GoLocalProv Endorsement: Attorney General
Editorial
GoLocalProv Endorsement: Attorney General
The 2022 election for Rhode Island attorney general is essentially a referendum on current AG Peter Neronha.
By all accounts, Neronha is a forthright and seasoned lawyer of high rectitude. A former U.S. attorney, he has the experience to be an outstanding state attorney general.
But unfortunately, in neither the 2018 election cycle nor this one has Neronha faced a viable opponent. Competitive elections make elected officials better.
Neronha’s first term has been the tale of two worlds. His first two years appeared, from the outside, to be rudderless.
For example, after promising as a candidate to pursue political corruption, he came out of the box with a failed case involving alleged money laundering and campaign-finance violations against Jeffrey Britt, who had served as a political consultant to then-Speaker Nicholas Mattiello. Many believed that the case was an overreach.
The attorney general lost the case, and his office was, in effect, spanked by the trial judge.
No elected or appointed official has been charged by Neronha in his four years.
More happily, he has been effective in pursuing such cases as pursuing landlords who violate lead-paint laws, and thus place children in harm’s way, and in helping to protect Block Island’s Great Salt Pond from what would have been an egregious expansion of Champlin’s Marina.
Meanwhile, the state’s prosecution involving the dumping of contaminated material into one of the state’s poorest neighborhoods is pending. Yet more needs to be done on environmental issues.
In any event, Neronha still has the opportunity to become one of Rhode Island’s best attorney generals.
So we endorse him for a second term -- in which we hope to see more energetic and varied action to protect the public than we’ve seen in his first term.