Guffey 2006 chapter One When Art Nouveau Became New Again
Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter nineteen
Monday, July thirteen, 2015
Between 1986 and 2006, Rhode Island ran a gauntlet of scandals that exposed abuse and aroused public rage. Protesters marched on the Land House. Coalitions formed to fight for systemic changes. Under intense public pressure level, lawmakers enacted celebrated laws and immune voters to amend defects in the state'southward constitution.
Since colonial times, the legislature had controlled state authorities. Governors were barred from making many executive appointments, and judges could never forget that on a single 24-hour interval in 1935 the General Assembly sacked the entire Supreme Court.
Without constitutional checks and balances, citizens suffered nether single party control. Republicans ruled during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Democrats held sway from the 1930s into the twenty-start century. In their eras of unchecked command, both parties became corrupt.
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H Philip West's SECRETS & SCANDALS tells the within story of events that shook Rhode Island's culture of corruption, gave birth to the nation'south strongest ethics commission, and finally brought separation of powers in 2004. No single leader, no political political party, no organization could take converted betrayals of public trust into historic reforms. Merely when citizen coalitions worked with dedicated public officials to address systemic failures, government changed.
Iii times—in 2002, 2008, and 2013—Chicago's Better Government Association has scored state laws that promote integrity, accountability, and government transparency. In 50-state rankings, Rhode Island ranked second twice and first in 2013—largely considering of reforms reported in SECRETS & SCANDALS.
Each week, GoLocalProv will be running a chapter from SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006, which chronicles major government reforms that took identify during H. Philip Westward's years every bit executive director of Common Crusade of Rhode Isle. The volume is bachelor from the local bookstores found Hither.
Part 2
JUDGES AND LAWMAKERS
Affiliate 19
Paying the Piper (1992-93)
"Nosotros've got our shot," Gary Sasse told me with a wry smile. "How oftentimes exercise legislative leaders invite yous to redesign their bailiwick?" He had nurtured the vision for an contained blueish ribbon committee to create "a blueprint for the General Associates in the 21st Century." With the support of legislative leaders the proposal had passed easily at the end of the 1992 legislative session, a final concession to the Right Now! Coalition. Later on the General Assembly adjourned, Speaker Joe DeAngelis and Senate Majority Leader John Bevilacqua appointed a 16-member panel, with Sasse as chair.ane
Before coming to Rhode Island, Sasse had served on the senior staff of Tennessee Gov. Winfield Dunn. Lean, lanky, pocket-sized, and around fifty, he had played college football for Florida State and flew to Tallahassee several times each fall to cheer the Seminoles. Years of reading gridiron defenses had prepared him to see pathways through political minefields.
He brought the commission together for an overnight retreat within walking altitude of Quonochontaug Pond, a stretch of common salt h2o backside the dunes on Rhode Island's southern declension.2 Without lobbyist badges or legislative lapel pins, we settled into lawn chairs and met equally peers. "This is casual, " Sasse told the opening session, "just we have real piece of work to do. We need to reach consensus on reforms that volition meliorate future operations of the General Assembly."
A national skilful, William T. Pound from the National Briefing of State Legislatures (NCSL), had come to guide us. "You couldn't undertake this report at a more than opportune fourth dimension," he began. "Over the last decade or and so, nosotros've watched controlling shift from Washington to land capitals, which raises questions of legislative expertise and capacity." Pound had an easy smiling, white mustache, and circular face. He did non mention the RISDIC disaster that had revealed ignorance, gullibility, and many conflicts of interest in the Full general Assembly.
