With new disclosures of conflicts of interest, fraud and mismanagement at the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC), it is astonishing that law-enforcement officials say they cannot do anything about the alleged corruption.

One would think that the Rhode Island Ethics Commission could play a role, yet with recent court rulings it is essentially a toothless body lacking the tools needed to fight corrupt public officials.

That’s one reason that government watchdog groups and citizens demanded separation-of-powers legislation to remove conflicted legislators from state boards and commissions. However, with this recent news about the scope of shady dealings at RIRRC, separation of powers alone is not enough.

The purpose of appointing qualified individuals to state and local boards and commissions is for them to serve as a check and balance for the decisions made by those in authority. In Rhode Island, when it comes to politics and power, why is it that the politically connected appear to be the ones primarily selected for these important positions?

For example, several years before Governor Carcieri appointed Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian in April 2006 to serve on the RIRRC board, the mayor had appointed the then-executive director’s spouse to the Warwick Planning Board, serving as chairman. In October 2006, the mayor appointed the then-director to the Warwick Municipal Retirement board. Both were avid supporters of the mayor.

When improprieties started to surface, the mayor resigned from the RIRRC board. The very day that the RIRRC preliminary audit report was released the former director resigned from the Warwick Retirement Board.

Later it was disclosed that pension-fund improprieties were discovered at RIRRC. Keep in mind as members of the Warwick retirement board individuals are responsible for overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in pension funds. I wrote about other member conflicts on this board in my Aug. 12 op-ed, “Last chance to stop latest Warwick folly.” There weren’t other qualified individuals in the state or in Warwick who could have served on each respective board?

My pointing out these facts is not meant to cast blame on the governor or the mayor for the alleged misdeeds at RIRRC or imply that similar misdeeds have occurred with the Warwick Retirement Board. However, it does demonstrate that the good-old-boy and -girl network is alive and well and leads one to wonder: Was the governor aware of these relationships before he made his appointment? Besides, how could the mayor and former RIRRC director believe that each could perform proper due diligence in these positions of oversight on one another’s boards while these cozy relationships existed?

It’s one reason I voted against the mayor’s appointment of former Warwick City Councilwoman Sue Steinhouse to the Warwick Zoning Board in 2008. She works in the governor’s office and is on several state and local boards already. There are plenty of qualified individuals in Warwick who could do the job without the potential conflict.

Is it ethical that on some planning and zoning board members are also real-estate professionals? Is it fair to other real-estate professionals competing for business when they discover an individual on the board has acquired the listing for projects the board approved months earlier?

The Warwick Beacon recently reported that a council member has proposed legislation, later withdrawn, that would have mandated that future police and fire chiefs be hired from within Warwick’s ranks. The ordinance could have directly benefited his son, who is a captain in the Police Department in line to become chief.

In all likelihood, the council member will be allowed to submit the legislation on the basis of “class-exemption” clause, which permits this activity as long as the legislation would also benefit a large enough class of people. It is why a teacher working in another district can serve on his or her own local school committee and vote on a teacher contract. It permits a member of the General Assembly, who works fulltime as a representative of a state workers labor union, to propose legislation benefiting the union.

With the “quid pro quo” philosophy alive and well in Rhode Island politics, it is only a matter of time before we discover new occurrences of scandal and cronyism in the state, with taxpayers ultimately paying the price.

It’s time for citizens to demand meaningful new laws that will provide authorities with tools to bring individuals to justice when they betray the public trust.

If the state Ethics Commission had the power to identify and limit the cross-pollination of boards and commissions, it would reduce these problems.

Robert Cushman is a former Warwick city councilman and former chairman of the Warwick School Committee ( CushmanR@cox.net).