TOCCO

SMITHFIELD — Should Stephen G. Tocco be cast out from the Town Council? That is the question voters will settle on Tuesday when they decide the fate of the controversial council president.

The extraordinary recall election is an apparent first for the town. If Tocco is removed from office, that may be a first for Rhode Island.

Which ever way the election goes, it will cap seven months of unprecedented political pandemonium in Smithfield during which:

•Town department heads revolted.

•The town manager and other officials quit.

•Tocco’s criminal past surfaced.

•His resignation was demanded by three former Republican Town Council presidents and officials of his own Democratic Party.

•A special prosecutor was appointed to investigate his alleged violations of the Town Charter.

•A short-notice trial took place in Superior Court to decide the date of the election.

•His chief political adversary was tried by a town prosecutor in District Court — and acquitted — on a charge of vandalism.

•Tocco was stripped, by the Carcieri administration, of his job as chief of the Rhode Island Capitol Police.

Tocco said yesterday that he considers the series of events to have been “a vicious, personal attack,” and retaliation for his push for “accountability” in town government.

“It has nothing to do with my past,” he asserted. “I was never charged with a crime. I was offered immunity. I assisted the U.S. Department of Justice, the highest law enforcement agency in the land. I was never convicted.”

James W. Archer, chairman of the town’s Republican Committee and one of the leaders of the drive to oust Tocco, had another view of the matter.

“Over the past year, Mr. Tocco has demonstrated that his style of leadership is not in the best interests of Smithfield,” Archer said last night. “His past is a problem and his current job performance is a problem.”

Archer, who won acquittal on a charge that he had torn up Democratic campaign signs on Election Day last November, said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the voters will eject Tocco.

Archer set up a Web site, www.recalltocco.com, in which Tocco’s opponents have laid out their case for expelling Tocco from the council. The Web site has been getting “a few hundred hits” daily, Archer said, “which is always a good sign.”

Archer added, “This is not a battle between Mr. Tocco and the Republicans, or a battle between the Democrats and the Republicans. This is a vote for Smithfield’s future and whether Steve Tocco is best for Smithfield’s future.”

Tocco’s woes began in May, when the heads of town departments went public with a charge that the three Democrats who form the council majority had brought pressure on Stanley J. Usovicz Jr., then town manager, to fire some of them and replace them with political appointees.

When Usovicz refused to grant their wishes, the department heads said, the Democrats then decided to fire him and find a candidate who would carry out their wishes.

The Democrats denied these charges.

Within days, Councilman Bernard A. Hawkins, a Democrat, searched the Internet and announced that he had found newspaper stories telling how Usovicz had doctored his resumÉ in the early 1990s when applying for municipal jobs in Massachusetts. The Democrats charged that Usovicz, who had admitted the fraud years before and apologized — and obtained the degrees he had falsely claimed — had failed to disclose this part of his past.

Richard A. Poirier, a Republican and council president who lost his seat in the election a year ago, and who served on the committee that sought candidates for town manager, later said the Democrats were talking nonsense, that Usovicz had indeed disclosed his previous indiscretions.

Tocco however maintained that he had been surprised at the description of Usovicz’s past.

“Clearly, everything was out in the open,” Usovicz said after Hawkins made public the fruits of his Internet search.

Usovicz resigned in July.

But a records search such as the one that illuminated Usovicz’s past can be a two-edged sword.

When The Journal checked the archive of the U.S. District Court, a skeleton emerged that was even scarier than the one that hastened Usovicz’s departure: Tocco, council president and police chief, was a confessed crook.

In 1993, the U.S. Attorney, at that time future Gov. Lincoln C. Almond, put Gary Garafano, then deputy public works director in Providence, on trial in a case of municipal corruption.

Tocco turned out to be the star witness, and his testimony was all the more startling for the fact that he was an officer of the Capitol Police.

He testified that he acted as a bagman who delivered bribes to officials in Pawtucket and Providence from the construction company for which he also worked.

He described on the witness stand how he had negotiated bribes and carried thousands of dollars’ worth on a number of occasions both to Garafano and to Louis S. Simon, public works director in Pawtucket during the administration of Mayor Brian J. Sarault in the 1980s. Simon and Sarault pleaded guilty and served jail terms.

[Archer’s Web site, www.recalltocco.com, has a copy of the trial’s transcript, complete with Tocco’s testimony.]

When these facts emerged, Tocco dismissed his role in the briberies as “something that happened in the ’90s.” He added, “I’ve got no record.” He portrayed himself and Forte Bros., the company for which he worked, as victims in the case, and said that to have refused to pay the bribes would have meant being shut off from city contracts.

Tocco received immunity from criminal prosecution for testifying.

Despite these revelations in open court, Tocco later rose to chief of the Capitol Police. He was sworn in as chief by Almond, by that time governor. After Tocco’s role as a facilitator of bribes was disclosed during the summer, Almond said he had not recognized Tocco, the chief, as the witness who had received immunity in the Garofano case. Almond, although the U.S. Attorney at the time of the trial, had assigned someone else as prosecutor and had no direct role in the case.

Tocco held the post of chief for nine years until The Journal asked Governor Carcieri’s office whether anyone had been aware of the background of the high-ranking official whose office is the first encountered upon entering the State House.

On June 7, the governor’s office announced that Tocco had been reassigned temporarily to a non-law enforcement post while the office examined Tocco’s record.

On July 20, the Carcieri administration made the reassignment permanent.

Tocco lost his badge and gun.

On Aug. 7, 150 Smithfield residents gathered on the lawn at Town Hall, where the council was scheduled to meet, to demand Tocco’s resignation.

“The guy was a cop — who would have thought to check up on him?” was the comment of Donald T. Burns, chairman of the Conservation Commission, one of those who attended and one of the leaders of the drive to conduct the recall election.

Councilman Ronald F. Manni, a Republican, said, “He was a Capitol Police officer. He was involved not once but several times in bribery. As a retired police officer, I am disturbed. He must be separated from this council.”

Later, at the council session — the meeting was shifted to the Senior Center to accommodate the crowd — a member of his own party, Councilman Stephen R. Archambault, moved that the council reorganize. Tocco would step down as president, in other words.

“This is not an easy motion,” Archambault said. “It causes me pain and discomfort. You have poured your heart and soul into this council. However, because of the cloud we have been under we have been unable to get any business accomplished.”

Tocco sat stone-faced throughout Archambault’s statement.

But Manni responded that simply electing someone else as president — presumably a Democrat — would be tantamount to “a different soup with the same ingredients.”

In any event, Archambault failed to get a second, and his motion died.

When Tocco finally spoke on his own behalf, his bid to redeem himself backfired immediately. He began by telling the crowd that he wanted to introduce his son. When the young man rose, the crowd uttered loud groans.

“I can’t believe he did that to his own son,” muttered an onlooker.

Tocco said yesterday, “I didn’t quit, I didn’t resign, because I believe in this community. Sixteen years ago I was wrong. I paid for it.”

He added, “It hasn’t been easy to stay the course. My family says, ‘We want you to stay in there.’ I wouldn’t make a decision without my kids. I wanted their support. They said, “Dad, you stay the course.’ ”

tmorgan@projo.com