Long before the colors red and blueish automatically identified Republicans and Democrats, Pound's organization had begun using those colors to depict characteristics of state legislative bodies. "Blue legislatures" were function-time operations, typically with small-scale staffs and low pay, where legislators needed exterior piece of work. Past contrast, "red legislatures" functioned like Congress, with full-time lawmakers and professional staff to practise research, draft legislation, and manage constituent services. Between these extremes Pound identified hybrids, which he called "white legislatures." In those bodies, he explained, lawmakers spent nigh of their fourth dimension representing their constituents but received modest pay. Further gradations included "light cherry-red" and "light blue." A chart listed states in each category. Rhode Isle's General Assembly barbarous between "blue" and "light bluish," since well-nigh lawmakers had no staff and ranked near the bottom in legislative bounty.iii
Rep. David Dumas, who was retiring from his post as House minority leader, said the bottomless pay forced him to pace down. Since 1900 Rhode Isle's Constitution had specified legislative pay as five dollars a twenty-four hours up to a maximum of 60 days: a total of $300 per twelvemonth. Iii times in the last xx years pay heighten amendments had gone before the voters, who spurned them every time. In 1986, more than 64 per cent of state voters rejected higher salaries.iv After that brushoff, lawmakers thumbed their noses and doubled their pensions. And so scores of General Associates members secretly secured special pension bills that allowed them to buy pension credits for war machine service or years served on local boards.
"Pension shenanigans have poisoned the torso politic," Dumas said as we lounged on Adirondack chairs. "Just lots of luck in convincing voters to pay more. People in my commune know I run a solo law do. They know I'm at the State House 3 or four afternoons a week for 6 months every leap. They know I tin can't beget to proceed. But if you think they'll approve a legislative pay heighten, I'll give you a bargain on the Brooklyn Span." Dumas shook his head. "Legislative pay is an utterly intractable conundrum."
I knew he was right. When I first went to the State Firm, the sheer size of the General Assembly shocked me. How could a state simply over a million people afford 150 state legislators? Rhode Island and nine other states averaged fewer than x,000 people for each lawmaker, but all the others were rural and sparsely populated.5 By contrast, Rhode Island ranked 2d just to New Bailiwick of jersey in population density, and New Jersey had nearly ten times as many constituents per legislator.6 Since 1987 Common Cause had favored downsizing Rhode Island'due south senate from 50 to 25 seats and shrinking the House from 100 to 50 representatives. Even after those reductions, Rhode Island legislators would nonetheless represent fewer people than their counterparts in any other urbanized state.seven
James Madison, the political theorist widely regarded as the builder of the U.S. Constitution, had warned against the assumption that large legislatures were more representative than small ones. "After securing a sufficient number for the purposes of safety, local information, and of diffusive sympathy with the whole gild," Madison wrote, any further increment in numbers would counteract constructive representation.
Later our initial retreat, the group met at the Land Business firm every two or iii weeks through the fall. Sessions were ever posted nether requirements of Rhode Island'southward Open Meetings Police, simply reporters rarely came, and only a handful of citizens showed interest. Gary Sasse held back his own expertise and drew others out, remaining patient fifty-fifty when comments came with an border. He often defused arguments past asking how an thought translated into a better legislative arrangement. "Remember," he said once, "we're trying to build a train that stays on the tracks no matter who'due south at the throttle."
John Bevilacqua had appointed Ray Dettore, a lawyer who worked for the City of Providence. Legally blind, Dettore held a complex chart on legislative pay only inches from his thick glasses and extracted its essence: "This confirms that Rhode Island'southward legislative pay is among the lowest in the country, simply to a higher place New Hampshire's." With wide, half-seeing eyes, Dettore panned around the tabular array. "How many of us would enter a profession where there hasn't been a pay heighten in xc years? Should we be surprised when some senators or reps compensate themselves in dubious means?"
"5 dollars a mean solar day was standard pay for railroad managers in 1900," said Patricia Houlihan of the AFL-CIO. "The problem is that voters accept kept refusing to amend the Constitution to raise legislative pay. Fifty-fifty later on xc years of inflation."
Everyone agreed that the pay scale fabricated no sense, but there was no consensus on what information technology should be. And no one knew how to market place a pay heighten to voters whose wounds from RISDIC were still raw.
