Report Inappropriate Comments

Regarding the first violations, Warwick Retirement Board Chairman Alfred Marciano statement, “I am especially concerned that the Department of the Attorney General concluded that the retirement board’s discussion of pension funds investment strategy that drive assumed returns cannot be discussed in executive session”, and regarding the second, Chief of Staff William DePasquale continuing to state it was a “clerical error” is really disappointing on two counts.

The first reason is that Mr. Marciano statement isn’t true, the retirement Board was not found in violation for anything to do with discussing pension strategy in executive session. I along with other tax payers attended the March 18 meeting where pension investment strategy was discussed publically, as it should be.

The AG writes, “In fact, we indicated that we found insufficient evidence to conclude that the Board’s inappropriate discussion and action during its March 18 closed session meeting was not willful or knowing and allowed the Board an additional opportunity to address this issue. Notwithstanding this opportunity, the Board’s supplemental response still fails to adequately address this violation”.

That means the board had two opportunities to explain its actions to the AG after the complaint was filed and failed to do so.

The Attorney General found that the board had violated R.I. Gen. Laws 42-46-5(a)(7), which allows a public body to convene into executive session for “a matter related to the question of the investment of public funds where the premature disclosure would adversely affect the public interest”.

The complaint I filed was in regards to the second part of that sentence. The board went into executive session to discuss and accept pension assumption recommendation from the board’s actuary when two days earlier on March 16, Mr. Marciano and the board actuary Joseph Newton presented a document outlining all the assumptions and discussed those assumptions in a public hearing before the city council. The assumptions were already discussed and disclosed so there was no premature disclosure at the March 18 meeting and the discussion should have been public. I actually told the board that fact before we were asked to leave the conference room where the meeting was being held.

The AG stated that “specifically, we failed to see how ‘the premature disclosure would adversely affect the public interest’ and expressly noted that, at no point in our investigation, did the Board offer any argument, reasoning, or justification for how the executive session discussion ‘would adversely affect public interest’”.

This leads me to my second point and by far the most important. Mr. Marciano and Mr. DePasquale statements demonstrate the Board’s tactic to resort to unwarranted attacks on the Attorney General office. Instead of properly reading, understanding why they were found guilty of the Open Meeting law and taking responsibility for breaking it, this defiance doesn’t provide me nor should it anyone in the public with the any assurance that when the dust settles and when no one is paying attention, the Board won’t violate the law again.

Rather I would have hoped that the Chairman Marciano,Board member Councilwoman Vella-Wilkinson and Mr. DePasquale would have announced new procedures to be put in place and mandatory educational programs for members occur so this does not happen again.

This leads to my final point involving the City Council need to set new stringent qualification standards and back ground checks on any person serving on this and any other board in the city.

It’s time for the Warwick Retirement Board members to either take responsibility for these violations and either promise not to do them again or resign from the board and let new individuals be appointed who will ensure transparency to the public is a paramount principle of operation.