Tougher stance against corruption still needed in R.I.

WELL-KEPT SECRET: Phil West, former executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, says that he thinks it takes time for “a culture of corruption to change.” / COURTESY FRANK MULLIN
WELL-KEPT SECRET: Phil West, former executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, says that he thinks it takes time for “a culture of corruption to change.” / COURTESY FRANK MULLIN

(Corrected, July 28, 12:22 p.m.)

Phil West spent years working to shine a light on corruption in Rhode Island government as the leader of Common Cause. Collaborating with others determined to dislodge the structure of favoritism and self-serving deals by legislators and other government leaders, West saw some things change.
He wrote an ethics complaint in 1988 against then-Gov. Edward D. DiPrete, which led to a finding of violation by the Ethics Commission and a record fine. DiPrete later pleaded guilty to related criminal charges, served 11 months in prison and lost his state pension.
In 1991, during the state’s credit union crisis, West helped organize the RIght Now! Coalition that won landmark reforms in ethics and campaign finance.
West hasn’t stopped. He’s documented what he sees as a web of deals and shadowy trading of power in what were supposed to be Rhode Island’s halls of democracy and justice.
West said many of the goings-on he’s written about in “Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006,” haven’t been clearly explained before. And that amid the dirty politics, there were plenty of good people fighting to do the right thing.

PBN: Your book covers two decades of scandals in Rhode Island, up through 2006. What’s that relevance for Rhode Islanders today?
WEST: Rhode Island has always been infamous for corruption. Some of that reputation has been earned. It’s because of the particular scandals that occurred around 1986 and since, that we’re been able to break open some of that corruption and change the rules of government. The challenge for the citizenry is to build a government where you have checks and balances, where you have systems in place that make it easier to expose corruption and to prosecute those who break the law. What I hope this book will say to people is that it’s not enough just to cry out and say they’re corrupt. That’s the easy way out. What we need to do is recognize how corruption works, make it illegal, make it easier to prosecute corruption and make it easier for people to run against corrupt people.

PBN: Do you think people have the time, interest and energy to be involved and make change?
WEST: I think it’s very hard, when you’re on the outside, to really understand what’s going on inside the Statehouse. What I’ve tried to do is to demystify that process and let people see how it works. If people would join some of the groups – [such as] Common Cause or Operation Clean Government or League of Women Voters – if they would read the newspapers, if they would consider running for office, they would see there are lots of things people can do to make government better.

PBN: What kind of changes have you seen from your work with Common Cause, and the work of others, that have helped clean up corruption in the state?
WEST: Rhode Island now has the strongest ethics commission in the United States and we have what we did not have for our first three centuries – separation of powers, which is the basic principle of American government.

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PBN: Students learn in school about the separation of powers between the legislative, judicial and executive branches of federal government, and about checks and balances. Why is it that you had to address this issue in Rhode Island?
WEST: As we in Common Cause began to study separation of powers, we saw that the legislature had major influence in a whole plethora of administrative agencies and boards and commissions. The effect was that there were no checks and balances on legislative power. One example is bogus pensions – and there were a lot of them. They gave them out like candy. There were some for people who had never worked for the state and yet they were able to buy their way into the pension system, at fire-sale prices. Some of those improper pensions were evicted in the mid-1990s, but some other improper pensions still stand and cannot be wiped out because they were properly passed by the General Assembly.

PBN: Where do you still see favoritism and patronage today?
WEST: The most obvious is in the selection of magistrates. In 1994, voters approved a constitutional amendment establishing merit selection of judges, making the selection a more open process. It was a reform that many hoped would bring an end to the corrupt process of picking judges. But it has been consciously undermined by several governors, leaders in the legislature and judges in the court. They’ve managed to subvert the process by creating more magistrates, which is very much like a judge, with minor differences. But essentially, it becomes a place where they can do it the old political way, by not going through the merit-selection process for magistrates. They found ways to jigger the system.

PBN: Separation of powers was on the state ballot in 2004, with the amendment approved by 78 percent of voters. Ten years later, there are signs corruption isn’t gone from in Rhode Island. Why is the state still seeing things like what happened in March, when federal agents raided the home and Statehouse office of then-Speaker Gordon D. Fox – who has not been charged – and he abruptly resigned?
WEST: I think it takes time for a culture of corruption to change. So, I’m not surprised we’re still seeing some outbursts like what happened with Gordon Fox. Even in a state used to scandal, many were stunned and saddened by his fall. •

INTERVIEW
H. Philip West Jr.
POSITION: Author of “Secrets & Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006,” scheduled to be released in October.
BACKGROUND: Taught ethics in public administration at the University of Rhode Island from 2010 to 2013. Executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island from 1988 to 2006. Before coming to Rhode Island in 1988, West served as pastor of United Methodist Churches and ran a settlement house in the Bowery in New York City.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree in English literature from Hamilton College, 1963; master’s degree from Union Theological Seminary, 1967; graduate research at Cambridge University; honorary doctor of laws degree from Rhode Island College, 2007
FIRST JOB: Bugler at Beech Mountain Boy Scout Camp in Livingston Manor, N.Y.
RESIDENCE: Providence
AGE: 72

The original version of this article incorrectly stated the year Phil West wrote an ethics complaint against then-Gov. Edward D. DiPrete.

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