I had much to learn about the constitutional powers of legislatures and the history of Rhode Island's Full general Assembly. Why did Rhode Island legislators introduce more bills than lawmakers in all merely four other states? Why did legislative leaders tolerate the stampede of session-ending special pension bills? Before our move to Rhode Island I had testified before legislative committees in New York and Connecticut, but never watched the intricacies of what many called "legislative sausage-making." I knew virtually nil about how legislatures functioned farther w and southward.
Inflation had driven the Consumer Price Alphabetize up 234 per centum in the last twenty years, but Rhode Island had not raised legislative wages since the Country House was built in 1900. Simply a constitutional subpoena approved by voters could lift the General Assembly'south pay, and voters had rejected higher compensation in 1962, 1973, 1980, and 1986.nine Sixty-four percent of the electorate had crushed a pay heighten proposed by the 1986 Ramble Convention.x
Lawmakers found means effectually voters' resistance. In 1947 the Full general Assembly created a legislative alimony system; after the proposed 1986 pay enhance was defeated, bills appeared to double the size of legislative pensions. Ane sponsor, Federal Hill Sen. John Orabona, spoke candidly to reporter M. Charles Bakst: "If the voters feel legislators practise not merit a pay increase, and then yous have to take some other type of compensation. It's fair, and information technology'south only." Bakst reported that despite the likely public backfire, the alimony-doubling legislation "leaped off the starting block" on the side by side-to-terminal twenty-four hours of the 1987 Full general Assembly session. It passed among hundreds of bills on the final night.11
Beyond infuriating the voters, the doubling of legislative pensions created a sense of entitlement as lawmakers channeled a flood of special pensions to themselves and their cronies. Alimony abuses in 1987 left an indelible loftier-water mark. One of the almost egregious bills allowed a bevy of marriage officials to buy into the state pension system at bargain basement prices.12
Steve Kass, a WHJJ-AM radio talk testify host, had served equally a delegate to the 1986 Constitutional Convention. He supported a General Associates pay heighten merely took offense. "This kind of activity is why people won't give them a pay raise," he told listeners. "They took the back door." Kass soon filed suit to block the newly doubled pensions, and angry listeners mailed enough checks to fund the lawsuit, but he remained skeptical virtually the judicial process. "Let's face it," Kass asked listeners, "where does the judiciary come from? The legislature, and that's a business. Can we get a fair hearing?" More than he knew, Kass had reason to be suspicious. His instance, Kass v. Retirement Board, landed on the calendar of Superior Courtroom Gauge Antonio S. Almeida.
Kass'due south attorney, George Vetter, argued that although legislative pay was depression, lawmakers had violated the Constitution's bounty clause when they additional their pensions.xv Vetter zeroed in on the actuarial discrepancy between $90 per yr that lawmakers would pay in and the generous pensions — $600 per legislative year, up to a maximum of $12,000 subsequently twenty years — that taxpayers similar Steve Kass would have to fund. "If the people wanted to have the General Assembly fix their own bacon," Vetter insisted, "they would have said then."
Plaintiffs who supported doubling the pensions included the General Associates, the State Retirement Board, and General Treasurer Roger N. Brainstorm, a sometime land representative from Woonsocket. Attorney John Dolan argued that pensions were mere fringe benefits and that the Constitution did not forbid the legislature to grant or heighten them.
Kass's suspicion of the judiciary proved prescient. Judge Almeida ruled that doubling legislative pensions did not violate the Constitution, and the Supreme Courtroom, comprised entirely of one-time legislators, agreed. In a unanimous opinion, Joseph R. Weisberger wrote that retired senators and representatives had been receiving legislative pensions since 1947. He added that the 1986 Constitutional Convention could accept proposed to cease or restrict those pensions but it did not. "Had those delegates desired to prohibit statutory pension benefits to state legislators," Weisberger wrote for the loftier court, "they would have done so explicitly."
