The Narragansett Indian Tribe had asked the Voter Initiative Alliance to endorse putting the West Warwick casino proposal on the November referendum ballot.

01:00 AM EST on Monday, March 27, 2006

BY DAVID MCPHERSON
Journal Staff Writer

The group leading the effort to establish voter initiative in Rhode Island has rejected a call by the Narragansett Indian Tribe to support placing the proposed West Warwick casino on the November referendum ballot.

The Voter Initiative Alliance said it would support the tribe's right to use the voter initiative process to place a constitutional amendment before voters.

"But VIA is not in the business of endorsing specific proposals to change the Constitution or our laws -- except for getting the voter initiative itself on the ballot," the alliance's chairman, former state Supreme Court Justice Robert G. Flanders Jr., said in a letter to the Narragansetts' chief sachem, Matthew Thomas.

The letter -- dated March 22 -- came in response to a Thomas letter to the group that the tribe had released publicly.

In his March 15 letter, Thomas had called on the Voter Initiative Alliance "to announce publicly its unconditional support of a constitutional amendment to 'let the people decide' the Narragansett Indian casino."

Thomas said the voter-initiative movement is "cherry picking" among causes.

The Voter Initiative Alliance is leading the campaign for a proposed constitutional amendment that would establish a process for Rhode Island voters to seek to amend state law or the state Constitution via ballot questions -- without the approval of the General Assembly.

The organization is asking the General Assembly to place the issue on the November ballot.

In his letter to Thomas, Flanders said his group does not support or oppose the tribe's casino effort.

If voter initiative makes it onto the November ballot and is approved by voters, Flanders wrote, "then the tribe would have a built-in mechanism to seek and obtain the constitutional amendment it is proposing -- regardless of any executive, legislative, or judicial opposition to same."

Flanders rejected a claim by Thomas that the Voter Initiative Alliance is seen as biased in support of Governor Carcieri and the Republican Party.

"If such a belief truly existed, it would be incorrect," wrote Flanders, who was recently nominated to a seat on U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, in Boston.