PROVIDENCE — Amid Republican complaints that the House Speaker short-circuited debate on a special tax deal promoted by his own community, the House yesterday approved a 22-year agreement between West Warwick and the developers of a proposed hotel and water park just off Route 95.

The House approved the proposal on a largely partisan 52-to-9 vote. House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, called for the tally seconds after the bill was introduced — and briefly explained — by House Finance Committee Chairman Steven Costantino, D-Providence.

This is roughly the way it would work: the developers would be allowed to use $1.7 million — or more than three-fourths of the projected $2.05 million in annual property taxes owed the town — to pay off the private financing raised for the project by the Midwest investment bank, Piper Jaffray. The town would keep the remaining $350,000.

Piper Jaffray yesterday refused comment on the specifics on the financing arrangement. The town’s bond counsel, Karen Grande, did not respond to inquiries.

But over the life of the agreement, West Warwick Town Council Vice President Peter F. Calci acknowledges the town will forgo more than $33 million in property tax revenues.

His view: without this financial help from the town, there would be no private financing, the project would never get off the ground, West Warwick would lose $31 million in potential new hotel, meals and property taxes, and be left with an undeveloped 24-acre, privately owned site that pays about $36,000 annually in taxes. If the project fails, Calci said, the owners can hypothetically sell the property along with the tax-agreement to new owners, but in no way can a lender hold the town or the state financially liable.

The town needs the legislature’s approval because the so-called “tax increment financing” agreement extends beyond the 20 years allowed by current law.

The bill, now headed to the Senate, carves out in the law an exception for this one West Warwick project that the Nebraska-based Dial Family Resorts is seeking to build in partnership, according to Calci, with several local businessmen. Dial has incorporated to do business in Rhode Island under the name: “Dial 7th Wave Development LLC.” No one except Dial president and chief executive officer Michael L. Day is named on the filing, but Calci identified the other partners as Dale DeJoy, Michael Dumont, Peter Arpin and David Arpin.

The proposal includes: a resort featuring a 65,000-square-foot indoor water park surrounded by at least 347 hotel rooms, and possibly as many as 409, in the West Warwick Business Park. There would also be 28,000 square feet of convention space, a restaurant, family dinner theater, and a spa and fitness center, according to the company.

The water park would include nine water slides, a wave pool, a tubing ride and a “lazy river” for floating, as well as forts with spray guns, fountains, hoses and water-dumping buckets. An outdoor pool and large deck would also be open during the summer.

After yesterday’s vote, House Republican Leader Robert Watson of East Greenwich said he and other Republicans expected they would be given time to publicly question the deal, and more specifically, the risk the water park could turn into a financial Whitewater.

Even after talking to DeJoy earlier this week, Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, said, he “wasn’t persuaded that this type of tax-incremental financing” won’t “put the taxpayers on the hook” if the project fails. Despite assurances to the contrary, Gorham said legislative approval would put the state’s imprimatur on the deal.

Beyond that, Gorham said, “everything I have read about tax-incremental financing suggests that it’s just a way to leverage public revenue to finance private projects. And I just think, if we were having good times maybe this would be a different situation. But the message I am getting from the people I represent is: we just can’t be putting our fingers in the pie on all of these bond issues and things like that. We just don’t have the money.”

Asked why he left these concerns unsaid during the House session, Gorham said, the speaker called the vote so quickly after Costantino sat down, that “maybe we were slow on the draw.”

Murphy later vehemently denied cutting off debate.

He said 52.8 seconds elapsed between the time Costantino first stood up to talk about the bill, and the time he called for the vote. He said the Republicans could have signaled their wish to talk electronically at any point during that time, but “there were absolutely no lights on” when he called for the vote. “To say we cut off debate is an outright lie,” he said, “a blatant falsehood.”

kgregg@projo.com