Across the fact that the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of doubling legislative pensions, the gauge upheld in Kass five. Retirement Board accomplished his own notoriety barely a yr and a half later. In July 1991, Judge Almeida was arrested simply moments after he pocketed an envelope stuffed with $ane,500 in marked bills, and he eventually pled guilty to accepting $45,100 in bribes.18 A colleague on the Superior Court fined him $l,000 and sentenced him to six years in prison. The Retirement Board sued to revoke Almeida's $97,904-peryear judicial pension and ultimately succeeded.
Could our Blue Ribbon Commission e'er resolve this biting legacy of blame? Even if we could diagnose chronic dysfunction and suggest solutions, could we persuade mutually resentful audiences — 150 members of the General Assembly and hundreds of thousands of state voters? In an try to try, we issued an open invitation for witnesses to testify — in person or in writing — at a series of televised hearings from January to March of 1993, with specific topics scheduled for each Mon evening. The Providence Journal quickly weighed in with an editorial. "The Full general Assembly," the editors wrote, "is a role-time, underpaid, overworked, intensely politicized aggregation of amateurs, imprisoned by a process that tends to hinder excellence and independence and advantage self-promotion — and, from time to time, out-and-out abuse."
The editors added that the legislature could non fulfill its duty "when it is mired in inefficiency; when some of its members indulge in glaring conflicts of interest; when some of its committee chairmen display autocratic power; and when the institution is then big as to be sluggish and unwieldy." The editors urged Rhode Islanders to nourish the hearings and speak up "for the legislature they want."
Room 35 in the State House basement was equipped for television. Its walls had been stripped to century-old bricks, and a blueish drape hung behind ergonomic chairs for members of the Firm Finance Committee. The RISDIC Investigating Commission had used the room for many public hearings. I had ofttimes watched from the audition never saturday in one of the high-backed black chairs behind the boxy dais.
From the center seat, Gary Sasse summarized our committee's work over half-dozen months. He introduced members of the console and invited witnesses to share their ideas nigh structural steps for improving the General Assembly. Should Rhode Island switch to a unicameral legislature, as Nebraska had washed? Should we go to a full-time legislature? Reduce the number of legislators? Fix term limits?
Former Lt. Gov. Richard A. Licht alleged unequivocally that a General Assembly of 150 was far too large for a land of only a million people. He suggested cutting the House from 100 to 50 representatives and the Senate from 50 to 24. Downsizing the legislature, Licht said, would make lawmakers more visible in their districts, and might persuade voters to consider a pay heighten that was long overdue.
Adjacent to testify was Lt. Gov. Robert Weygand, who had helped put Brian Sarault in prison two years earlier. "As we move into the xx-start century," Weygand testified, "the question is whether we'll go on with an amateur legislature or create a body that can bargain head-on with the complex issues that face our country." He urged reducing the number of legislators. "Last yr, nosotros had over four thousand bills introduced, and that was fewer than the year before. When I chaired the House Corporations Committee, I had to read thousands of bills. I tried to be responsible, simply in that location was no way I could stay on elevation of them all." He urged stronger professional staff to help lawmakers with enquiry and constituent services, as well every bit improved equipment and figurer access for every legislator.
Although the question of legislative pay no longer affected him, Weygand continued, the state must bargain with it. Fifty-fifty increasing from $v to $100 per mean solar day might not solve the problem. "There'south huge stress and pressure in having to leave your regular place of business after dejeuner three days a week all through the spring. For my work equally a landscape architect, that was the busiest time of twelvemonth." Although he was not sure how to persuade the public of this, "information technology'south bones in whatsoever business organization to pay your employees adequately. When you don't, y'all invite precisely the kind of problems nosotros've seen in contempo years. Either you are going to make the leap to reasonable salary or strip responsibilities and get back."
Former Senate Minority Leader Lila M. Sapinsley, a moderate Republican with elegance and gravitas, had narrowly lost a race for lieutenant governor and now volunteered with several nonprofits, including Common Cause. She proposed higher legislative salaries, an end to legislative pensions, and strict ideals rules. "Until people in the General Assembly recognize a conflict of interest and steer articulate," Sapinsley testified, "all the residuum volition exist only cosmetic."
