Westerly Town Council President Edward Morrone has submitted a letter of resignation, saying he is stepping down entirely from the council about eight months after taking office, according to multiple council members and a copy of the letter forwarded to The Public’s Radio.
The decision to leave office comes as the town is embroiled in several closely-watched legal battles related to shoreline access in the coastal town. Morrone had also been under scrutiny for an aggressive outburst at a recent town council meeting and past work he did for a shoreline fire district that critics said presented a conflict of interest in an ongoing lawsuit.
In his letter announcing his resignation, Morrone said discord over shoreline access in Westerly had influenced his decision.
He cited a July 31 vote on the future of the Watch Hill Lighthouse in which Morrone was the only council member to vote against the town requesting that the federal government give the lighthouse land to the town instead of the private non-profit Watch Hill Lighthouse Keepers Association.
Morrone said he took issue with the vote coming in a special meeting called because of the impending transfer to the Lighthouse Keepers instead of a regular meeting where representatives of the organization could make their case.
Councilors and members of the public were concerned ownership by the Lighthouse Keepers could result in a loss of public shoreline access in the future, which the organization denies.
“That meeting confirmed for me the troubling division in our community and the callous agenda that some have sought, promoted, and achieved,” Morrone said in the statement. “I can no longer participate in a governing body that refuses to recognize and will not fully respect the rights of all its citizens.”
Morrone added, “Despite my best efforts early on to create an environment of collaboration and mutual respect among councilors, the current dynamics do not allow for that.”
Morrone did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Morrone had previously served as town council president and in state government before deciding to run again last year. He was voted in as president after the council took office last November.
Kevin Lowther, who was the Westerly Town Council vice president, said he now becomes acting town council president, although that could change based on a future vote to reorganize the council. Lowther said he was “surprised and saddened” by Morrone’s decision to leave office.
“Because he is an institution,” Lowther said. “He has this lifetime of public service. He has really dedicated himself to this town. But I could see the toll this term has been taking on him.”
Tensions had been running high at council meetings in recent months because of legal cases involving shoreline rights-of-way in the exclusive Weekapaug and Watch Hill sections of Westerly.
Morrone, a Watch Hill property owner, had worked as a consultant for the Watch Hill Fire District and the Watch Hill Conservancy, earning $30,000 from the fire district alone, according to public records.
Those payments became a source of controversy after the Watch Hill Fire District and Watch Hill Conservancy filed a lawsuit in Rhode Island Superior Court in May, seeking to invalidate a town-designated right-of-way to the Napatree Point beach and conservation area.
Advocates for shoreline access asked Morrone to recuse himself from the case, which he refused to do, saying his past work did not pose any current conflicts. Morrone sought an ethics advisory opinion on the matter, and the Rhode Island Ethics Commission cleared Morrone to participate in the case.
Morrone, who defended himself against accusations he was anti-shoreline access, once called a shoreline access advocate “despicable” for requesting documentation of potential fire district payments made to Morrone’s family members.
On Tuesday, that activist, Anthony Palazzolo, Jr., echoed the sentiments of other shoreline access advocates who were glad to see Morrone go.
“He was despicable,” Palazzolo said in a phone interview.
“I am not going to miss Ed Morrone,” said Conrad Ferla, a shoreline access advocate who publicly called out Morrone over his work for the Watch Hill Fire District during public comment before the council.
Ferla added, “I’m glad that somebody who has so many conflicts of interest regarding shoreline access in Westerly will no longer have power in the local government.”
In addition to the lighthouse matter, the town of Westerly is involved in several cases before the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council dealing with possible designation of public rights-of-way to the shore, including the high profile Spring Avenue case involving the Weekapaug Fire District that Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha has intervened in on behalf of the public.
More recently the Weekapaug Fire District filed a motion to hold the town of Westerly in contempt of a 1997 legal agreement for referring another Weekapaug path, the Sand Trail at the Quonochontaug Barrier Beach, to CRMC for potential designation as a public right-of-way.
During a council meeting on Monday, shoreline access advocates asked the town council to use the motion as an opportunity to reexamine the consent judgment and hire outside counsel to ask a judge to void the agreement on the grounds that the town hadn’t properly abandoned a town road when it signed the judgment declaring the Weekapaug Fire District the owner of the Sand Trail.
At the meeting, Westerly Town Solicitor William Conley also found himself under scrutiny from coastal access advocates after an email exhibit in the fire district’s motion revealed Conley previously acknowledged in writing to the fire district that he agrees with its counsel’s interpretation of the consent judgment now at the heart of the case. Conley, who was also criticized for not including the exhibit in materials on the case he gave to councilors, tried to defend his actions during the open portion of the council’s meeting Monday night but was told to hold the discussion for executive session.
Morrone’s decision to resign comes roughly two weeks after he issued a statement at a regular meeting of the town council saying he regretted his behavior at a meeting July 10 when he went on a “profanity-laced tirade,” according to other councilors, and challenged another councilor to “step outside” with him.
One councilor, Joy Cordio, said she also witnessed Morrone throw his briefcase during the outburst that immediately followed an executive session.
Under the Westerly charter, Morrone’s vacated seat on the council is to be filled by the next top unelected vote-getter in the last election – in this case Robert Lombardo, a local attorney known for using town council public comment periods to make provocative and controversial statements.
Alex Nunes can be reached at anunes@thepublicsradio.org
