Avoiding
the appearance of conflict of interest…by not disclosing it.
CCA Party Town Council candidate owns an OIL WELL? Read on. |
By Will Collette
In an earlier article by my colleague Bob Yarnall, we
covered the significant differences between what the two Charlestown Citizens
Alliance (CCA Party) candidates for Chariho School Committee said on their CCA
Party biographies compared to what they reported to the RI Ethics Commission.
Click
here to read Bob’s entire
article, but in a nutshell, both candidates, Donna Chambers and Ron Areglado,
have some explaining to do about these blatant inconsistencies—especially given
that Areglado calls himself the president of something called the Center for
Ethical and Moral Leadership (which may or may not exist - sort of like Blake Filippi's RI Liberty Coalition).
But the CCA Party slate’s problems with the RI Ethics
Commission are broader than resume inflation.
Three additional members of the CCA Party ticket for
2014 appear to be in violation of the state’s ethics laws by failing to
disclose what they need to disclose.
Full disclosure is important to open and transparent
government. Disclosures tell us a lot about potential conflicts of interest. And
the CCA Party trumpets their high ethical standards and their devotion to open and
transparent government every chance they get.
For example, before the CCA Town Council majority had
launched its attack
on the state Water Resources Board for their effort to buy undeveloped land
owned by the Glista Family to protect the water below it, it would have been
nice to know that Town Council Boss Tom Gentz has invested in the American Water Works Company, one of
the nation’s largest private water system developers.
That may explain why Gentz and his CCA Party
colleagues tried so hard to characterize the state Water Resources Board land
purchase as a precursor to a public water supply.
From Boss Gentz's financial disclosure form. |
These include: Dupont,
Merck, Northeast Utilities, Total (Europe’s largest oil company), lots of big bank stocks, Xcel Energy, Pfizer and even Waste Management, Inc., famous for its
landfills and shady record.
You won't find this on Donna Chambers' Ethics report because it isn't true. |
But there’s another lesson to be learned from Gentz’s
ethics disclosure report – at least one member of the CCA Party leadership team
knows how to fill out the form.
So why then did Town Council candidate Denise Rhodes
– who was personally recruited by Gentz – fail to file any disclosure form at
all?
I like Denise. She and I worked together on the Copar
fight, especially in deciphering Copar and Armetta’s finances. But why did she
fail to file? Why didn’t Gentz take her in hand rather than leave it to mean
people like me to file a formal complaint against her with the Ethics
Commission?
The failure to file a report is a pretty easy one for
the Ethics Commission to judge. I filed a complaint
against Tina Jackson who ran for state Representative in 2012 for failing
to file her ethics disclosure report. The Ethics Commission issued a ruling
against her and fined her $100. To my surprise, Tina
actually paid that fine, while still owing
the Board of Elections almost $6,000 in fines for not filing campaign finance
reports.
This should be on Areglado's NEXT report |
These other two complaints are against Bonita
Van Slyke, another CCA Party Town Council candidate, and Barbara
Heavers, a CCA Party candidate for Planning Commission.
Both of them failed to list the contents of their
trusts the way the law requires, and the way Boss Gentz did it. Again, were
they left without guidance from Gentz and the other senior CCA Party leadership?
Both Ms. Van Slyke and Ms. Heavers simply wrote that
they owned “stocks and
bonds” without naming the
companies – and that’s the key piece of information.
We did get one tantalizing detail from Ms. Van Slyke’s
disclosure statement and that is that she and her husband own an oil well. It looks like it might be in Kansas; I really hope it’s not in Charlestown.
Screen shot from the Van Slyke ethics disclosure form |
But again, with so many renewable energy issues on
Charlestown’s plate, it’s hard to see how she can be objective when she owns a
frigging oil well.
I filed ethics complaints on the two of them, and
added that Ms. Heavers did not disclose her ownership or income from a house
she owns.
You can read all three complaints by clicking
here.
Ms. Heavers is assured a spot on the Planning
Commission while Ms. Rhodes and Ms. Van Slyke will have to compete for their
spots. But if they couldn’t figure out their legal duty to file Ethics disclosure
reports, or understand the instructions on how to complete the forms, that
raises some serious concerns.
As members of the town government, they will
have to handle far more complicated documents than these disclosure reports.
And shame on the CCA Party regulars who recruited
them for the CCA Party ticket. While candidates are personally responsible for
their compliance with the law, the CCA Party leaders had a moral and ethical
responsibility to guide them along, instead of leaving them to flub around and
make mistakes like the ones that spurred my formal complaints.
This isn't the first time we've caught CCA Party leaders acting unethically. One of my favorite episodes is HERE and involves George Tremblay who is running for re-election for Town Council.