FOGARTY

Former Lt. Gov. Charlie Fogarty is returning to the State House. But this time, he’ll be wearing a lobbyist badge.

The Democrat who lost a nail biter to Governor Carcieri in 2006 has joined the Mayforth Group, a lobbying and communications firm headed by Fogarty’s former campaign director, Rick McAuliffe.

“This isn’t a huge firm, so Rick will be the primary lobbyists at the State House for Rhode Island, but I expect that as the session gets under way, I’ll be up there,” Fogarty tells Political Scene. “I imagine the first couple times that will be odd. I haven’t been to the State House much since I left office.”

Nearly Fogarty’s entire professional career has been focused on public service. Since 2007, however, he’s been an adjunct professor at Johnson & Wales University, where he teaches Foundations in Leadership Studies, among other classes.

“It is going to be a different experience, definitely,” Fogarty said, noting that he plans to use contacts from the National Lieutenant Governor’s Association to help Mayforth grow. “But fortunately for me, Rick is a great person to work with, I’m happy with and comfortable with the clients, so I don’t think that’ll be difficult.”

Mayforth’s clients include Johnson & Wales University, the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, Women & Infants Hospital, and the collection of nonprofit nursing homes known as the Rhode Island Association of Facilities and Services for the Aging.

The operation, which lobbies in Washington and other states, has made other changes.

The firm has added marketing and communications director Mary K. Talbot, a former public relations official with Citizens Bank and the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. Kerry Hall, who previously supervised grant writing efforts at Women & Infants Hospital, has been added as a grant writer.

Sen. Tassoni joins list of qualified labor mediators

State Sen. John Tassoni, a Smithfield Democrat who until last spring was a senior business agent for the largest state employees union, has landed on the state’s list of qualified mediators to call when there is a state or local labor dispute.

Though his newly formed company — The Sentinel Group — has not yet won any state or local mediation contracts, it is now within a small, select group that the state purchasing office has deemed qualified for use. Tassoni has offered his services for $125 an hour, $1,000 a day.

Some on the list are better known than others, including Bernard Singleton, a state pensioner, former top official in the National Education Association of Rhode Island and state labor director in the DiPrete administration; and Gerard P. Cobleigh, who is one of the lead lawyers for the largest of the state employee unions and Tassoni’s former employer: Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees.

The minimum qualifications to get on the state’s list of potential mediators include “a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university” and five years experience “as an arbitrator and/or mediator for labor management matters, or a lawyer representing parties” in such matters.

Tassoni is a 1976 Smithfield High School graduate, who lists the New Horizon Computer Learning Center in Cranston, the George Meany Labor Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Institute for Labor Studies and Research in Cranston as his higher-education experience.

As for his “relevant skills and experience,” his resume notes that he is chairman of the Senate Committee on Housing and Municipal Government, and a member of the Senate Labor Committee who has over the years, in his union roles, had to “negotiate union contracts and resolve union grievances” and research, prepare and present cases for arbitration.”

In March, when he was still toying with the idea of running for lieutenant governor, he said: “I worked for Amica Insurance for 10 years. I worked for private business. I went into the union. I’m well-rounded.”

In one of several references Tassoni made public last week, Robert Kulik, executive director of the Woonsocket Housing Authority, said Tassoni “was always striving for a solution that was fair and equitable,” and lawyer and mediator Vincent F. Ragosta Jr. described his sometime adversary in past labor disputes as “a formidable, vigorous and tireless advocate for the labor organizations and workers he represents.”

Tassoni said he has no plans to resign his Senate labor committee post, or ask the Ethics Commission whether his bid for state labor work poses a problem until he lines up a potential contract. “It wouldn’t be advantageous for me to resign anything, because I don’t have any clients yet” in that arena, he said.

Paiva Weed has ‘no comment’ yet on possible casino

Though it has been months since she left her Newport law firm, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed is still keeping her distance from the revived State House talk about asking voters to allow full-scale casino gambling at Twin River in a 2010 referendum.

House Speaker William. J. Murphy has indicated he thinks another referendum would be a good idea; Governor Carcieri, once the state’s most vocal opponent of casino gambling, has said he would not stand in the way.

In a brief interview Tuesday, Paiva Weed, D-Newport, said she does not yet feel free to talk publicly about gambling so soon after leaving the law firm that has long represented the state’s only other slot parlor, Newport Grand.

She announced plans to “transition out” of her law firm Moore Virgadamo & Lynch in March, citing the enormous time demands of her elevated new legislative role.

On Tuesday, Paiva Weed said she wants to first “touch base with the Ethics Commission” about what she can and cannot do without running afoul of the state’s ethics code. “At this time, I would have no comment,” she said.

While Paiva Weed has not taken a position, her second in command, Senate Majority Leader Daniel Connors, whose district includes a slice of Lincoln, has indicated little enthusiasm for another referendum.

In an interview and follow-up statement conveyed through Senate spokesman Greg Pare, he said the House speaker and the governor “are not misguided in their concerns” about preserving Twin River revenue in the event Massachusetts makes a major competing play for the region’s gambling dollars, but the Senate is otherwise “occupied with the budget and unemployment.”

“To suggest that gaming is going to be a panacea for all of our economic problems has been disproven throughout the country,” he said.

Judge Houlihan sworn in; Jeffrey Teitz sighted

A judicial swearing-in ceremony for fellow Newport lawyer J. Terence Houlihan produced a rare Jeffrey Teitz sighting at the State House Tuesday.

A one-time chairman of the Rhode Island House Judiciary Committee, Teitz moved to the Washington, D.C., political arena in the 1990s to work for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Teitz has most recently been chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that Kennedy had chaired, one of the committees at the center of the national health care debate.

After Kennedy’s death in August, Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, succeeded him as chairman, stating his intent “to carry on the legacy of Sen. Ted Kennedy.” While standing in line, waiting his turn to congratulate Houlihan in the State Room of the Rhode Island State House, Teitz explained his ongoing role with the Senate Health Committee. He said Harkin has “asked the senior staff, including me, to stay on and I expect to be doing that for the foreseeable future.…We certainly have a lot of very important projects under way, and I want to see them through.”

Houlihan was sworn in as the state’s newest District Court judge. Teitz’s own name surfaces from time to time as a potential candidate for a federal judgeship.

speoples@projo.com