UPDATED: CCA-led Town Council violates Open Meetings Act again

They dodge the bullet on "intent"

By Will Collette

Slattery gets spanked again. Will he ever learn?

UPDATE: reliable sources tell me there was a flurry of activity at Town Hall on Monday as delinquent Commission records were updated - several had fallen months behind. I made a brief reference to the failure to post current minutes as yet another way that our CCA Party-led town government pays little regard to its own rhetoric about openness and transparency. Too little, too late.

On at least a dozen occasions, the Charlestown Town Council majorities led by CCA Party poohbahs Boss Tom Gentz and his sidekick Dan Slattery have broken their own pledges of “open and transparent government.” 

This time, the state Attorney General’s office upheld the complaint filed by former Town Council President Deb Carney (D) that the Council violated the law by conducting a secret ballot last March to pick CCA Party favorite Donna Chambers to file a vacancy on the Chariho School Committee.

As Deb forcefully argued (click here), the Council cannot conduct a secret ballot during the course of an open meeting under the Rhode Island Open Meetings Act. The type of ballot the Council used is called an “Australian Ballot” by its chief Council proponent, Crocodile Dan Slattery.

One of the Town’s defenses after Deb filed her complaint was that they had used the “Australian Ballot” before, as if that made it OK when actually, all it meant was that they violated the law twice. They used it to pick the Town Administrator Search Committee (click here). 

The last time was during the last Council term where the Council was also led by Gentz and Slattery. 

The Town also argued that this current Council (led by Gentz and Slattery) has not yet been found to have violated the Open Meetings Act, as opposed to the last Council (also led by Gentz and Slattery) which had been found guilty of violating the Open Meetings Act on several occasions, including by the Superior Court in Jack Donoghue's Y-Gate Scandal lawsuit.

On those thin grounds, the Council escaped being cited – and fined – for an intentional violation. Click here to read the decision letter.

From the very first Council meeting led by Gentz and Slattery on November 15, 2010, they have shown contempt for the principles of open and transparent government that have been the main features of the CCA Party's campaign rhetoric. Right after being sworn in, they immediately introduced and passed a moratorium on all wind energy generators. The resolution had already been written and the three-member majority – Gentz and Slattery, plus their ally Lisa DiBello – pushed it through.

The Vanover Precedent

Cliff Vanover created the legal precedent
that his CCA Party colleagues violated

Ironically, this action was in clear violation of a precedent that had been set by the CCA Party in its wars with former Council President Jim Mageau. 

CCA leader Cliff Vanover had filed an Open Meetings Act complaint against Mageau and his colleagues charging that they – like Gentz, Slattery and DiBello – had worked out a plan after they were elected, but before they were sworn in. In Vanover's case, it was that Mageau et al. had privately decided to hire Bob Craven as Town Solicitor at their first Council meeting. 

The Attorney General ruled for Vanover and, if anyone had filed a complaint against Gentz, Slattery and DiBello for their actions at their first Council meeting, the Vanover case would have been the precedent.

Since then, the Gentz-Slattery Council was found guilty in Superior Court of violating the Open Meetings Act in the way it set up the process for acquiring the derelict YMCA camp in what came to be called “Y-Gate,” a million-dollar rip-off that eventually fell apart. The Court is expected to issue a second ruling in the same lawsuit against the Town because the committee the Town Council set up to work the Y-Gate deal operated in complete defiance of the Open Meetings Act. 

The complete lack of regard for the Open Meetings Act was admitted in sworn depositions by two key players, former Councilor Gregg Avedisian and Charlestown Land Trust Treasurer (and CCA Party major donor) Russ Ricci.

Jim Mageau caught the Gentz-Slattery Council in yet another Open Meetings violation when it improperly handled a very positive public review of then Town Administrator Bill DiLibero’s job performance and gave him a raise. The Attorney General’s Office ruled Mageau was right and made the Council do it over.

Then, a few months later, the Gentz-Slattery Council decided it wanted to force DiLibero to resign (the “Kill Bill” Campaign) and again appeared to violate the Open Meetings Act in the way they handled it. Mageau has a pending Superior Court lawsuit on that matter which essentially uses the Gentz-Slattery Council’s earlier violation as a precedent.

I don't envy Peter Ruggiero's task in having to defend
stupid behavior by town officials

Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero had to admit the Charter Revision Advisory Committee (CRAC) created by the Gentz-Slattery Town Council had violated the Open Meetings law. The CRAC violated the Open Meetings Act not once but twice. 

First, they failed to post meeting minutes for their first several months of operation. 

Then, they failed to file the minutes for their crucial final meeting where they came up with their final recommendations for Charter revisions that were going before the Council for approval to send to the voters.

After an extensive review of other town committees, I also found that about half of the town’s committees and commissions were delinquent in filing committee minutes and documents.

Another Open Meetings Act Lawsuit Waiting to Happen

Much more recently, the Gentz-Slattery Council made a decision in Executive Session to spend $50,000 on a Special Counsel who will not only represent Charlestown in the Whalerock but also private individuals.

Mancini's hiring, plus who is paying for his anonymous
clients, is another lawsuit waiting to happen

That decision to spend the $50,000 was handled in almost the same manner that was found to be an Open Meetings violation in Mageau’s lawsuits regarding DiLibero’s personnel issues. Namely, a major public expense was made without proper notice to the public. In the case of Mancini's hiring, with no notice whatsoever.

The icing on the cake is that this Special Counsel, John O. Mancini, will not reveal the identities of the private individuals the town is apparently paying him to represent. 

Long-time observers of town politics tell me it is unprecedented for anonymous objectors to be represented before the Zoning Board of Review, never mind being paid for by the town.

