PROVIDENCE – David Patten, the state property director who is accused of inappropriate behavior by a real estate developer in Philadelphia during a business trip there in March, is resigning at the end of the month, Gov. Daniel J. McKee said Thursday.
Patten, who has been on paid administrative leave since May 30, submitted his resignation effective June 30 at McKee’s request after a “human resources investigation highlighted Mr. Patten’s highly inappropriate conduct, which was disturbing, entirely unacceptable and not representative of Rhode Island’s values or the integrity of our State workforce,” McKee spokesperson Matthew Sheaff said in a statement late Thursday.
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Patten, who is said to have a health issue and went on medical leave three days after the trip, will maintain his health insurance coverage until Sept. 30, Sheaff said.
Earlier Thursday, the R.I. Ethics Commission’s staff outlined complaints against Patten and James Thorsen, the former director of the R.I. Department of Administration, for potential violations of the state ethics code during the trip, which has garnered national attention, WPRI-TV CBS 12 reported. The commission is expected to vote on June 27 on whether to authorize a full investigation.
“The commission has the ability to self-initiate complaints when it has reasonable, reliable information that leads to a possible ethics violation … and that is what we did,” Jason Gramitt, the commission’s executive director, told WPRI-TV.
In an email to McKee, Philadelphia real estate developer Scout Ltd. claimed Patten displayed bizarre, offensive behavior that was “blatantly sexist, racist and unprofessional” during the daylong trip when Patten and Thorsen visited Scout on March 10 to discuss the redevelopment of the Cranston Street Armory. Scout officials also claimed Thorsen, who left his state job in April to rejoin the U.S. Treasury Department, failed to intervene.
The McKee administration fought for months to keep the email secret but released it after Attorney General Peter F. Neronha ruled in favor of WPRI-TV and The Providence Journal in an open-records complaint.
The ethics commission complaints suggest Patten and Thorsen may have violated a Rhode Island law that bars public officials from receiving any financial gain or reward from their public positions, as well as an ethics regulation that bars officials from accepting any single item worth over $25 or collection of gifts worth over $75 from someone with business before the government, WPRI-TV reported.
“I will just say that we had heard of the trip, but we had not seen the email until everyone else saw it last week, and upon reviewing the email we made a decision that it was worth investigating,” Gramitt told WPRI-TV.
On Tuesday, Thorsen said through a statement from his attorney that he was aware that Patten “was behaving strangely during this trip and was not representing the state in an appropriate or positive way.
“This presented a dilemma on how to complete the meeting, but because of the time constraints, I endeavored to do so,” Thorsen said in the statement.
Thorsen said the clarification “of greatest importance” to him was that “I did not make any remark or make any statement to any person that was racially or sexually insensitive or inappropriate. I do not engage in that type of speech or conduct,” according to a WPRI-TV report.
Thorsen also asserted that he “did not request or have anyone else request preferential treatment from Scout.”
Thorsen also claimed he was “in the dark” that Patten demanded Scout open a high-end Italian restaurant to serve the officials lunch that day in Philadelphia.
“I sat down to eat with two Scout Ltd. representatives at around 11 a.m.,” he said, according to a WPRI-TV report. “There were no other diners in the restaurant at that time. Because it was so early, I did not attach significance to that observation.”
(Update: Story recast with Patten’s resignation.)