Calendar week after week witnesses testified. Some had served every bit statewide officers or legislators, others worked in government agencies, one taught political science, and a few were citizen activists. Ane evening in March, both Joe DeAngelis and former Senate Majority Leader Jack Revens spoke.
DeAngelis, with his neatly trimmed mustache, remained one of the about successful lawyers in the state. No longer speaker of the House, he seemed diminished as he sabbatum before the committee. Routine conflicts of involvement and lax legislative oversight had come up crashing down on his watch. Nothing would change his responsibility for that. Defensively, he recited the reforms approved since RISDIC. "We enacted DEPCO in thirty-six days," he said. "We reformed pensions and restructured land purchasing." He ended by maxim plaintively that he and other leaders had "done a lousy task of promoting ourselves."
Jack Revens had risen to the superlative spot in the Senate after his old-school predecessor, Rocco Quattrocchi, botched the redrawing of Senate districts in 1982. Taxpayers were stuck with the costs of protracted litigation. Judges blocked the election of senators in 1982 and forced the cartoon of new Senate districts. As a result, Rhode Island state senators met as lame ducks throughout the spring of 1983 and had to compete that June in a costly special election. Voters expressed their disgust by electing fourteen Republican senators, a record number since Democrats grabbed power in the Bloodless Revolution of 1935. Senate Democrats dumped Quattrocchi and elected Jack Revens majority leader.
At 36, Revens had already spent one-half his life in politics and had learned painful lessons. A tragic accident had seared his character. While a educatee at Providence College, he struck and killed a pedestrian ane nighttime on Boston Neck Road. Although no charges were filed, Revens never forgot. "You lot know," he told a reporter, "y'all wish you could find some fashion to change information technology. You lot rethink it and rethink it and rethink information technology. Was there anything you could have washed differently?"
Over several years I had come to respect Revens for his intelligence. At present he testified before the Blue Ribbon Commission with cool detachment. "It's difficult for the legislature ever to wait good," he said. Thin, tall, and balding, he spoke with wry self-conviction, as if he had no need to persuade. "I have legislation pending to reduce the size of the Senate past half. You can imagine how popular that makes me with my colleagues, but it's necessary and the correct affair. We have far more senators than we need, and with so many, information technology makes questions of a pay raise all the more complicated."
Revens scanned the dais. "If nosotros were request in the abstract what size the General Assembly should exist, no rational person would say a hundred reps and fifty senators." He said the legislature's size distracted from the central issue: legislative pay. "Pay should reverberate adequately what piece of work the public expects the legislature to do. A real problem in Rhode Island is that all country officials are significantly underpaid. The attorney general makes but half the salary of the U.S. attorney or a lawyer who's made partner in a downtown firm. I know information technology'southward not easy to become the public to pay, but our pay should exist in the ten-to-xv-chiliad-dollar range. To quote an old cliche, 'You become what you pay for.' "
He urged us to preserve what he called "a citizen legislature." With his characteristic detachment, Revens saw no reason for a total-time professional legislature. "Yous don't need total-time legislators if you improve the quality of staff to analyze complex bug." He spoke laconically, moving through the matrix of legislative functions, schedules, and structures like a plumber tracing pipes through the basement of an old firm, explaining what each did and how they connected.
Across taking public testimony, the Blue Ribbon Commission likewise surveyed electric current and one-time legislators, and 175 returned questionnaires. Most all said they felt overworked, undervalued, and underpaid. Their feedback showed a surprising amount of understanding, particularly the need for reliable legislative information. They wanted computer access for everyone, including the public, to bills and legislative information, and asked for more than staff to assistance sort through torrents of data. "It'due south like trying to drink from a fire hose," one wrote. Many requested financial impact statements and professional analysis of major bills before their transfer from committees to the flooring.
