Conley

PROVIDENCE — Richard H. Aitchison, longtime city license administrator, who helped to implement a more formal and more open decision-making process in licensing matters, has quietly retired from his $72,774-a-year post.

He is expected to be succeeded by Serena Conley, director of community relations for Mayor David N. Cicilline.

When Aitchison became license administrator in 1989, the city Board of Licenses was a freewheeling and informal group that often decided cases behind closed doors and offered little or no explanation for its decisions.

After taking office in 2003, Cicilline orchestrated a change in the board’s public behavior — he appoints its members subject to City Council ratification — and the board in recent years has adopted a more regular and more transparent way of doing business. For one thing, it began an outreach to neighborhood groups and others with an interest in licensing cases who perceived that their concerns had been given short shrift.

There have always been complaints that the board has been unduly influenced by political considerations, and those complaints continue. Since Cicilline became mayor, his brother, lawyer John M. Cicilline, has represented many more clients on licensing matters than he did before.

After failing in an attempt to fire Aitchison in 2003 — Aitchison sued to challenge his dismissal — Mayor Cicilline acquiesced to his continuing on as administrator. And Aitchison helped the board make the transition to its new ways.

Aitchison has been replaced on an interim basis by Paul T. Jones, lawyer for the board, and Conley is scheduled to be appointed next week. Board Chairman Andrew J. Annaldo acknowledged Friday that Conley, 59, a retired high school principal and one of Cicilline’s early supporters for mayor, is in line to succeed Aitchison.

“No one will ever know” the scope of Aitchison’s achievements, said state Rep. Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence, who is board vice chairman. Aitchison served with grace and distinction and his “sage counsel” was a great service to the board, Fox said.

Annaldo said Aitchison did an excellent job and displayed good judgment.

“He was a straight shooter,” Annaldo said.

“He gave everybody a fair shake if they wanted to be heard.”

Over time, the mayor’s opinion of Aitchison evolved and he grew “very appreciative” of his work, Annaldo said.

“I couldn’t have done it” without the help of the licensing staff and the board, Aitchison said recently. “It will be left in great hands with Mr. Jones.”

In addition to supervising a small staff, the license administrator coordinates or at least keeps tabs on a variety of actions by state and local government, such as inspections, that must occur before the board issues a license. The office handles a wide variety of licenses, varying from liquor to yard sales to taxis to food dispensers.

Aitchison implemented a gradual expansion of the board’s authority over the years, including the first hiring of civilian inspectors for the board, and the board’s belated computerization.

To gain a better grasp on misbehavior at nightclubs, he and the board helped to shepherd into law a new class of liquor license for nightclubs, and initiated the licensing of nightclub bouncers. Police Sgt. Peter Costello, he pointed out, was “a driving force” in the bouncer licensing. The board also began licensing valet parkers.

Aitchison was in the news as early as 1971 when, at the age of 18, he landed a full-time paid job with the Johnston Fire Department and became the youngest permanent firefighter in Rhode Island. There had been volunteer and paid-by-the-call firefighters who were that young.

He got to know former Providence Mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr. when they worked together on Thomas R. DiLuglio’s campaign for lieutenant governor in 1976. He also clerked part-time for a General Assembly committee.

From the Paolino association he garnered a job in late 1987 in the Personnel Department at Providence City Hall, where he moonlighted while continuing to work as a firefighter. Aitchison moved up at City Hall in 1989, when he was named license administrator, and he finally retired as a Johnston fire lieutenant in 1992 and settled into one job.

Aitchison, 55, said his retirement was his decision and not the result of any coercion. With two decades each in two different public-sector jobs, he is entitled to collect two pensions.

Until this year he was a Cumberland resident. He has relocated, at least seasonally, to Sarasota, Fla.

gsmith@projo.com