House Speaker Gordon Fox. WPRO Photo.
By Kim Kalunian, WPRO News
A Tuesday night Judiciary Committee vote has stirred up a lot of controversy.
Rep. J. Patrick O’Neill (D- Pawtucket) motioned for the passage of a bill that would put the General Assembly in the purview of the Ethics Commission, a bill that Speaker Gordon Fox endorsed in 2010.
“He submitted this exact piece of legislation, word for word,” O’Neill told WPRO's Buddy Cianci Thursday in his fist on-air interview since the debacle. O'Neill said he was asked by Fox to submit the bill, since the speaker cannot sponsor bills himself.
But O’Neill's relationship with Fox has changed in the past two years; he was formerly the House Majority Whip but resigned from Fox’s leadership team last year. O’Neill said he and the Speaker didn’t see eye to eye on 38 Studios and the merge of the two education boards, which passed late last session.
So on Tuesday night, when O’Neill made a motion for the passage of the ethics bill, which was heard earlier that night, a lot of eyebrows were raised. (Although Fox sponsored identical legislation in 2010, his colleague, Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, is an adamemt opponent of the bill.)
The bill passed 8-0 Tuesday night, but was nullified later on the grounds that the vote went against the House rules.
O’Neill said there’s no truth to the rumor that he had been plotting this move for some time. He said he had no previous conversation with Rep. Doreen Costa (R-Exeter), who seconded O’Neill’s motion for the vote.
“I didn’t speak to anybody, I simply made a motion that passed,” he said, denying there was any type of “conspiracy.”
In the wake of the controversy, O’Neill has been tossed off the Judiciary Committee, of which he’s been a member for 8 years.
“That’s how they like to do things, they like to make a ‘grand beheading,’” said O’Neill about the decision to remove him from the committee. O’Neill said Fox made an announcement that O’Neill would be replaced on Judiciary and moved to the Small Business Committee instead.
“Which let’s you know how they feel about small business,” he said with a laugh.
O’Neill said the move “sets us back 50 years,” and implies that those in power can silence people they do not see eye to eye with.
“That’s not what Rhode Islanders want,” he said.
