Gov. Daniel J. McKee and Attorney General Peter F. Neronha are apparently not on speaking terms, most recently due to an ongoing dispute over funding for the latter’s office. While such disputes between public officials, especially over funding, are not uncommon, the public would be best served by both men resolving their differences quickly.
Some observers see benefits to the dispute because it’s led Mr. Neronha to publicly air his grievances with a fellow Democrat. In so doing, he’s shone a light on part of a behind-the-scenes budget-negotiating process that Democrats have tightly controlled for decades in the General Assembly.
But that benefit, however welcome, is an unintended consequence and likely fleeting.
The bigger question is whether the public’s business is being affected. While the two offices don’t need to be in lockstep, they do need to work together.
The attorney general’s office is often called to represent the administration and state departments in legal disputes. Earlier this year, however, Mr. Neronha declined to represent the McKee administration in a legal dispute over the removal of a homeless encampment on the Statehouse lawn in which the governor eventually prevailed.
The state, at Mr. Neronha’s direction, has also hired an outside attorney in an ongoing dispute with an insurer over recouping $40 million in fraudulent unemployment payouts.
Would a happier, better-funded attorney general’s office have taken on either case? Such speculation, fair or not, will only grow with each new case as long as the two leaders remain publicly at odds.