JONATHAN F. OSTER

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / MARY MURPHY

PROVIDENCE — It was Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: Lincoln Edition, yesterday at former Lincoln Town Administrator Jonathan F. Oster’s bribery and conspiracy trial.

The state and the defense took turns using testimony by contractor Robert Gelfuso, one of the men from whom the state says Oster conspired to get a bribe, to extract quotations from transcripts of his taped conversations with ex-Planning Board member and accused Oster co-conspirator Robert R. Picerno.

Oster is facing two bribery counts and two conspiracy counts in connection with a scheme the state says he worked with Picerno to shake down two different potential buyers of a piece of town-controlled land on Route 116 during Oster’s 2000-02 term in office. Picerno pleaded no contest in 2004 to four counts of taking, or trying to solicit, bribes, and three counts of conspiracy to solicit bribes.

Gelfuso cooperated with state police investigators in the case, wearing recording devices to meetings when Picerno discussed his plan for Gelfuso to pay him and, the state says, Oster, $25,000 in exchange for getting a discount price on the Route 116 land, the old H&H Screw property.

Most of Gelfuso’s Wednesday testimony was about transcripts of his 2001-2002 meetings and phone calls with Picerno. Defense lawyer C. Leonard O’Brien brought up a Dec. 5, 2001, meeting at Shanna’s Country Kitchen in Lincoln.

The defense has said that Oster was unaware of Picerno’s bribery efforts. To try to make that case, O’Brien played a segment of the tape from that meeting, where Picerno discussed how Gelfuso should make his $25,000 payoff. Up to that point, Picerno’s plan was the Gelfuso would pay cash, presumably that he and Oster would split. But at the Dec. 4 meeting, Picerno suggests that instead of Gelfuso paying him $25,000, the contractor should sell Picerno a $100,000 property for $75,000.

“So you’re saying it it’s you’re saying instead of giving you $25,000 for that building [H&H Screw] just take it off the lot,” Gelfuso said on the tape.

“Right,” Picerno said.

“Ex him [Oster] out of it,” Gelfuso replied.

“Right,” Picerno said.

O’Brien pointed out that that plan, had it been followed, would have meant Oster wasn’t getting a payoff.

Attorney General William Ferland had his own favorite scenes from lunch with Picerno. State police had told Gelfuso to press Picerno on where the bribes were going, and particularly to determine if they were going to Oster. But Picerno rarely gave a straight answer to a direct question when it concerned the bribes and Oster. And he hinted at a reason for his reticence.

“There are too many guys out there who are … wired out there,” Picerno said to Gelfuso, who was wearing a wire.

“You have to understand, it’s going somewhere, OK?” Picerno said at an Oct. 12, 2001, lunch at Shanna’s. At an Oct. 30, 2001, meeting, when Gelfuso complained that Oster was withholding the final payment on a playground project his company did for the town, Picerno tried to soothe him.

“There are things that, you know, you can do and you can’t do,” Picerno told Gelfuso. “And if I can’t do it, believe me, I’ll tell you I can’t do it. But as far as Oster goes, don’t worry about that.”

Afternoon testimony featured Richard G. Riendeau, a former Providence assistant city solicitor with a specialty in tax sales and title transfers. Riendeau testified a resolution the Oster administration had drawn up in July 2001 to sell the H&H land for $105,000 was not, in his opinion, valid under the state laws concerning tax title transfers because it didn’t list $718,789 in back taxes owed, as required by state law regarding tax title transfers.

That was important because part of the state’s case is to show that Oster wanted to transfer title of the H&H property — initially to the first bribery target, Robert Campellone, who backed out of the deal, and then to Gelfuso and his partner — for $105,000 through an illegal maneuver to give the bribers a big discount.

But O’Brien pointed out another state law, passed in 1998, allowed municipalities to sell off, either by auction or a direct sale, pieces of property where the taxes owed were greater than the land’s value. O’Brien read sections of the statute and asked Riendeau to read others. He then handed Riendeau a copy of the resolution Oster had presented to the council setting the $105,000 price, the document Riendeau had previously testified was deficient.

“That conforms with the very statutes I showed you. Correct?” he asked, adding when Riendeau didn’t answer right away, “yes or no? Sort of?”

Riendeau took a long time to think about his answer, then asked if the question could be repeated.

There was a little more back and forth over the resolution and then O’Brien asked again whether the resolution Oster prepared and the Town Council approved, conformed with the statute.

“On its face,” Riendeau said.

jhill@projo.com