The West Warwick Investment Dance Continues

By way of an update on West Warwick's current public-money scandal:

An Arizona real estate firm has offered to return $3 million to the West Warwick pension board after news of the investment — and the subsequent resignation of the board's financial consultant — triggered a barrage of criticism in recent weeks.

Cole Capital sent the offer to local officials in an e-mail on Thursday. On Friday, a national real estate consulting firm released a report reaffirming repeated concerns raised by the former consultant, P-Solve Asset Solutions, which wrote last fall: "We have rarely, if ever, seen a potential investment that is more inappropriate for an institution than this one."

The people of West Warwick — of all of Rhode Island — should remember that if you keep electing the same sorts of people, you're going to keep getting the same results.