The rise of Val Lawson as president of the Rhode Island Senate put questions of conflict of interest front and center at the Statehouse this year. That’s because Lawson also serves as president of one of the state’s largest teachers’ unions. Lawson says she’s capable of policing her own potential conflicts, and the Rhode Island Ethics Commission offered an ok for her dual roles as president. But Lawson’s number two is a longtime former labor official and labor remains an influential special interest at the Statehouse. That’s a place where corporate lobbyists significantly outnumber advocates for nonprofit groups.
In related news, efforts to modernize the state’s open records law once again ran into a brick wall on Smith Hill this year. So, what did this legislative session show us about the outlook for good government in Rhode Island? How can everyday citizens make their voices heard in the corridors of power? And what can be done about the broader problem of political violence in our polarized world?
This week on Political Roundtable, I’m going in depth with John Marion, executive director of the nonpartisan good government group Common Cause of Rhode Island.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript has been edited for clarity
Ian Donnis: We’re talking a few days after some disturbing political violence in Minnesota. A man shot and killed a state legislator and her husband and wounded another lawmaker. In Northern Virginia, an SUV drove into a crowd at a No Kings protest. John Marion, what is your prescription for reducing the threat of political violence in the US?
John Marion: Yeah, I wish I had a great answer for how we sort of turn it down. It’s terrible. Political violence is a horrible thing. That’s why I do the work I do, because I think politics is the solution to disagreement without violence. I think both parties have to loudly condemn it. You know, this isn’t the first time we’ve had periods of political violence in our country, but we’ve managed to come out to better periods in our history. And I really think it’s going to take both parties really sort of loudly condemning it.
Donnis: One more question on national politics before we come back to Rhode Island. The national version of your organization, Common Cause, has responded to the Trump administration and Project 2025. What is the significance of that for us folks here in Rhode Island?
Marion: Yeah, I mean, so we’re working on a couple of things nationally. We’re trying to sort of hold the line on voting rights. There’s a bill in Congress called the SAVE Act that we think would be very damaging to the right to vote for a lot of people, particularly married women. And we have a project called the People’s Promise, where we’re asking people to kind of tell their stories about how the budget that’s working its way through Congress is going to hurt them. We’re just trying to highlight the issues that we’ve always worked on, which is sort of the undue influence of big money in politics and how it’s gotten us to this point, and how it’s really going to affect real people’s lives when they lose healthcare and other government services.
Donnis: Val Lawson, president of one of Rhode Island’s largest teachers unions, became president of the Rhode Island Senate this session. Her number two, Frank Ciccone, is a longtime former labor official. Are you concerned that organized labor has too much influence now in the state Senate?
Marion: Not concerned that labor has too much influence per se. It’s more just concerned of potential conflicts of interest. So Val Lawson’s predecessors either retired, stepped down from their positions or were pursued for conflicts of interest by the Ethics Commission. So we’re just concerned that trying to hold these dual roles is going to be very difficult to manage from a conflict of interest perspective. Labor has historically been very strong in Rhode Island. It has a big presence at the State House, both in the membership but also a lobbying presence that’s not surprising in a state that has such a storied history of labor activism as we have in Rhode Island. But they are a special interest and we do need to keep a check that they’re not, like any special interest, sort of taking advantage of their position to, you know, gain advantage as a special interest.
Donnis: On a related note, when the Rhode Island Ethics Commission recently said that Val Lawson did not have a per se conflict as being both president of the Rhode Island Senate and a large teachers union, you said the commission could have gone a little bit deeper in considering her power to decide what gets voted to make appointments, et cetera. So I wonder how you view the Ethics Commission these days. It’s had an up-and-down history. Do you think it’s being rigorous enough in its scrutiny of what is on its plate?
Marion: Yeah, great question. You know, yes, the Ethics Commission has sort of ebbed and flowed in how strict it’s been about enforcing the code of ethics. I think it’s a little more lax and it’s gotten there over the course of a couple of decades through opinions that it’s issued that have sort of broadly interpreted some of the exceptions to the code of ethics, namely the so-called class exception. I think they need to consider narrowing that. We actually have a proposal before them this summer that would close a loophole. So I think we’re going to sort of start as an organization examining how we can persuade them that they need to be a little tougher.
Donnis: The General Assembly is close to wrapping up its current session. Once again, the legislature is not moving ahead with efforts to modernize the state’s open records law, the Access to Public Records Act. The modernization was fiercely opposed by Governor McKee’s administration and state departments. What will it take to move this issue forward?
