August 25, 2005 – Former Rhode Island Sen. John A. Celona pleaded guilty today to federal fraud charges. Celona admitted he accepted money and gifts from corporations that had interests in legislation pending before the General Assembly and that he used his position as a senator and committee chairman to fraudulently advance the interests of those corporations. … At the plea hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gerald B. Sullivan said, had the case gone to trial, the government would have proven that Celona deprived Rhode Islanders of the benefit of his honest services when he represented them. … Celona admitted that he accepted consulting fees or other benefits that were intended to affect pending legislation.
John Celona was supposed to be one of the good guys – one of those regular neighborhood guys.
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And, by all accounts, he was. He was someone you might run into at the market, at a soccer field or maybe a Little League game.
Celona used to run a small business on Mineral Spring Avenue in North Providence. You could get things fixed there, like lawn mowers. Lots of people would go by to just visit and sit around and talk over coffee.
He got himself elected to local office and did that for a while. And then he got elected to the state Legislature. And that’s where, you get the impression, it all got more complicated.
For a while, he did a lot of neat things that didn’t harm anyone. Remember when he made sure there was a sign on Douglas Pike reminding everyone that Rhode Island was – at least until recently – the “summer home of the New England Patriots.”
Celona embraced the role of cheerleader for the state. For a while, he may have led the Legislature in press releases, whether it was touting a grant for a youth program or an initiative that was creating new jobs.
It was all going so well.
But it appears Celona did what so many others have done before him. He stayed too long. The pats on his back must have gone to his head. He started to like the idea of power.
Celona became chairman of a Senate subcommittee. He even floated the idea of running for lieutenant governor.
But according to the U.S. attorney’s office, as Celona became more powerful he also stopped working for us and started working for himself.
Though not named specifically in court papers, Celona’s crimes center on his dealings with three corporate entities: Roger Williams Medical Center, CVS/pharmacy and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.
According to a statement from the U.S. attorney after Celona’s guilty plea was accepted:
*Between 1998 and 2003, the medical center paid Celona $260,683 in consulting fees through an assisted-living facility that it partly owns. Celona performed numerous tasks on the medical center’s behalf. Among them, he opposed legislation that would prohibit the center’s officials from continuing to serve if the medical center converted from nonprofit to for-profit;
*Between 2000 and 2003, the pharmacy corporation paid Celona consultant fees totaling $45,000. Prior to his consulting agreement with the pharmacy, Celona supported Pharmacy Freedom of Choice legislation, which the pharmacy company opposed. After he became a paid consultant for the pharmacy corporation, he stopped supporting the legislation. The pharmacy company also treated Celona to a charity golf tournament in San Diego;
*In 2002, the health insurance company began paying a communications company to produce a cable access television program for Celona. Celona had introduced executives of the communications company to executives of the health insurance company to persuade them to enter the arrangement. Celona then used his influence as chairman of the Senate Corporations Committee to benefit the health insurance company in various ways. Among his actions, he supported a bill to allow insurers greater flexibility designing health benefit plans and opposed a bill regulating investments by a nonprofit dental insurance company.
That’s a brief summary, of course. In court, the U.S. attorney’s statement ran on for 22 pages of details.
Celona will be sentenced in early December. The maximum penalty for each of the three counts of mail fraud to which he pled guilty is five years and a $250,000 fine.
John Celona stayed at the party too long. A lot of them do.
It makes you wonder if term limits wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.
