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Political Scene: Mollis gives friend Barbieri department job
09:16 AM EDT on Monday, July 30, 2007
To fill the long-vacant position of director of e-government and information technology in his office, Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis hired William Barbieri, the former Rhode Island Public Transit Authority employee accused of using his state computer to send an e-mail urging his fellow RIPTA employees to support Mollis during the lead-up to last fall’s election, Political Scene has learned.
Mollis announced most of his staff roster in December, before his inauguration. The $93,480-a-year information technology position remained open until Barbieri began work in April.
Last July, Mollis’ opponent in the Democratic primary, Guillaume de Ramel, alerted the media to Barbieri’s e-mail. A RIPTA spokeswoman said at the time that the agency was considering disciplining Barbieri for violating RIPTA’s written policy on computer use, which stated that the computers should be used for RIPTA business only.
At the time, Barbieri — who did not respond to a reporter’s request to speak with him Friday — said he sent the message “on a coffee break” and didn’t think he did anything wrong.
“What I think I did was just make a well-intentioned decision to reach out to a handful of coworkers to support a friend who I believe in,” he said.
Asked later whether Barbieri had ultimately been disciplined, the RIPTA spokeswoman said she could not discuss it because it was a personnel matter.
Barbieri — a resident of North Providence, where Mollis was mayor before becoming secretary of state — was a database systems manager at RIPTA, where he had worked since 1977.
Last summer, Mollis called Barbieri “a very good friend” and said Barbieri had done volunteer work for his campaign including designing the campaign Web site.
The secretary of state issued this comment through a spokesman Friday: “Bill Barbieri’s professional background as a network administrator and a database systems manager is second to none. When our two top IT staffers left for the private sector, I turned to a man whose talent I have complete confidence in.”
If state court officials were hoping to put lawyer Keven A. McKenna in his place with a scathing response to McKenna’s incendiary comments about Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Wlliams, it didn’t work.
The judiciary’s response seems only to have encouraged McKenna.
After McKenna appeared before the House Finance Committee to allege a “power grab” by Williams in a plan to remove the state Traffic Tribunal from the state District Court’s jurisdiction, Williams responded through the Supreme Court legal counsel in a sarcasm-laced letter copied by e-mail to the media.
Not to be outdone, McKenna shot back a 23-page letter, which he also sent to the media. It was accompanied by another document — spanning 21 pages and quoting liberally from the state Constitution — titled “Centralized powers of King Frank.”
McKenna accused Williams of accruing “auxiliary powers” that “have nothing to do with being a judge.” To be a judge, one only needs a computer and a courtroom, McKenna wrote. “You do not need the paraphernalia of a governor.”
McKenna challenged Williams to a public debate, and even suggested a moderator — Patrick T. Conley, a lawyer, retired Providence College history professor and onetime aide to former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. Conley recently wrote a book on the Rhode Island Constitution with former state Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Flanders Jr. — and a location — Conley’s Wharf, on Allens Avenue in Providence.
“Even though some may think it is not politically correct to defend the Constitution, no amount of personal criticism of me by your staff will deter me as a citizen from using my free speech to protect the R.I. State Constitution from abuse by any public official,” McKenna wrote.
Judiciary spokesman Craig N. Berke said Williams has no intention of debating McKenna.
“We have to keep in mind that these comments are from a man who sought two years ago to have the chief justice removed from office, and one year ago sued the chief justice over the dismissal of the director of the Rhode Island Legal/Educational Partnership,” Berke said in an e-mail message.
(McKenna was the lawyer for Claudette Field, who was fired last year from her job as the nonprofit agency’s executive director, a post she had held for 14 years, and to which Superior Court Judge Stephen J. Fortunato ultimately ordered her reinstated. Field initially named Williams as a defendant in her lawsuit, but Fortunato removed him.)
In addition to alleging that McKenna has ulterior motives, Berke offered a fuller explanation of how the General Assembly’s restructuring of the Traffic Tribunal came about: “The Supreme Court’s general counsel drafted legislation this year that would have vested the full Supreme Court with the appointing authority for magistrates, but it was never introduced,” Berke wrote. “The General Assembly chose to vest the chief justice with the appointing authority for a chief magistrate in the Traffic Tribunal. The chief justice did not seek that authority.”
Berke continued: “The Supreme Court and its general counsel continue to review the magistrate system. … The chief justice has previously been on record as saying he favors magistrate selection through the Judicial Nominating Commission.”
State Rep. Robert E. Flaherty, a thorn in the side of House Speaker William J. Murphy since Murphy removed him as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in 2005, penned one of his trademark snarky letters to Murphy last week. The issue this time: the House’s failure to take further action on a request for a Supreme Court opinion on whether the Coastal Resources Management Council is subject to the separation-of-powers constitutional amendment voters approved in 2004.
In the session’s final days, House members approved a resolution to ask for the opinion. To accompany it, they passed a bill to reincorporate coastal council in its current format, with lawmakers and their appointees allowed to sit on the board. Even though the separation-of-powers amendment required the removal of lawmakers from state boards and agencies with executive power, some claim the state Constitution gives General Assembly special jurisdiction on environmental issues and therefore the council should be exempt.
The watchdog group Common Cause of Rhode Island opposed the bill, which ended up passing by a hair’s breadth on a vote of 33 to 31.
Flaherty noted that as of last week, the bill was still “held on the desk” in the House and had not seen Senate action.
Flaherty — who, by the way, did not vote on the bill, according to the official journal of the House from that day — took this to mean that the Senate refused to go along with it.
“The leadership made its members vote affirmatively on an issue that 80 percent of the electorate disagreed with,” Flaherty, D-Warwick, wrote. “Every member who supported the leadership on this issue will be hurt in the next election.”
Flaherty accused Murphy of failing in his duty to “handle controversial legislation in a fashion that protects the body as a whole and that insulates the members from undue criticism.”
“Why are you in this position?” he wrote in closing. “I invite your comments and input. Enjoy your summer!”
But House staff said yesterday that Flaherty misunderstood what had happened with the bill. William R. Guglietta, chief legal counsel to House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, said there was a simple reason the House did not transmit the bill to the Senate.
“The Constitution requires us to submit questions to the Supreme Court on matters that are pending,” Guglietta said. “Once the House votes on it, the matter is pending.”
If lawmakers had simply submitted a quotation from existing law, along with the request for an opinion, the Supreme Court could have rejected it on the grounds that it did not address a pending matter, Guglietta said.
As of Friday, the court had not yet received a letter requesting that opinion. Guglietta said he did not know why it had not been sent yet, but that the reason could be as simple as many staff being on vacation and lawmakers being away, too, or busy catching up with the day jobs they neglected during the hectic last weeks of the session. (Case in point: Flaherty could not be reached Friday to comment on his own letter.)
At noon on Friday, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed’s deputy press secretary, Regan Lachapelle, traded a Reed for a Reid.
After five years, Lachapelle, 27, left Reed’s office to join Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s staff.
Lachapelle will serve as the deputy director of communications for Reid, D-Nev. Her duties will include organizing events, such as a recent rally by Democrats celebrating the increased federal minimum wage, said Chip Unruh, Reed’s spokesman.
Her departure is a loss, but represents a career opportunity for Lachapelle, Unruh said. He expected her position would be filled by mid-August.
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