In her first act since fellow Democrats endorsed her for Senate president, Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed yesterday announced that she has chosen Sen. Daniel DaPonte to be the new Senate Finance Committee chairman and will convene an “informational caucus” early next month on the state’s massive financial problems.

The caucus has been scheduled for Dec. 4. The announcement comes a day after the Carcieri administration released a quarterly spending report that serves notice the state is headed for a potential $357.4-million deficit this year, as a result of a revenue shortfall, tens of millions of dollars in unbudgeted spending and overly optimistic budget cuts.

Paiva Weed’s choice of DaPonte, a deputy majority whip, to replace the defeated Sen. Stephen Alves, D-West Warwick, as Finance chairman is likely to be controversial. DaPonte’s name is mentioned in every news story about Operation Dollar Bill, the wide-ranging probe of influence peddling at the State House.

The apparent focus is a $100,000 commission that Alves and DaPonte, of East Providence, split in 2004 while they were both still financial advisers at UBS Financial Services, for their role in “introducing” Prudential Financial to the annuity fund of Local 99 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Prudential called the payment “a onetime finder’s fee,” but the financial consultant who oversaw the process in which Prudential was chosen to manage the fund said neither DaPonte nor Alves had anything to do with Prudential’s hiring, which was done through a competitive bidding process.

Paiva Weed yesterday said she did not question DaPonte about what happened because, before naming him Finance chairman, he “assured me he committed no wrongdoing,” and she saw no reason to probe what she called “innuendos and rumors” about what did and did not actually happen.

Asked about all this last week after DaPonte’s name surfaced as a candidate for Senate Finance Committee chairman, Paiva Weed said her chosen replacement as majority leader, Sen. Daniel Connors, of Cumberland, recommended DaPonte, who now heads his own brokerage firm, Axis Financial Group. Connors is a lawyer in defeated Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano’s law firm.

Yesterday, she issued a statement in which she called DaPonte “an insightful and valued member of this chamber since 1999 ... [who] brings a unique skill set and considerable financial credentials to this position. He has the respect of his colleagues in this chamber, and I have every confidence that the people of Rhode Island will come to appreciate his leadership as they get to know him better.”

Without addressing his role in the Prudential-IBEW controversy, she said: “He is the right person for the job during these difficult times.”

In an interview, DaPonte, 30, said he has “never been notified that I was a target of an investigation,” and while it has been reported that federal investigators “looked into a transaction [that took place] while I was employed at UBS … according to my attorney and the attorneys for the firms mentioned, there was no wrongdoing.”

He would not say if he had been questioned or elaborate on which firms assured him there was no wrongdoing. He referred further questions to his lawyer.

As for his new role at the State House, DaPonte said it would be premature to talk about bringing the full General Assembly back for a special session to deal with the financial crunch. “The governor’s office would obviously have to present us with something to come back for. To date, we haven’t received anything.”

But “the numbers are sizable,” he said. “The numbers are problematic” and “I think we need to look anything.”

Tax hikes? “I can’t say absolutely not,” he said. “I think it is premature to speculate before we have further conversations and are able to study the numbers in a much deeper way.”

In a related development, the three Senate Democrats who voted at a caucus last week against Paiva Weed as the next Senate president — and a fourth who abstained — called on her yesterday to convene an immediate “economic summit” to allow legislators to brainstorm ideas for solving the state’s budget crisis. Joining them was Edward O’Neill, the Lincoln independent who toppled the current Senate president, Montalbano, at the polls.

In response, Paiva Weed said she continues to believe an “informational caucus is the first step,” but “I am certainly not ruling out” a later summit.

In a related development, House Speaker William J. Murphy said the House Finance Committee will meet Monday to delve into the state’s emerging budget crisis, and House leaders will decide after that if there is a need to bring the General Assembly back into session before the normal start in January.

kgregg@projo.com