Amongst erstwhile lawmakers who took time to reply, near four out of five agreed that the General Assembly should continue as a "part-fourth dimension citizens' legislature" rather than become a full-time professional trunk. Almost all of them favored a dramatic increase in pay, and 59 pct wanted to keep legislative pensions based on years of service. Nearly 84 percent thought it would be wise to downsize the House by 25 percent and to cut the Senate past half. Most also favored iv-year terms for senators; 89 percent called for shared part infinite, phones, vocalisation mail, and secretarial support.
By contrast, in that location was no understanding on term limits for legislators, which had get popular in other parts of the state. In 1990 and 1992, voters in a dozen states had established term limits, typically vi or eight years for senators and representatives. Nigh erstwhile Rhode Island lawmakers did not like that idea.
With mounds of testimony, completed surveys, and research data from other states, the Blue Ribbon Commission spent four months drafting a preliminary report. The work reminded me of boiling downwardly maple syrup in the Catskill mountain valley where I grew upwards: lugging buckets of clear sap to an oblong tub over a stone burn pit, pouring into the steam, stoking the fire, then climbing through snowy woods for more sap. Gradually, the clear liquid turned amber. Our panel's final product might not be sweet, but it would be genuine.
We would propose current compensation of $ten,000 per year with full family health insurance — costs that roughly equaled the pensions that would be eliminated. The official position of the Common Cause state governing board was for a salary equivalent to 125 per centum of Rhode Isle's average wage, approximately $eight,352, with no health insurance. I urged the lath to accept the committee's slightly higher amounts, and they agreed. And to avoid future battles over raises, nosotros would put a toll-of-living escalator in the proposed constitutional amendment.
Along with a grand bargain over pensions and pay, most of us were set up to recommend downsizing the General Assembly by ane 3rd, from 150 to 100 members. All simply one fellow member of the panel affirmed Sen. Jack Revens'due south legislation to cut the House from 100 to 75 representatives, the Senate from 50 to 25 senators.
"I like Jack Revens, just downsizing makes no sense." The AFL-CIO's Patricia Houlihan was determined. "There would be a terrible blood-letting to come across which twenty-five senators survive. It's wrong to chop away at the Full general Assembly, especially if we're non proposing 4-year legislative terms."
I reminded her that Revens had proposed iv-year terms in commutation for a smaller state senate.
Houlihan glared. "Labor'southward position last yr was to create 4-year terms both for general officers and the Full general Assembly, but your reform groups never took information technology seriously."
Sasse tried to mollify her. "Downsizing wouldn't take place until after the next census, and that would be 8 years after passage of the amendment. If past experience is any guide, many electric current members of the General Associates may motion on in that fourth dimension."
"That'south fantasy," she shot back. "Window-dressing. Rhode Isle voters take a closer connectedness to their senators and reps than you see in other states. In all the enquiry nosotros've done, in all the conversations we've had, I have nonetheless to see a shred of bear witness that closeness is bad for democracy."
I reminded her of the RISDIC scandal and pointed out that Rhode Island legislators would still represent fewer constituents than their colleagues in 40 other states.
"You've said all that before," Houlihan said, "and I'grand sure yous'll say it all once more. Simply you haven't convinced me, and I don't think you'll convince many in the Senate. It'due south obvious that if you double the number of people in their districts from twenty to forty thousand, they won't have anything like the intimate relationship that people enjoy now. It simply won't exist the same, and it doesn't matter whether y'all downsize next year or in 2002."
She would non budge. "I desire AFL-CIO's opposition to downsizing noted in our final report."
"You got it," Sasse agreed.
Item by item, most members of the commission supported a preliminary report we would release for word. At its core were ii compromises: first, an end to legislative pensions for all lawmakers elected afterwards passage of a constitutional amendment that would raise compensation to $x,000 per twelvemonth, adjusted to follow the federal Consumer Price Index; 2nd, downsizing the Business firm from 100 to 75 representatives and the Senate from 50 to 25 senators. Senators would become four-year terms, while representatives would continue with two. The downsizing would occur in viii years, when information collected in the 2000 federal census would guide the drawing of larger districts.
