Larisa on the warpath

Joe Larisa collects $8,200 from Charlestown

By Will Collette

Read on to see what you got for this money

Yeah, well, blame me. In the lead item in the July13 Charlestown Tapas, I raised the question of what ever happened to Charlestown’s Special Counsel for Watching the Narragansetts in Case They Do Something Joe Larisa? 

Based on documents sent by Town Hall in response to my revolving open records request, Larisa had not submitted his bill for his $2,050 monthly retainer in several months.

Plus there was an article in the Providence Journal that reported Larisa had moved his family out of state to South Dartmouth, MA.

Did the town finally decide to end the perpetual war against the Tribe and let Larisa go? Did he leave without submitting a final bill? Have we finally come to our senses in Charlestown?

Nah, no such luck.

All my inquiry managed to do was to get Larisa to catch up on his invoices for four months, rather than his usually two-month-at-a-time drill.

The bills (click here to read) cover his “work” on behalf of Charlestown for the months of March through June.

During that time, Larisa “worked” for a grand total of ten billable hours. If you’ve ever employed a lawyer, you know that “billable” hours are not usually the same as actual hours.

Anyway, we got a grand total of ten billable hours out of Larisa, for which we paid him $8,200. The simple math puts his effective hourly rate at $820. To be fair, we would have paid him the same amount if he did nothing since his contract with Charlestown guarantees him $2,050 a month.

Larisa spent nearly all of his time “working” on the “Carcieri Fix.”

The Carcieri Fix is an effort by some members of Congress to redress an unfortunate consequence of the US Supreme Court’s 2009 Carcieri v. Salazar decision that ended up stripping sovereignty rights from any Tribe that received federal recognition after 1934, a list of over 500 Native American tribes all across the US.

The “Carcieri” in the case is none other than our terrible former Governor Don Carcieri.

Ground Zero in Carcieri v. Salazar. The Narragansetts wanted to build
affordable homes for tribal elders. Charlestown was convinced it was a
ploy to build a casino. What's left are shells of incomplete houses.
(AP photo)

The Carcieri v. Salazar case began right here in Charlestown when Charlestown sued to block the Narragansett Indian Tribe from placing a small parcel of land it had acquired outside of the Tribe’s formal boundaries in trusteeship with the US Department of Interior. 

The Tribe wanted that land placed in federal trust so they could build a low-income elderly housing project without having to go through years of trouble with the Charlestown Planning Commission.

This suit occurred before there was a Charlestown Citizens Alliance, but many of the same people who are now leaders of the CCA Party were the lawsuit's instigators. They were outraged that the Narragansetts would try to assert sovereignty rights and build affordable housing without Charlestown’s direct approval.

They accused the Tribe of actually wanting to build a casino on the property and sued to block the Interior Department from taking the land into trust.

The state of Rhode Island took over the case and after losing in the lower courts, appealed to the US Supreme Court just as the hard-right conservative majority under Justice John Roberts started to issue its string of awful verdicts.

The Carcieri case was red meat for conservative Justices Scalia, Alioto and Thomas. The resulting decision baffled even the Court’s right-wing fans for its audacious attack on Native American rights. 

The decision essentially said that Congress wasn’t clear when it enacted the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 whether they really wanted the law to apply to all Indian tribes, or just those that were federally recognized in 1934. So the Court ruled that all tribes recognized after 1934 were S.O.L.

Joe Larisa when he was East Providence's ethics tone-deaf mayor, before
voters booted him out of office.

The result is a two-class system of sovereignty with some old, established tribes still covered by the full rights granted under law and 500 tribes, including the Narragansetts, being essentially screwed.

Even hard-right conservatives like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) could see the gross injustice this decision created. 

Over the years, a bi-partisan coalition of members of Congress have tried to enact what they call a “clean” Carcieri Fix – a law that essentially “clarifies” the will of Congress that all federally-recognized Indian nations are to be treated equally without complicating or killer amendments.

Rhode Island’s Congressional delegation and an odd mixture of Senators and Representatives from other states have generally opposed the Carcieri Fix. In the case of our guys, it’s a case of being heavily lobbied by the RI Statewide Coalition and other anti-Narragansett groups like the CCA Party to make sure the Narragansetts stay screwed even if it means screwing 500 other tribes.

To be clear, and maybe even fair, the CCA Party has stated in various iterations that it believes that all land use decisions in Charlestown must be under the control of Charlestown Town government (which they have controlled over the past six years). They’ve even tweaked their “platform” to reflect that “principle.”

Tribal Council member Randy Noka called Larisa an
Indian hater." Tribal elder Paulla Dove Jennings said that
Larisa and the CCA Party held "wicked prejudices" 

They have long taken the position that they really weren’t against the tribe's plan to build affordable housing for its low-income elders, but were afraid that allowing the Tribe to place land under federal trust infringed on Charlestown’s control over what happens on land inside Charlestown. 

Plus, the housing project was just the “camel’s nose under the tent”…and who knows whether it was just a Trojan Horse for a Narragansett casino?

After all, isn't it mostly senior citizens you see at most casinos? Ipso facto.

The thing is, Charlestown Town government, especially under CCA Party control, has been asserting greater and greater reach into the lives of Charlestown residents – way too far, in my opinion – to the point where they are now claiming the right to intervene in private land sales.

To prevent the Narragansetts from doing anything that might somehow pose a threat to Charlestown’s non-Indian property owners, the town keeps Joe Larisa on permanent retainer - $2,050 a month plus a lot more if he has to actually go to court.

Of the ten hours of “work” Larisa claims he did, three hours were spent reviewing a recent Interior Department solicitor’s opinion on land trusts (an issue related to the Carcieri Fix) and seven hours were spent solely and directly on the Carcieri Fix.

That’s a total of ten hours Larisa spent reviewing the odds that the Narragansetts will be able to put land under federal trusts (odds of that happening – slim to none) to make sure they won’t build a casino (the odds of that happening, even with a Carcieri Fix – slim to none).

I watch the same issues too; I analyze them and report on them here in Progressive Charlestown. I can tell you it doesn’t take ten hours to review the literature on dead issues.

Since the stated reason Charlestown, or more specifically the CCA Party, gives for watching these issues is there seemingly irresolvable fear of a Narragansett casino, I think more time and attention should be spent watching the on-going collapse of the casino industry.

Even though Massachusetts intends to build several casinos in the near future, they recognize there is a finite market. In the Bay State’s case, they want to keep Massachusetts gamblers in Massachusetts. Rhode Island will be lucky to hold on to 50% of the gambling revenue it gets now.

The only factor that might lead to a spike in area casino revenues is Lisa DiBello once she cashes her settlement check from her lawsuit against Charlestown.