Serious financial challenges continue to dog Rhode Island’s capital city. And now, there’s a cloud hanging over the Providence City Council, with two councilors facing close public scrutiny.
One, Kevin Jackson, could lose his office through a recall election Tuesday. The other, Council President Luis Aponte, is the subject of a State Police investigation. These issues are amplifying a sense of uncertainty surrounding the council.
In the ornate, cathedral-like chamber of the Providence City Council, Council President Luis Aponte calls to order a noisy council meeting. As usual, the 15 councilors from different Providence neighborhoods stand to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But these are not usual times for the Providence City Council.
Council President Aponte faces a State Police investigation. This comes after the state Board of Elections identified problems in Aponte’s campaign finance filings. And Councilor Kevin Jackson is accused of misusing campaign funds and embezzling about $127,000 from a youth sports organization he founded.
“I do believe it has cast somewhat of a cloud over the entire city council,” said East Side Councilor Sam Zurier. Zurier is part of the minority faction on the council. They often clash with the council’s ruling majority. And they didn’t support Aponte for council president when he won that post in 2015, with Councilor Jackson landing the number two role as majority leader.
Even without these issues, Rhode Island’s capital city faces serious financial challenges. The city’s pension fund is less than 30 percent funded. Mayor Jorge Elorza has rejected suggestions that Providence consider bankruptcy. He says the city’s fiscal outlook is improving and that Providence will establish a rainy day fund for the first time since he took office.
But Providence still faces a structural deficit. And the capital city looks to the state for help. A lot of it. The city gets about $36 million in state aid every year, not including millions more for the Providence schools.
Allegations of wrongdoing are nothing new at Providence City Hall. This is the same city once presided over by two-time felon Vincent “Buddy” Cianci.
John Marion of the non-partisan good-government group, Common Cause of Rhode Island, says the issues involving Council President Aponte and Councilor Jackson have larger implications.
“It undermines the average voters’ confidence,” said Marion. “And that’s all we have. Legitimacy in a democracy flows from trust in your leaders and if you can’t trust them to do the right thing, ultimately legitimacy erodes.”
We should note that Aponte has not been charged with anything. Jackson maintains his innocence and is still awaiting his day in court.
Yet Jackson has critics who say he’s done a poor job representing Ward 3 in Providence’s Mount Hope neighborhood. The recall vote of Jackson today was set in motion when 20 percent of the residents in the ward signed petitions expressing support for the move. Recall supporters say Jackson hasn’t properly answered to his constituents for the charges he faces.
“I think that holding elected office is a privilege and it’s not a right, to anyone,” said Patricia Kammerer, a Ward 3 resident, who is spearheading the campaign to unseat Councilman Jackson. “We have a right as voters to hold our elected officials accountable.”
Kammerer walks through a leafy neighborhood in Ward 3, which includes tough sections of Mount Hope and some more prosperous parts of the East Side. As part of the recall, she’s been busy knocking on doors and rallying volunteers.
“We’re paving the way for new leadership here,” said Kammerer. “So the next thing would be for the ward to have a special election to replace Councilman Jackson, because we’re ready, we’re ready for new leadership.”
Jackson stepped down as majority leader after his arrest last year, although he resisted calls to leave the council. Jackson maintains he’s getting a bad rap, and he’s fighting for the seat he’s held since first winning election in 1994.
“I’ve done nothing wrong, and therefore let’s say the court case proceeds, and I’m found innocent, I have no right to claim back my seat if I allow them to recall me,” said Jackson.
Jackson is Providence’s longest-serving city councilor. He got into politics while working with young people in the poor parts of Mount Hope. Jackson says he got social services into the neighborhoods, and helped re-invigorate parks and community spaces. Luis Aponte, now the council president, landed on the council a little later. He became the city’s first Latino city councilor when he was elected in 1998.
“The South Side suffered from a lot of disinvestment,” said Aponte sitting in a bright café in his South Side neighborhood. “The level of blight was much higher, and there was not a lot of attention paid to this part of the city. And part of what motivated me to run was a belief that we could change that.”
Today, parts of the South Side show vitality, with lots of Latino-owned small businesses, although the area still suffers from poverty. And Aponte faces his own issues.
He accumulated almost $50,000 in fines by failing for years to file required campaign spending reports with the state Board of Elections.
Then, last fall, the Elections Board referred a report on Aponte’s campaign account to Attorney General Peter Kilmartin’s office. The report said Aponte made personal use of his campaign funds and it pointed to a $13,000 discrepancy in his filings. In the time since, State Police have opened a probe into Aponte, and a grand jury subpoenaed his payroll records from City Hall.
Aponte concedes shortcomings related to his campaign finance reports.
“I’ve been at this trying to resolve these issues, and at the very beginning I owned them,” said Aponte. “I didn’t follow through, I wasn’t as meticulous as I should have been with my reporting and I own that.”
Aponte downplays his issues and the effect they’re having on the council. But East Side councilman Sam Zurier worries that the council has become dysfunctional.
“I believe that there have been signs that this has been a very unproductive city council,” said Zurier.
In one sign of disharmony, the council last year failed to pass a $40 million bond for much-needed repairs to city streets and sidewalks, even though voters had approved the measure. Council leaders wanted greater discretion over how the money would be used, but Mayor Elorza threatened to veto what he called “slush funds.” Council leaders say the city couldn’t afford more borrowing.
Now, with state lawmakers turning their attention to the state budget, Zurier fears uncertainty gripping the council will hurt the city as it looks to the state for even routine financial help.
“I believe that these reports, that we don’t have our act together, that there are various investigations of our top leadership in the city council, those provide questions in the General Assembly, ‘should we really help Providence?’”
Council President Aponte maintains the issues facing him and Kevin Jackson are separate from the city’s larger financial picture.
“Look, I think our approach, and our arguments before the General Assembly are based on merit,” said Aponte. “They are based on the circumstances that exist in our city.”
For now, the circumstances in Rhode Island’s largest city also involve serious questions about the head of the City Council and his former deputy. While the resolution of those questions remains unclear for now, they have the potential to remake the leadership of the council.
