An infamous legislative leadership committee met for the first time in a decade. Here's what happened.

PROVIDENCE – News flash: Rhode Island's legislative leaders met for the first time in more than a decade on Wednesday as the little-known – but infamous – Joint Committee on Legislative Services.

This is the five-member committee made up of top House and Senate leaders, Republicans and Democrats that, on paper, oversee the General Assembly's $50-million budget, including hiring, firing and spending on items big and small, from bottled water to the provision of new Capitol TV-ready hearing rooms.

More: Controversial Assembly committee to meet for first time in more than 10 years

The committee meeting for the first time since 2011 in itself was noteworthy

Very little news broke out at the group's first meeting since March 8, 2011, except that it took place in one of the newly created hearing rooms, and that long-time state auditor David Bergantino had been elevated to "auditor general" by House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi in late March.

Despite the history leading up to this first-in-a-decade meeting – a dispute that grew into a lawsuit over the "unilateral" decision-making of a former House speaker – House Republican Leader Michael Chippendale said he had no problem with Democrat Shekarchi's action.

"We can't stop government functions to wait for a quarterly meeting," Chippendale said. "It's not feasible."

And in this case, he said, Bergantino was the natural choice after more than two decades in the auditor general's office, an arm of the legislature headed by Dennis Hoyle until his retirement.

Audits, lawsuits and controversy around the committee

That the leadership group met at all was the result of the dropping of a lawsuit filed in 2020 by then-House Minority Leader Blake Filippi to try to wrest unilateral and, he argued, illegal control of the decision-making from then-House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and his subordinates and return it to the JCLS.

"Pretty much everything that happens in here happens unlawfully, because JCLS doesn’t meet and JCLS hasn’t delegated its authority to anyone," Filippi alleged.

The "final straw": Mattiello's call for an audit of the Rhode Island Convention Center after a friend facing dismissal from his job as head of security for the convention center came to him for help. The management of the convention center called for an investigation of a perceived State House "threat"; a grand jury inquiry ensued, and Filippi filed his lawsuit.

"As you are no doubt aware, the Rhode Island Convention Center was recently threatened with an audit by the auditor general, supposedly at the direction of the Joint Committee on Legislative Services," said a letter then-authority Chairman Bernard V. Buonanno Jr. and then-Executive Director James P. McCarvill sent Col. James Manni, then-superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police.

"We have since learned that the JCLS did not authorize that audit."

Mattiello acknowledged that he ordered the audit without a formal vote of the legislative services committee, but a spokesman questioned why the Convention Center was so opposed to "anyone looking at its financial records.

"The taxpayers were responsible for $28.4 million in support for the Convention Center in 2019 and $255 million in the last 10 years. Why is the Authority so opposed to having a performance audit done?” spokesman Larry Berman asked.

Nothing came of the highly publicized grand jury investigation, but the specter of it no doubt contributed to Mattiello's defeat in his 2020 bid for reelection.

Filippi, who surprised Smith Hill by not seeking reelection to the House last year, agreed in February to dismiss his lawsuit in exchange for a commitment by the current House Speaker, K. Joseph Shekarchi, to hold quarterly meetings of the JCLS.

What happened during the meeting?

The agenda: "Construction/Office Improvements Update ... Security Measures Updates (parking lot lighting/automatic defibrillators) ... Employee Manual Update."

Kinch briefed the panel on fresh paint and carpeting in "16 to 17" legislative offices that had been described by their occupants as "embarrassing."

And Bergantino said a half-dozen cities and towns were late in filing their annual audits with his office – East Providence, Coventry, Hopkinton, Lincoln, Middletown and Woonsocket – a situation he attributed to "a calamity of issues related to staffing'' in most of those communities.

"And sometimes, I'll be honest, when you meet with them, it takes all of about 20 minutes to realize that they don't have the right person leading the effort," he said.

The Joint Committee on Legislative Services is made up of the House speaker, House majority leader, House minority leader, Senate president and Senate minority leader.

Because House leadership holds a 3-to-2 majority on the committee, the speaker has historically controlled it and hired the JCLS director, currently Henry Kinch, who runs the legislature's day-to-day operations.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Joint Committee on Legislative Services meets for first time in a decade