The Rhode Island Ethics Commission heard public feedback Tuesday on the possibility of changing state ethics rules to limit lobbyists’ influence on the lawmaking process.
But before the public had their say, ethics commission chair Lauren E. Jones wanted to correct the public record.
“The press has had this wrong,” Jones began. “We have not proposed to change any rule. We have proposed to consider whether to change the rules. The fact that this is set up for a public hearing today does not mean at all that this commission has made any decision on any of the proposed amendments to rules and regulations.”
The potential changes are twofold: One proposed by lawmakers would increase the permissible amount of individual gifts to public officials from $25 to $50 and from $75 to $150 annually in aggregate. The other, proposed by Common Cause Rhode Island, would broaden the definition of “interested person” to explicitly cover lobbyists and their employers, filling a gap that lets public officials and employees accept potentially unlimited freebies from these parties.
Tuesday’s meeting agenda explains that while the so-called gift rule “has historically been understood to include gifts from lobbyists to the public officials they lobby, lobbyists for not-for-profit entities may not fit neatly into this definition.”
Common Cause Rhode Island first petitioned for a rule change late last December. In May, the commission voted to start the rulemaking process.
“There is not, as we sit here right now, a predilection to either side,” Jones said. “That has not been discussed by our commission at all.”
Part of the process involves public feedback, which Jones entertained to the fullest extent. At the start of the meeting, the commission’s executive director, Jason Gramitt, suggested the chair might impose a time limit on commentary, but Jones avoided any explicit restraints and asked people to simply be “aware” and “respectful” of the time they used for comment.
The commission also OK’d moving public comment ahead of the day’s executive session, so that people could contribute sooner. Across roughly a half-hour, six people — including the current and former heads of Common Cause Rhode Island — spoke up to support the lobbyist rule change and reject the gift increase.
Common Cause Rhode Island Executive Director John Marion took to the podium first. “Why would someone hire a lobbyist if they didn’t have an interest in the outcome of a government decision?” he asked.
As for the gift increase, Marion argued the desire for more expensive tokens of appreciation derives from a small group of lawmakers. One of those lawmakers is Senate Majority Leader Frank Ciccone III, who submitted a bill this past legislative session that would have upped the gift limit to $50. During the bill’s committee hearing on April 8, Ciccone pooh-poohed the $25 limit — codified in 2005 — as inadequate given inflation.
“There is no public demand for this change, just the demand of a handful of legislators who can use their campaign accounts, or their legislative salaries, to buy all the lunches they want,” Marion said.
North Kingstown resident Kathleen Odean thought the existing $25 cap is sufficient. In her years as a public librarian in California, “No one gave me any gifts,” Odean said. “And I did my job as well as I could.”
Gramitt said the commission will continue to accept written public comment on the possible changes through Sept. 16, before the panel takes up the issue again at a subsequent meeting. The next two meetings are on Sept. 30 and Oct. 8.
“We’re hopeful that at their next meeting, they’re going to change the gift rule and close the loophole,” Marion said after the meeting. Possible revisions to ethics law could help people “shed the belief” that the Ocean State “has a corruption problem,” he added.
There are also practical benefits to the change. “Public officials should have clarity of what the law says, and that law should say if a person has a lobbyist badge on, they shouldn’t be able to give you a gift more than $25,” Marion said.
‘Three minutes’ for you but not for me
Speaking after Marion was his predecessor, H. Philip West Jr., who led Common Cause Rhode Island for 18 years before retiring in 2005. Although he noted he was not speaking on behalf of Common Cause, West offered a systemic critique of the lobbying loophole.
“It’s very difficult for legislators to tell who is an interested person,” West said. “In fact, it’s almost impossible.”
The categorical exclusion of lobbyists from the state’s present idea of “interested persons” is thoroughly undermined, West thought, by the realities of policymaking. Most small advocacy groups and ordinary citizens get maybe “three minutes” when they testify on bills at the State House, West said.
But the same is not true for former legislators who take up lobbying after they leave the General Assembly. West shared with the commission a document detailing his admittedly non-comprehensive analysis of former lawmakers who now get paid to lobby. Using public records, West accounted for about $3.5 million paid in the 2025 legislative session to 14 lawmakers-turned-lobbyists, from dozens of clients including Bristol Myers Squibb, Care New England, Brown University Health and Haxton’s Liquors.
While West’s calculations are conservative and not definitive — they exclude hourly work, and assume firms paid the listed lobbyists in six monthly installments — the 14 individuals listed in West’s research seem to represent a massive amount of lobbying muscle. Among the active lobbyists in 2025 who used to be members of the General Assembly are a former House speaker, Senate president and Providence mayor.
“Here’s the important point: They largely conceal what they are lobbying for, from the press and from the public,” West said.
Jones asked West if he was talking about campaign contributions made by lobbyists, which were included in West’s documentation but are firmly outside the commission’s purview. West replied that’s not the case, asserting his main target is the “completely independent” fact of policy discussions behind closed doors — or, just as often, out in the open, at soccer or baseball games or private lunches.
There is no public demand for this change, just the demand of a handful of legislators who can use their campaign accounts, or their legislative salaries, to buy all the lunches they want.
“These lobbyists, for the most part, are not saying to legislators publicly, in public hearings, ‘Here’s what I want you to do.’ They’re doing that in private.”
West reappeared — in book form — during Kate McGovern’s testimony, when the Providence resident held up a copy of West’s 2014 tome, “Scandals and Secrets: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006.” McGovern described a legislative process in her former residence of New Hampshire as one in which all bills get a hearing and committee vote.
But in Rhode Island, legislation can face a Sisyphean struggle, with some bills returning year after year after year, only to die multiple deaths while waiting to be heard in committee.
“We got here, and it’s like, ‘What do you mean there hasn’t been a vote on payday lending in a dozen years?’” McGovern recounted, referencing a piece of legislation that failed to pass for years and only after the death of former Senate President Dominick Ruggerio last April.
“The outcome of the lobbying is extremely relevant to what happens at the State House,” McGovern said, noting that whether bills pass committee is not always left up to the committee chairs themselves.
Jessie Kingston, also a Providence resident, told the commission it needs to adopt gift limits amid what she described as a broader context of federal opacity.
Said Kingston, “If not now, then when?”
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
