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January 2, 2008

Ethics panel votes to prosecute Ciccone on 2 charges

PROVIDENCE -- The Ethics Commission voted today to prosecute state Sen. and union official Frank A. Ciccone III on two charges but dropped five other charges that his votes in the General Assembly amounted to an ethics violation because they benefited unions he works for.

The decision means that in at least some circumstances, union officials can support legislation that benefits their unions. But commission Chairman James Lynch Sr. said that "this is not a blanket endorsement," and that the commission will deal with future cases one at a time.

The charges the commission voted to prosecute relate to Ciccone's failure to publicly disclose his income from the Rhode Island Laborers' District Council of the Laborers International Union of North America, where he is president and a field representative, and the union's Local Union 808, where he is business manager.

The complaint also accused Ciccone, a Providence Democrat, of using his position on the Senate Government Oversight Committee to benefit his union by investigating GOP Governor Carcieri's administration's use of temporary employees to fill jobs that would otherwise go to union members.

The commission's staff report said its investigation, including watching 25 hours of videotaped committee hearings, found no indication Ciccone was working to replace temporary workers with union members, and the commission dropped that charge, too.

The main issue raised in the complaint, filed by the group Operation Clean Government, was a bill Ciccone sponsored, voted for in the Senate Labor Committee, and voted for again on the Senate floor.

The bill, which was passed by the Senate but died in the House, would have reduced the amount unions would pay toward the costs of mediation in disputes involving public employee unions, including some that Ciccone represented.

The commission ruled today that because the legislation would have affected more than 100 other bargaining units no differently than the nine Ciccone is involved with, his votes qualified for an exception that is part of the state Ethics Code. The commission has never said, and Lynch didn't say today, exactly how big a group of beneficiaries has to be to qualify for that exception.

-- Journal staff writer Bruce Landis

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 4:30 PM | Permalink

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Jake | January 2, 2008 9:18 PM link

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