Former State Rep. settles ethics complaint

By Steve Klamkin WPRO News

Former State Representative Donald Lally Tuesday settled a complaint that he violated the state’s ‘revolving door’ prohibition against taking a state job within a year of leaving office, while the Rhode Island Ethics found probable cause to pursue another complaint against the president of the Providence City Council.

Lally agreed to pay a $5,000 fine in what the Ethics Commission called an informal settlement.

“I just, it didn’t occur to me,” said Lally, about taking a job in the Raimondo administration within months of resigning his seat in the General Assembly.

“That’s my mistake and after 26 years of being a “Rep”, I believed the position was one I could have done a great job at. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out that way.”

The complaint was filed by Rhode Island Republican Party Chairman Brandon Bell, who questioned the settlement in a tweet following the Ethics Commission ruling:

“Wrong message: Break ethics code and you will profit. Taxpayers paid Lally approx 68k (not including benefits) and he will pay 5k back?”

Lally, who worked briefly in the Department of Business Administration is a lawyer, and former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says he is now practicing law in private practice.

The Ethics Commission also met behind closed doors with Providence City Council President Luis Aponte, before finding probable cause to pursue his case in a trial-like setting.

In a separate action, the Ethics Commission accepted the claim by Jamia McDonald, the outgoing Chief Strategy Officer for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, that she will have no role in lobbying the Governor’s Office, the EOHHS or the Department of Children, Youth and Families, which she ran for the past year.

McDonald told the Commission that she is joining Deloitte Consulting’s national office, not the division currently embroiled in a legal dispute with the Raimondo administration over the problematic “UHIP” computer system.