Access Denied
Two Coventry Town Councilmen resigned abruptly this week - the culmination of a months-long dispute over access to the details of the town’s burgeoning legal bills. Meanwhile, the council’s president says the war of words crossed a line, and she is filing a complaint with the attorney general’s office against one of the formal councilman. Jim Hummel hears from both sides.
COVENTRY - What began several months ago as a dispute over legal invoices culminated this week in the abrupt resignation of two councilmen - followed by the council president filing a complaint with the attorney general’s office, saying one of them made threats of sexual violence directed at her.
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James E. LeBlanc, a former council vice president, and Scott R. Copley sent letters to the Town Clerk on Monday, outlining what led to their resignations just five months after they were elected.
“I wanted to make a difference, but unfortunately with this sitting Town Council and the (Town) Solicitor that wasn’t going to happen,” Copley, a first-term councilman, told The Hummel Report after submitting his resignation.
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Meanwhile, Council President Hillary V. Lima told The Hummel Report Tuesday afternoon that she had filed a complaint earlier in the day with the attorney general’s office and asked for a no trespass order against Copley. She said it was based on a conversation Copley had last month with the council’s vice president, John-Paul A. Verducci, who relayed that Copley was upset that Lima would not put an item he had requested on the agenda and used a sexually-explicit phrase directed at her.
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Copley, in an interview Tuesday, admitted he was heated and used foul language during the conversation with Verducci, but denied that he directed any threats at Lima. The saga played out for nearly two hours at Tuesday night’s council meeting as a packed audience - many supporters of LeBlanc and Copley who learned of the resignations on social media - heckled the council and Solicitor Stephen Angell.
LeBlanc and Copley, in separate interviews, said they have been trying for months to get detailed invoices of work performed by Angell, who was appointed in 2022 when LeBlanc was the council vice president. The now-former councilmen said they had constituents ask them about the burgeoning legal costs that were fueled largely by litigation surrounding the town’s condemnation of Johnston’s Pond.
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LeBlanc noted that the town’s legal bills last year had ballooned to just under $900,000. Only a portion of that went to Angell’s firm, as experts and other lawyers were brought in on the Johnson’s Pond case and other litigation.
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The town’s finance director, Robert Civetti, told Copley he didn’t have details of the legal expenditures - and that only Lima and Verducci received unredacted bills, which they reviewed and sent to Civetti for payment.
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In a March 4 email, Civetti wrote Copley: “I have been working in the government/municipal environment as an auditor, consultant and now finance director for more than 35 years and I have never been in a situation where the finance director or auditors did not have access to the unredacted legal invoices.”
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At a council meeting last month Copley got into a testy exchange with Angell. Copley said the solicitor responded that would not provide unredacted copies because they had sensitive information. “I was dumbfounded,” Copley said. “I challenged him on it: I said where is the authority? I am your client.”
The two former councilmen said if the president and vice president have access to the information, every council member should have it, as they have to answer to their constituents as well.
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“Why are our legal bills going up every year since (Angell) come on board?” Copley said. “And when you question it, the response is: ‘it’s okay, don’t worry about it.’ That’s not what the taxpayers put me there for; I need to worry about that.”
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Copley said he found it ironic that the council wants to go through the School Department’s budget line by line and complain what it spends, “but you don’t want to look at your own solicitor’s budget and see what he’s charging us for? It doesn’t make any sense.
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“I asked for: who did you talk to, when did you talk to them, the topic you talked about, the time and date and the billable amount,” he added. “I’m not asking for specifics about what you talked about, I just want to see bullet points and what you’re charging for. No one is going to see the bill, I’m going to see it because we want to make sure (Angell is) not screwing us.”
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LeBlanc agreed: “Our financial director is responsible for the finances of our town, he should be able to audit, ask questions, corroborate that hours, actually were incurred,” LeBlanc said.
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LeBlanc also took issue with Lima’s reviewing and processing the invoices, saying that it violated a section of the Coventry town charter that says council members “shall have no administrative duties” - something he said he has repeatedly brought up with no response.
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Angell told The Hummel Report he has handled invoices this way with other communities where he has been the solicitor with no issue.
In a wide-ranging interview Tuesday afternoon, Lima defended the process, adding the council had discussed the concerns of LeBlanc and Copley at three meetings, and she was ready to move on. Lima also noted that LeBlanc, who was her council vice president when Angell was initially hired, never raised the issue. LeBlanc was first elected in 2020 and Copley last fall.
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The new council voted 7 to 0 in January to approve Angell’s contract. “I’m not sure what happened after that meeting and into March, but there seemed to be some issue with the contract. I don’t know if (Copley and LeBlanc) didn’t read it, or missed it, but then all of a sudden the invoice process became an issue.
“I don’t know what’s changed since we had the unanimous vote with no discussion - to now becoming so vitriolic and ultimately leading to resignations. It’s kind of unfortunate that this happened less than six months after a general election and now those two districts won’t have elected representation for an extended period of time.”
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Lima said she has spoken with the Rhode Island Board of Elections and it looks like the earliest a primary could take place would be July, with a general election in August. She estimated the elections would cost a total of $40,000.
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She also noted there was a confluence of complex issues that came together just as she took over as council president several years ago: Johnson’s Pond, the receivership at Centre of New England, a school deficit and a municipal fire commission studying whether to bring the town’s four independent fire districts under the wing of town government.
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Lima added that the Johnston Pond litigation alone has cost taxpayers between $400,000 and $500,000, but that the solicitor account is on track to come in under budget when the fiscal year ends in June.
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“Everything that’s ever plagued this town is happening at the same time and our legal department is not immune to that,” Lima said. “There are extremely complex pieces of litigation that have come through this town in just the four years I’ve been on this council. Unfortunately we can’t always help when a town is pulled into a suit or litigation.”
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She then turned to her complaint against Copley. “I have a lot of people online saying that I lied about this threat that Mr. Copley made, and I want people to know that I wouldn’t make something like this up.”
It was Angell who contacted the Coventry Police after Verducci told him about the conversation, saying they needed to take what Copley said seriously.
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Copley disputes Verducci’s version of their conversation, saying he was upset that he and Lima wouldn’t put the legal invoices issue on the agenda, but denied threatening the council president.
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Lima remains unconvinced. “I think we’re in a world that’s becoming increasingly desensitized to dangerous language like that and we’re in a world where people don’t want to step up and run for office or be public officials,” she said. “I think it’s important to stand up and say that that’s not okay to speak to or about people like that.”
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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.