This whole mess is another Open Meetings Act lawsuit waiting to happen.

The Town also Stonewalls on Public Records Release

As if all of these instances of Open Meetings Act violations weren’t enough, there is regular resistance to compliance with the state open records law, called the Access to Public Records Act.

As an investigator and reporter, the APRA is one of the major tools I use to find the facts and then present them to you. The law protects the right of the public to know by establishing the presumption that all government records are public unless they are specifically exempted. The law also specifies deadlines for public bodies to disclose records.

I could give you a long list of times I’ve had to struggle with the town over the release of records - including my current beef with the town over their refusal to release court records in Superior Court in the Whalerock case - but let me tell you about some of my favorites.

Two of them deal with Councilor Dan Slattery. The first had to do with Slattery’s investigation of alleged corruption by “Friends of Ninigret Park.” 

Slattery reported to the Council that he had conducted the investigation, collected town records and interviewed town staff. He held and waved a thick folder and said that it contained evidence that proved to his complete satisfaction that there was no corruption by Friends of Ninigret Park.

Now I already knew that – in fact, Progressive Charlestown regularly runs articles promoting and reporting on events sponsored by Friends of Ninigret Park, such as this one that ran last night. 

But I wanted to see what was in Slattery’s folder, especially since he had publicly offered to show its contents to other Council members and had made such a big display of it during an open Council meeting.

Slattery did not want to cough up the files, but he was in a bind. Through Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero, Slattery had to admit that, yes, he did conduct the “investigation,” and no, that investigation was not authorized by the town or any authority within the town, so it was his own "personal quest," as Ruggiero put it. 

And yes, he did make the offer to show other Council members the content of the file and yes, when Councilor Gregg Avedisian took him up on the offer, Slattery reneged on his offer and yes, he denied Avedisian access.

Town Solicitor Peter Ruggiero's preamble to Slattery's sworn statement

 From Slattery's sworn statement:
 

Slattery's sworn statement about his secret "Friends of Ninigret Park" investigation

After making Slattery’s admissions public, I was more than willing to withdraw my complaint. I think getting Slattery to admit that he was a loose cannon and a liar was worse than nailing him for violating the open records law.

Later, Slattery and Gentz launched the “Battle for Ninigret Park” that argued that the reckless acts of Town Administrator Bill DiLibero (acts he was directed to perform by the Gentz-Slattery Town Council) were jeopardizing the town’s continued ownership of Ninigret Park. 

Slattery claimed that there were two documents, aptly named Document #1 and Document #2, that conclusively showed that Charlestown’s rights to use and own Ninigret Park were a lot less secure and subject to a lot more conditions than anyone had ever realized in over 30 years of town stewardship of the Park.

Gentz and Slattery argued that the town needed to take steps to cede major control of the Park to the National Fish and Wildlife Service. Plus, instead of having a Parks and Recreation Commission, we needed a new super-committee that would be controlled by allies of the CCA Party to protect the park from a federal take-over.

Under the APRA, I demanded copies of Document #1 and Document #2 that were the foundation for the Slattery-Gentz attack on the current administration of Ninigret Park. After considerable struggle and on the brink of taking legal action against the town, the town released Document #1 to me.

Document #1 did not support any of Gentz’s or Slattery’s wild claims. In fact, the records contained in Document #1 said the opposite. So maybe all the really juicy stuff was in Document #2. 

Again, after more struggle and on the brink of legal action, Slattery admitted through the Town Clerk that Document #2 did not actually exist.

From Slattery's original motion....the only problem is Document #2 didn't exist

As other, genuine documents emerged – documents that actually exist and worse for Gentz and Slattery, that contradicted their position – they lost the Battle of Ninigret Park. However, to save face, Gentz, Slattery and their ally Councilor Lisa DiBello purged Town Administrator Bill DiLibero.

Larisa Cover-up

Charlestown has paid Larisa - a minimum of $2050 a month
- to fight the Narragansett Indian Tribe

One final example of how selectively our CCA-led town government applies the principle of openness and transparency deals with the town’s hired gun, Joe Larisa.

Charlestown has paid Larisa over $300,000 to stand on call to be ready to fight the Narragansett Indian Tribe on anything they want to do.

People have the right to know what he does for the money and that’s what the Access to Public Records Act is all about. 

So I filed an APRA request for his bills and records of payment by the town. After a major hassle, the town finally released the records to me…with almost every word blacked out!

Typical page from the town's response to my
request for Larisa's billing statements

Page after page after page and line after line of black-outs. Click here to see the initial document the town sent me.

Naturally, I appealed but before this matter went too far, someone within the town’s brain trust must have realized that this was not only a losing issue for them - in fact, indefensible -  but an embarrassing one as well. 

So they reluctantly notified me that they decided to "voluntarily" release the uncensored records to me. Click here to see the uncensored version. 

I accepted the records but rejected their claim that they were not obligated to release them.

I just received a new batch of Larisa invoices that cover the past 11 months. I'll be writing about the contents of those documents in an upcoming article. 

One item I found very amusing is Larisa's description of how much work he put into trying to cover-up his legal activities in my request for his first batch of bills.

As I have found it necessary to say so often, I am not making this stuff up. Here is a screen shot from Larisa's invoice to the town on how he spent the town's time (at $130 an hour or $715) trying to cover up his own bills:

From Day One, Gentz and Slattery have made it clear that the CCA Party has a platform filled with noble statements and high standards…that only apply to other people, not to themselves. 

When it comes to openness and transparency, that’s for them to know and for you to find out. So read the records and decide for yourself whether to believe them or your own lying eyes.