Speaking Up in North Providence
Kenny Cicerone, of North Providence, has caught the online-activism bug. His North Providence Taxpayers Association is seeking to file an ethics complaint against Senate President Joseph Montalbano “for being a municiple court judge in North Providence, where he solicits votes, and he was appointed as judge after voting to give the town council a raise from $1,500 to $8,000.” Secretary of State Ralph Mollis is on Kenny’s list, too.
For more, see North Providence Town Council Must Go and the less specific Rhode Island Elected Must Go.
I thought there was some sort of prohibition on elected officials holding multiple offices at the state and municipal level?
i read the website and is montalbano really untouchable? and if he is then why? the people in north providence are not the only ones who suffer but the whole state foots the bill for this criminal. you are telling me there is nothing we can do as citizens and taxpayers in rhode island? if someone has an answer to this i would really like to know what it is and why.
About time North Providence woke up! This is sure to incur the wrath of NP’s good ol’ boys, but who cares?
Liberal and conservative alike need to unite to get rid of this cancer on our state.
Let’s see, Montalbano didn’t remember to mention on his ethics filings 80-ish thousand dollars a year of income from the Town of West Warwick, for multiple years, but obviously had no trouble remembering to send West Warwick bills month after month.
Ends up with a slap on the wrist from the Ethics Commission and silence from the Bar disciplinary counsel (so much for avoiding even the appearance of impropriety).
And the rest of the Democratic Party remains silent, including the “progressives” like Teresa Paiva-Weed.
Just as they were notable in their silence when Harwood had his wife appointed a Magistrate for Life; when Pauly (Soprano) Moura was implicated patting down a businessman lest he be wearing a wire; and silent about Irons and Celona and Martineau (all part of the Democratic leadership) and Operation Dollar Bill generally.
The so Democratic Party in Rhode Island is made up of the directly corrupt and their enablers – so essentially the entire party structure and membership is corrupt. Yet it looks to maintain control of Rhode Island for the foreseeable future – so Rhode Island will continue to remain politically corrupt for the foreseeable future.
Sigh ….
You know, if we had a strong state-wide paper, they could run a story a week about the history of corruption in RI over the past few decades from now until the elections. Not that we have such a paper and not that it would matter to the majority of the yellow dog democrat voters. Short version – its the voters, stupid!
Sorry Rhody but Montalbano, Murphy, Williamson and that crowd are the (corrupt but)reasonable ones. The real cancers are the progressives like Segal, Perry, Handy, Slater, etc. who are determined to rush over the cliffs like lemmings.
Montalbano, Murphy, Williamson reasonable?
Hey, Mike, you can always join Bobby Oliveira’s jihad against Segal (he basically threatened Segal today on RIF). I find it amusing that anyone can consider a backbencher like Segal a bigger problem than the leadership.
Rhody,
There are a lot more than the 4 “progressives” I name.
You can talk to “the leadership”. They are corrupt, they are worms. But they are also sane and rational. They readily acknowledge that a situation where spending is increased at 2 1/2 times the rate of revenues is untenable. I have yet to see a single elected “progressive” acknowledge that fact. That is why they are frightening. They determine what is “needed” (be it lavish social spending, funding formulas, pensions, benefits, mandates etc.) and demand them-like petulant children pointing to toys in a toy store screech “I want!”.
Oh, Michael, Michael, Michael. Segal would be flattered at how much power you attribute to him, and how powerless the Dem leadership is. That is, when he stops laughing at the absurdity of that statement.
You want to let the people who really got us into this mess off the hook. C’est la vie.