Conflict Of Interest?

SCITUATE - A councilman who negotiated a 10-year tax deal for the town with the Providence Water Supply Board approached the agency a year later, asking that it pay him $300,000 for a conservation easement on 60 acres of land he bought a mile and a half from the reservoir.

Councilman Timothy McCormick told Providence Water at the time he would seek an advisory opinion from the Rhode Island Ethics Commission, but never did. He eventually built a $1 million, 3,400-square-foot home with an in-ground pool on Trimtown Road, on a five-acre parcel carved out from the conservation easement.

The easement protects 60 of the 65 acres McCormick bought, from development. Just south of his house is a bank of solar panels that is also within that development envelope.

“I didn’t really see the need to get an advisory opinion,” McCormick said in an interview with The Hummel Report on Monday, adding that he recused himself from votes involving the water supply board after the tax treaty was signed.

But Scituate resident Richard Finnegan says the recusal can’t undo the financial transaction between McCormick and Providence Water. Earlier this year, Finnegan sent the Rhode Island Ethics Commission an 8-page complaint, with 173 pages of supporting exhibits that include council minutes and correspondence between McCormick and the water supply board.

“The question is why did the Providence Water Supply Board purchase this piece of property?” Finnegan said. “Why did they allow (McCormick) to build a house on it if they wanted it for a conservation easement?”

The house, which originally called for nearly 4,400 square feet but was scaled back, sits well back from Trimtown Road behind a line of trees.

Finnegan is a retired state employee who worked in the state court system for decades and served as a bail commissioner for many years. He has a law degree and a master’s degree in public administration and has regularly attended Town Council meetings the past four decades.

As a result, he said residents periodically approach him when they have concerns about what’s going on in town, but are hesitant to speak publicly.

“I love government, I love how it works and I like to be an informed citizen,” he said, adding that he gets the occasional eye roll from council members when he speaks at meeting. “It’s a shame that more people don’t get involved because they’ll complain afterward and say ‘I can’t believe they did this.’ Well, you should have gotten up to the microphone and let them know what you thought.”

Shortly after McCormick built his house in 2022, a neighbor asked Finnegan about what appeared to be a low tax assessment. That led Finnegan into a months- long review of building permits, Town Council minutes and video - and eventually the conservation easement McCormick negotiated with Providence Water. The agency initially refused to give Finnegan documents he requested, but relented when he pointed to sections of law that required them to produce the material.

McCormick was first elected to the Town Council in November 2018. At his first meeting in early 2019, he asked to be the first council liaison to Providence Water, the town’s largest landowner and taxpayer.

“(We’ve) got to maintain a close relationship with these folks and maintain an ongoing relationship,” he said at the time, according to meeting minutes and video available online. “It just can’t be every 10 years when we have a tax treaty.”

The next month, the council appointed a negotiating committee that included McCormick and two other council members, tasked with reaching a new tax treaty with Providence Water.

McCormick acknowledged to The Hummel Report he did not include the other council members - or an attorney to help negotiate. Voters at that year’s Financial Town Meeting allocated $75,000 specifically to hire an lawyer for the negotiations.

Finnegan said the town never got a new appraisal, even though Providence Water had added significantly to its land holdings - and completed major renovations and improvements to its filtration complex - since the previous tax treaty with the town had been signed.

“I briefed (the two other council members), but they weren’t necessarily at the table,” McCormick said. ““When you’re in negotiations like that you have to understand who has the leverage. The water supply board had a lot of leverage over the town of Scituate. They’ve got an enormous legal reserves, when if push came to shove they would deploy.”

Asked why he didn’t take advantage of an attorney, approved by voters, McCormick, a retired equity analyst, said: “Ultimately anything negotiated comes back to the council and the attorneys have an opportunity to weigh in on it at that point in time. So nothing’s definitive with regard to what’s negotiated with the water supply board.”

Finnegan said the public did not get the opportunity to weigh in on the specifics of the agreement before ratification. “What’s really disturbing is (McCormick) negotiated that tax treaty, which is a horrific treaty for the residents of Scituate. And they negotiated it in secret and approved it in secret without having any public input from the taxpayers and residents of Scituate,” he said.

McCormick described the final agreement, ratified by the Providence City Council late in 2019 as “a fair deal for the town of Scituate.”

The agency’s General Manager Ricky Caruolo, in a letter to then-Providence City Council President Sabina Matos, described the agreement as having “favorable terms” for the city of Providence.

In late 2020, McCormick and his wife Erika - a longtime member of the Scituate School Committee - bought the 65-acre tract on Trimtown Road for $650,000 that he says he’d had his eye on for years. The next spring he approached Providence Water about the conservation easement.

Richard Blodgett, the agency’s environmental resources manager, emailed three senior managers, noting that he had been contacted by “Timothy McCormick, who is presently on The Scituate Town Council.”

“Tim mentioned he will be making a presentation to the state Ethics Commission in an effort to ward off any politically-motivated assertions in Scituate that he is colluding with Providence Water (i.e. a claim that Tim negotiated a tax treaty which was favorable to Providence Water in exchange for purchasing a conservation easement from him),” Blodgett wrote.

Blodgett added that McCormick asked that the agency to send a letter expressing its interest in protecting the land - even though he had approached Providence Water. “He would then submit this to the state Ethics Commission along with other documents he has prepared. Although such a request is a bit unusual, I don’t see why we couldn’t write such a letter.”

Based on that presentation, the agency moved forward with purchasing the conservation easement from McCormick.

Providence Water said it has a scoring system to “objectively rank properties being considered for acquisition for water quality protection,” a spokesman for the agency told The Hummel Report. The parcel McCormick purchased was rated 55 out of 100.

Based on two appraisals it did on the property, the water supply board offered him $292,000 for a conservation easement on 60 acres, with a five-acre “envelope” that would allow him to build a house. McCormick said the bank of solar panels lies within that envelope.

McCormick countered, asking Providence Water for $300,000, which it agreed to.

Finnegan said: ““I think it’s very clear he was in a business relationship with the city of Providence Water supply Board and he was working as an agent for the city of Providence Water supply Board when he was negotiating the tax treaty.”

McCormick said there was no way he knew, when he asked to be appointed as the council liaison to the water supply board, that he’d be buying land - then asking for conservation easement - two years later.

The executive director of The Rhode Island Ethics Commission earlier this year told Finnegan it was not going to pursue an investigation of his allegations, saying “your submission does not set forth a substantive violation of The Code of Ethics.” However, McCormick did not list the conservation easement on his annual disclosure form and the commission allowed him to amend the form.

McCormick said it was an oversight, and not intentional.

So why bring this up now? Finnegan, who is unaffiliated, said voters need to know the full story about the financial relationship between Providence Water and McCormick , a Republican seeking his fourth term on the council. Finnegan said he has voted for both Democrats and Republicans over the years and his criticism is not political.

McCormick said it feels personal, adding that he has done nothing wrong. “It’s a shame, because (the public criticism) dissuades people from running for office,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that this type of thing happens. It is what it is.”

The Hummel Report is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies, in part, on donations. For more information, go to HummelReport.org. Reach Jim at Jim@HummelReport.org