RIPTA wants out of $84K lobbying contract with Fung's law firm

PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority is seeking to get out of the $84K lobbying contract it gave the law firm that employs former Cranston Mayor, two-time GOP candidate for governor and congressional hopeful Allan Fung.

At a meeting on Wednesday, the RIPTA board voted to direct management to discuss with Pannone Lopes Devereaux & O’Gara LLC "a mutual agreement to dissolve the contract and/or select another PLDO staff member to manage the contract."

Asked to clarify the intent, RIPTA spokeswoman Cristy Raposo Perry said: "A staff member other than Fung." (She did not respond to Journal questions about the reason for the board's action.)

But when asked for comment, Patrick Crowley, the secretary-treasurer of the R.I. AFL-CIO told The Journal: “I’m thankful my fellow board members voted to direct RIPTA management to see if there is a way to mutually agree to dissolve this contract.

"It was a mistake to enter into the agreement without consulting the board, especially given what I see as a conflict of interest with Mr. Fung, given his participation in the continuing contract lawsuit which names as defendants the General Assembly leadership and the Governor.”

PLDO is the law firm that hired Fung as a partner in February 2021 after his 12-year mayoral run ended. And the lobbying contract does not give RIPTA an easy out.

It says: "If RIPTA terminates this agreement during the [legislative] session, then RIPTA shall pay, within thirty (30) days of terminauon, $84,000 MINUS any payments already made to PLDO Strategies."

In a telephone interview with The Journal last month after the contract surfaced, RIPTA Chairman Normand Benoit said that, in his mind, RIPTA was hiring Matthew Lopes, another long-time lobbyist at the same firm with whom he worked well to get legislative grant funding for Boys & Girls Clubs in the past.

He surmised: "the firm [has] the contract. Allan probably listed himself as one of five or whatever [at PLDO Strategies] out of an abundance of caution. And maybe he will talk to somebody here and there, a Republican. I don't know. I don't know how that happened. In my mind, we were hiring Matty."

Benoit said the decision to hire a seasoned State House lobbyist evolved out of several concerns, chief among them the "fiscal cliff" the public transit agency faces after FY24, when "all of our federal money runs out." That includes the $29.6 million in Federal Emergency Relief (CARES) dollars the state is counting on to pay a big chunk of RIPTA's operating expenses next year.

"Unless we somehow get a new source of revenue that is sustainable from the General Assembly," Benoit said, "we will have to make really massive cuts to how many runs we can do, how many routes we can do."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RIPTA seeks to drop $84K lobbying contract with Fung's law firm