Charlestown new leadership gets top marks from the RI ACLU for transparency in government

Charlestown is one of only four municipalities to get a perfect score

By Will Collette

Of all the phony claims made by Charlestown’s former rulers, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA), transparency in government was among the most outrageous. They claim in their campaign platform that they support:

Accountable Government
To provide open, honest, responsible leadership that listens to concerns and acts in the best interests of all our residents.

However, during much of their decade of control, the CCA was anything but what they claim. 

Using CCA stooge, ex-Town Administrator (now Pawtucket Finance Director) Mark Stankiewicz, the CCA made it nearly impossible to get public records. Using loopholes in Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act, CCA leadership imposed outlandish demands for fees to receive records, especially those related to shady land deals.

Those foolhardy enough to pay exorbitant fees then received documents often mostly or wholly blacked out (see example, left). I finally figured out the reason for the incredible number of hours the town billed for public records. It was to pay staff time to black out just about everything in those records. Cover-ups are often labor-intensive.

But there’s more. The Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union just released a survey of Rhode Island’s municipalities and school district boards to determine which of them met the highest standards of transparency and public access to their proceedings.

Read their report HERE.

Charlestown is now one of only four municipalities with a perfect score – and the ACLU notes that Charlestown attained this status through changes made in 2023 after the Charlestown Residents United (CRU) defeated the CCA and took a 4-1 majority on the Town Council.

The ACLU looked at four criteria:

• Did they livestream their meetings?

• Did they record their meetings and provide a video archive of them for future reference?

• Did they provide links to agenda item documents online?

• Did they allow remote participation by the public?

Here’s the top line scores:

In Charlestown, people on the agenda can link in and participate remotely. If you aren't on the agenda and wish to speak, you must be present.

NOTE: According to the ACLU report, the Chariho School District only complies with three of the four criteria used for scoring because, the report says, it does not provide for remote participation.

The ACLU’s footnote about the changes in Charlestown’s transparency practices changing after 2023 is another example of an outside, well-respected source showing advances Charlestown made by ousting the CCA from power.

Another example was last year’s report by the Rhode Island Auditor General that detailed the remarkable progress the CRU-controlled Council made in Charlestown’s finances and fiscal management. Read HERE for a description of the Charlestown section in that report and HERE for the full, original report.

Here's the Auditor General's summary for Charlestown:

And if that’s not enough, check this third source, the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council (RIPEC) 2022 report on municipal costs under the CCA. The most glaring issue was that Charlestown’s administrative costs are double the state average and six times higher than Cumberland which has the lowest administrative cost in the state. Fortunately, according to the Auditor General, Charlestown new CRU leadership turned these problems around as you can see for yourself in the summary findings above.

Here's RIPEC's summary table - scoot your eye to the bottom to see how Charlestown under the CCA fared:

The CCA’s de facto leader, Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, and CCA spokes troll Bonnita Van Slyke continue to claim, without evidence, that the CCA provided Charlestown with impeccable, error-free leadership. They say their critics whom they call “apologists for the current Town Council” cherry-pick facts and lie and distort the truth to put the CCA in a bad light. Tough talk but nothing to back it up.

Read the actual reports. The ACLU, Auditor General and RIPEC have no reason to favor the CRU over the CCA. Yet their reports and data draw a bright line showing that once the CCA was ousted, Charlestown was more open and its finances were better managed.

So who are you going to believe? Ruth Platner and the CCA? Or the RI ACLU, RI state Auditor General and the RI Public Expenditure Council?