Marion: Yeah, it, you know, this is tough. I think we every year bring more and more examples of why this is needed. This year, one of the provisions would make Brown University police department’s arrest records public. We actually had a former Brown University police officer show up to testify in favor of the legislation, unbeknownst to us. I think we’ve demonstrated the need. I think we just need to sort of do more to build political will. We need to talk to more members of the legislature about how this is a kitchen table issue. When people are concerned about the Washington Bridge or they’re concerned about some issue they hear about in government, they often know about it because of the value of public records. And so having a strong public records law helps them as residents of Rhode Island, know more about what their government’s doing.
Donnis: We’re talking here with John Marion, executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island and John, you are a lobbyist at the State House. There are other lobbyists for nonprofit groups like Steve Brown of the Rhode Island ACLU, but people like you and Steve are greatly outnumbered by lobbyists who represent companies and corporations. They watch legislation affecting their clients like hawks and are always present. Given this climate, how can the average person make more of an impact at the State House?
Marion: Yeah, interesting. So, you know, fortunately, Rhode Island, our legislature is very accessible compared to other states, right? It’s a commuter legislature; they meet in the evenings. So if you have a day job, you can actually get up there and talk to your legislator. And we actually do a lot of programming at Common Cause, teaching people how to do this. And so I think people just need to literally show up. They need to call their legislator. They need to email their legislator. And they need to make their voices heard. You know, one of the things I fear, actually, after the tragedy in Minnesota, is that we’re going to put layers or put barriers between us and our government because of the threat of violence. And I hope that doesn’t happen because I see every day that I’m up there, every day people coming into the building and talking to their legislators, and I think that’s incredibly important.
Donnis: Republicans have really struggled to build their presence in Rhode Island. It used to be that the party was pretty effective at winning the governor’s office in Rhode Island and Massachusetts not so much lately. Now, the GOP holds just 14 of 113 legislative seats. People can say that a better partisan balance would produce better politics. How do you look at that and what would it take for the Republicans to have a more robust presence?
Marion: I don’t know. I’ve never been a partisan, so I don’t know what it takes to recruit candidates. It’s clear the Republicans in the last few decades have had a challenge just recruiting what political scientists call quality candidates to run for the legislature. Another issue is just Rhode Island has not fully realigned as a state. Again, it’s a political science term, but we have a lot of very conservative Democrats who remain, who in other states, particularly we saw in the South after the civil rights movement, where conservative Democrats became Republicans. We’re not seeing that to the degree that we saw in the South. I can’t really explain why that’s happening. I don’t really know what’s happening inside the party, but I would have to believe eventually, especially as we see sort of the ring around Providence, North Providence, Johnston, Cranston, some places you’ve reported on, go for Trump. Down ballot, everything we see in the rest of the country tells us eventually that will spread down ballot.
Donnis: Rhode Island does not have a law against bid rigging. And the Providence Journal’s Katherine Gregg reported in April on how a senior aide to Governor McKee spoke to two lawmakers who were involved in promoting a bill to address that. What is your takeaway on what that tells us and where things stand?
Marion: Yeah, to his credit, the Attorney General put in a bill that would prohibit certain activities that we refer to as bid rigging. In response to the ILO investigation that the state police and the Attorney General conducted over the last couple of years. We supported the bill. It looks as of this taping that it might pass sometime this week, which would be great because I think there is a hole in our laws in between our procurement law and our ethics law that the Attorney General has identified and that he’s trying to fill. And so hopefully this law will fill that hole or plug that loophole, however you want to say it. I’m surprised actually, given our history going back to DiPrete, that we didn’t have a statute that sort of prohibited this very specific type of behavior that this bill is going to address.
Donnis: One of the top issues for your organization is same-day voter registration. It seems like it might take at least another year to get that across the finish line. How is the outlook?
Marion: Yeah, so unfortunately, you know that’s not going to get a vote this week in the final week of the session. We put in our best effort. You know, we’re super grateful. It was a top priority for the Secretary of State and he put a lot of work into it this year. We need to continue to sort of build pressure on the legislature to move that. The earliest, it’s a constitutional amendment, the earliest it could be on the ballot anyway is November of 2026. So we have another shot at it next session. We are hoping to get it done and get it on the ballot for next November or November 26. Have that happen this year, but it’s not going to happen. But we’re going to continue to put pressure on. We especially think it’s needed because, as I mentioned earlier, there’s this federal bill that would require a lot more proof of documentation to register to vote. And with the longest voter registration deadline in the country, that could be particularly detrimental to Rhode Island voters.
Donnis: We’re out of time, so we need to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us, Executive Director of the non-partisan good government group Common Cause of Rhode Island, John Marion.
Marion: Thanks, Ian. Thanks for having me.
