Members of the Westerly Harbor Management Commission announced at a town council meeting Monday night they will resign from their positions at their next meeting on Thursday. The decision to step down in protest was prompted by the town solicitor’s handling of a records request seeking to shed light on his relationship with an influential attorney in the coastal town.
Town Solicitor William Conley, a former state senator from East Providence who served as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has faced sharp criticism from shoreline access advocates in South County because of what they say are questionable actions he’s taken in recent years on beach access cases in Westerly’s exclusive coastal communities.
The issue came to a head after a court filing in August revealed some of Conley’s email communications with an attorney for the Weekapaug Fire District about a path now being considered by the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council for potential state designation as a public right-of-way to a barrier beach where access is currently restricted.
In the communications, Conley concurs with the opinion of the fire district legal counsel that the so-called Sand Trail was already a “completely resolved matter.” A 1997 agreement between the district and town says the fire district owns the road, but the general public is allowed to walk on the road without leaving it to go on adjacent beachfront property.
“We are in full agreement that we have no confidence in the town solicitor’s ability to effectively represent the town in right-of-way matters,” commission member Jason Jarvis said to town councilors on Monday, with his four other committee members standing at his side. “All the members of the commission are planning on resigning on Thursday.”
Town Councilor Joy Cordio had sought additional emails between Conley and Weekapaug Fire District attorney Thomas Liguori after their limited exchanges were made public when the Weekapaug Fire District filed a motion in Rhode Island Superior Court to hold Westerly in contempt of the legal agreement signed with the fire district in 1997 that governs the use of the Sand Trail path going down the center of the Quonochontaug Barrier Beach.
A judge later denied the district’s motion.
Councilor Cordio initially made her request last month after Conley did not include a key exhibit showing the emails when he provided council members with paperwork related to the case ahead of a closed door briefing.
Cordio said she asked for all emails between Conley and Liguori since Conley began as town solicitor, and was told Conley would need to hire a technician to pull his correspondences and have a legal assistant review them, and that would come at a significant expense that would need to be approved by a vote of the town council.
Cordio requested that the item be placed on the town council agenda, but it wasn’t, she said.
At Monday night’s meeting, Cordio said concerns raised about Conley by the Harbor Management Commission members point to a “very serious issue with serious implications.”
“We need to look at it,” Cordio said.
Shoreline access advocates have previously criticized Conley for what they say is his lax or weak approach to handling shoreline access cases. They point to another closely-watched case in Weekapaug in which Conley told members of a previous town council he did not see evidence that the blocked-off Spring Avenue was ever accepted by the town as a public right-of-way to the shore.
That path was eventually sent to CRMC to be investigated further, and Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha has officially entered the case on behalf of the public, arguing “uncontradicted evidence” shows Spring Avenue is a public right-of-way to the Weekapaug shoreline. The CRMC review is still ongoing.
In raising their concerns about Conley, shoreline access advocates are also pointing to invoices filed by Weekapaug attorney Liguori to the fire district that show in 2021, when Liguori was working to prevent public access to the Quonochontaug Barrier Beach on behalf of his client, he was teleconferencing with Conley.
In one line item seeking payment for work done prior to submitting a legal memorandum to CRMC arguing Spring Avenue is private property owned by the fire district, Liguori writes “finish draft memo and email to Bill Conley.”
Shoreline access advocates say that disclosure, which came as the result of a public records request, raises questions about whether Conley was assisting the fire district in its effort to kill off a potential public right-of-way to a coveted barrier beach and fishing area.
“That is something that somebody that is working with somebody would do,” Ben Weber, an access advocate and member of the Westerly Harbor Management Commission, said at Monday’s town council meeting.
More recently, shoreline access advocates argued town councilors should hire outside legal counsel to handle a lawsuit filed by the Watch Hill Fire District and Watch Hill Conservancy over access to the Napatree Point beach and conservation area, where Westerly designated a public right-of-way through a town council resolution in 2008.
Calls for a new attorney in the Watch Hill case led Conley to take the step of publicly defending his credentials in a town council meeting earlier this year, citing the number of cases before his law firm, his experience with land use cases in the past, and his status as a Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly Hall of Fame honoree.
In recent weeks, shoreline access advocates have said they are disappointed the town council has not moved more forcefully to address concerns with Conley after the council was reorganized following the resignation of former Council President Edward Morrone.
Morrone was under criticism for his connection to the Watch Hill community and previous work for the Watch Hill Fire District as a consultant who was paid $30,000.
At the town council meeting Monday night, Conley defended himself, saying, “half truths and selective narratives have led this council and perhaps even part of the public in the town of Westerly to have a very skewed and unfair vision of the work that I’ve done.”
“I have never done anything as an attorney for this council, or for this municipality, that I am not proud of,” Conley said. “It’s been a privilege for me to be able to be of service to this town.”
Alex Nunes can be reached at anunes@thepublicsradio.org