These historic changes could occur only if the General Associates placed a constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot and voters approved. A less controversial constitutional amendment would finish the roles of the lieutenant governor and secretary of state as presiding officeholder and secretary of the Senate. In their place, senators would elect their ain officers.
We would too advise improvements that the General Associates could provide for its rank-and-file members: staff to aid with research and constituent services, function space in or nearly the State Firm, voice mail, laptop computers, and a computer database of legislative information. Nosotros would urge that the legislative database be accessible to the public from computer terminals at the State House and in public libraries. "Above all," nosotros wrote, "the General Assembly should conduct itself in accord with the highest ethical standards." No one was certain how to make that happen, only we urged ethics training to ensure that lawmakers would never be ignorant of the police.
Meanwhile the legislature had gone through a bounding main modify since Joe DeAngelis and John Bevilacqua appointed the commission in July of 1992. DeAngelis had stepped down voluntarily, and the November elections had swept Bevilacqua from ability. Now new leaders — Firm Speaker John B. Harwood and Senate Majority Leader Paul S. Kelly — controlled the Full general Associates. Neither had been involved in designing our committee or appointing its members, although Gary Sasse had kept them informed and provided advance copies of our draft report. Two years and two days after the RIght Now! roll-out with pealing bells, nosotros released the final seventy-page report at a printing conference in December.
Paul Kelly attended. Cheery and positive, he accustomed his copy and said he favored the idea of keeping the Full general Associates as "a citizen legislature." Afterward, he told reporter Russell Garland that he liked the idea of four-year terms for senators, but preferred to decrease the size of the Senate and House by equal percentages. John Harwood ignored the event. He later told reporter Russ Garland that while he could affirm four-year terms, additional staff, and role space — the question of downsizing "must be looked at carefully."
Kelly and Harwood were consolidating their power. Would our recommendations gather grit on a shelf, equally commission reports traditionally did? Were we fools to recall nosotros could motion these proposals through the General Assembly and onto the 1994 ballot? Even if we did, would voters approve?
H. Philip West Jr. served from 1988 to 2006 every bit executive director of Mutual Cause Rhode Island. SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006, chronicles major government reforms during those years.
He helped organize coalitions that led in passage of dozens of ideals and open up government laws and five major amendments to the Rhode Island Constitution, including the 2004 Separation of Powers Amendment.
West hosted many delegations from the U.S. Land Section'due south International Company Leadership Program that came to larn about ethics and separation of powers. In 2000, he addressed a conference on government ethics laws in Tver, Russia. After retiring from Common Cause, he taught Ethics in Public Administration to graduate students at the University of Rhode Isle.
Previously, West served as pastor of United Methodist churches and ran a settlement house on the Bowery in New York City. He helped with the commitment of medicines to victims of the South African-sponsored ceremonious war in Mozambique and later assisted people displaced by Liberia's civil war. He has been involved in developing affordable housing, day care centers, and other community services in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
West graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from Hamilton Higher in Clinton, N.Y., received his masters degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York Urban center, and published biblical research he completed at Cambridge University in England. In 2007, he received an honorary Doc of Laws degree from Rhode Island Higher.
Since 1965 he has been married to Anne Grant, an Emmy Award-winning writer, a nonprofit executive, and retired United Methodist pastor. They live in Providence and have 2 grown sons, including cover illustrator Lars Grant-West.
This electronic version of SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006 omits notes, which fill 92 pages in the printed text.
Related Slideshow: Rhode Island'southward History of Political Abuse
Related Manufactures
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Affiliate Ane
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Isle 1986-2006, Chapter 2
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Three
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Isle 1986-2006, Chapter Four
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Isle 1986-2006, Affiliate Five
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Vi
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Vii
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Eight
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Isle 1986-2006, Chapter Nine
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter X
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 11
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Twelve
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter Thirteen
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Isle 1986-2006, Chapter 14
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Isle 1986-2006, Chapter fifteen
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 16
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Affiliate 17
- Secrets and Scandals - Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 18
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