Neronha says ‘no laws were broken’ in real estate project involving McKee’s ex-chief of staff
CUMBERALND, R.I. (WLNE) — Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said Wednesday that “no laws were broken” in a real estate project involving Gov. Dan McKee’s ex-chief of staff.
Anthony Silva stepped down from his position last August after a complaint was filed against him, saying that he used political power to push a wetlands development project on land owned by his family.
Town officials and community members were against Silva building on the land because it would exacerbate flooding problems in the area. They also expressed concern that Silva and his family received preferential treatment because of his political status.
The attorney general’s office released it’s official report on the matter, which can be found here.
The report read in part, “His persistence put state regulatory officials and employees — and not all of them were at high levels of the agency — in very difficult and unenviable positions, in that they
knew they were dealing with an important political figure and yet had rules and regulations to follow. He pressured Town of Cumberland officials, and whether he intended to play the role of the heavy or not, that is plainly how his conduct was interpreted.”
Neronha reiterated that Silva did nothing illegal in the report’s conclusion, stating, “We come back to where we began. No laws were broken here, based on the facts as we found them and the applicable Rhode Island law.”
“At bottom, in our view, Mr. Silva exercised very poor judgment. As a person with power, he should have distanced himself from a matter before a state agency in which he had a personal interest, whether he had the authority to control the ultimate outcome or not,” the attorney general added.
In a statement to ABC 6 News, Andrea Palagi, who’s the governor’s communications director, said Wednesday’s report came at the request of McKee.
“The attorney general confirmed what Governor McKee has said from the beginning — the governor had no involvement in this matter and no laws were broken,” she said in part in a release.
