution based on their legislative activities.

The Ethics Commission’s lawyers, on the other hand, argued that the amendment to the state Constitution that created the commission in 1986 also gave the commission unique authority to prosecute legislators in spite of the speech-in-debate provision.

Darigan ruled that the two provisions can both apply. Legislators get immunity for acts within “the parameters of their legislative positions,” like “proposing, passing or voting on legislation,” he said, while the commission can enforce the ethics rules where non-legislative activity is concerned.

If the drafters of the 1986 ethics amendment wanted to override the speech-in-debate clause, the judge said, they should have said so explicitly.

Last year, Senate President Joseph Montalbano initially defended himself against ethics charges with arguments similar to the ones that convinced Darigan to dismiss the charges against Irons. However, last September, Montalbano agreed to settle the charges against him for $12,000, the third-highest penalty the state Ethics Commission had imposed. That put off a court ruling on the speech-in-debate issue until yesterday’s decision.

blandis@projo.com