All the problems faced by Providence Mayor Buddy "Vincent A." Cianci,
who's about to go on trial in federal court, almost pale in comparison to the
sideshow unfolding in Cranston. The Bud-I should feel a bit aggrieved to be
targeted for all the abuse about political scandal while a cast of characters
that includes more second-rate punks, pimps, and thieves than a Hubert Selby
Jr. novel has run Cranston over the past three decades.
Prominent among them is our pal Joe DeLorenzo, the disgraced City Council
president, who went whining to court, seeking an injunction to keep his
position, after his council cronies attempted a palace coup. (Actually, in
Cranston, the palaces are all ostentatious split-levels with fake Doric
columns, with eye-popping tasteless large statuary on the lawn, and a Virgin
Mary shrine in the back garden, but we digress. Just think Ed DiPrete's idea of
class.)
Was it due to DeLorenzo's part in running the city into the ground? Hell, no.
It was getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar and Harrah's pocket while
employed at Secretary of State Ed Inman's office. I mean, we don't mind if you
Catholic priest-us in our own backyard, but the airs of the man to go off and
do it at the state level!
DeLorenzo's troubles at Halitosis Hall are essentially because he's part of
the Neanderthal Harwood League, House Speaker Pucky Harwood's personal NHL. As
chief of staff for Inman, Harwood's NHL appointee and hockey-playing pal, Joe
D. got caught serving as intermediary, oops, "relationship person," for
Harrah's in the local pursuit of a Narragansett casino. Since DeLorenzo just
happens to be a business partner of Harwood's and a charter NHL player, more
than a few deaf, dumb, and blind people sensed that it might be a tad unethical
for "Twin Oaks Joe" to provide an in for the speaker's preferred gambling
franchise. Word was rampant that Harrah's had the "green light" from the NHL's
third-floor headquarters.
This little wheeling-and-dealing cost DeLorenzo his job, after Inman was
finally shamed into canning his fellow NHLer. It was then revealed that
DeLorenzo had steered a handshake contract to another Cranston colleague,
Stephen Cuomo, the city's former director of administration, giving him 20
cents on the dollar for any money he raised for the secretary of states'
convention in Little Rhody this summer. Perhaps Joe forgot he had already hired
a fundraiser to the tune of $50,000. Your bad, eh, Joe?
The topper was that DeLorenzo also hired a legitimate NHLer -- former National
Hockey League player Chris Nilan -- whose work for the Smith Hill NHL is
largely undocumented, except for the fact that Harwood's personal secretary
called in his hours each week. Jeez, no sign of the speaker's paw prints there,
eh? Did you get his autograph, too, Pucky?
The best carnival act in town may now be watching Cuomo's business partner in
this glorified kickback scheme, state Representative Frank Montanaro, trying to
squirm out of trouble. He told the Urinal, "That's [Cuomo's] own deal. We
basically just do our own thing." Isn't that what Enron's Ken Lay said about
Jeffrey Skilling? We can't wait for the sparks to fly, never mind the
inevitable court drama when Cuomo, Montanaro, and their company are asked to
return the money they accepted -- now estimated to be around $20,000 in pledges
-- because they don't have a signed contract, just another of DeLorenzo's
oversights while playing in the NHL.
Who says the NHL is boring?
More on (or is that moron?) Cranston
While the belief of many Cranstonians is that Joe D.'s time is up and he ought
to go, the method employed by the majority of the city council to remove him
from the council presidency appears dubious at best. And the attempt to deep
six vice-president David Hersey because of "health considerations" was
deplorable. Hersey's heart condition can't be any worse than another vice
president that we know of and we don't hear any official bodies clamoring to
have that fellow removed. The Governor's Commission on Disabilities got right
on the case, issuing a statement that called the attempted removal of Hersey "a
slap in the face" to all people with disabilities.
It might be in the best interests of everyone for the state to take over the
business of running Cranston, as the circus atmosphere threatens to intensify.
At this point, most of the combatants appear to have reverted to the
time-honored practice of scapegoating. The angry meeting at the Cranston East
auditorium on Monday, April 8, featured not just a city council fresh from a
day in court, trying to overthrow its leadership, but the reemergence of CUT
(Cranston United Taxpayers), an angry mob-cum-"organization." Highly skilled
provocateurs they may be, but Cranston needs productive proposals far more than
disruptive tactics.
It seemed as if things couldn't get worse than the mob-like atmosphere in the
auditorium when Mayor O'Leary was shouted down with derisive taunts of, "Speak
only when you're spoken to," but things actually did get worse. The meeting
reached its nadir when a bunch of "concerned citizens" hooted down a
14-year-old Cranston High School West student who gamely tried to defend the
mayor and city council.
Web intrigue
Speaking of Plunder Dome, if you've gone to the Urinal's Web site to begin your
homework for the upcoming trial, the archival Plunder stories that were once
available at no charge have gone missing. Why? It appears that in another
cost-cutting effort -- pardon the redundancy in our using this phrase every
time we mention the Other Paper -- the Belo Corporation, which owns the Urinal,
has assumed the BeloJo site into its own corporate network. The end result is
that visitors have to slog through a behind-the-scene technical morass to get
where they're going. This may account for people having already noticed
belojo.com being slower, with less content, and as one Fountain Streeter points
out, "it still looks like crap."
Unfortunately, this seems to contradict the current house ad campaign, in
which the Urinal boasts, "You'll experience a more convenient design with
enhanced functionality that allows you to access more of what you're looking
for -- even faster."
Yep, there's that Bridal Planner just when we needed it.
Browned off
While it took a while for the Brown University community to finally realize
that United Parcel Service was usurping the school's good name in its current
"What can Brown do for you?" ad campaign, the shipping company's tweak of the
upturned College Hill nose didn't go unnoticed by others, notably the staff of
Saturday Night Live. On the April 6 show, in a sketch featuring
ultra-fragrant hostess Cameron Diaz, a group of "kids" are partying on spring
break when one yells, "Go Brown!" When Diaz turns and asks him if he attends
Brown University, the reveler replies, no, he just works for UPS.
Brown University -- where their tuition is greater than UPS's corporate
profits.
Sleep tight, Ms. Simmons.
Profit uber alles, pt. 2
An item that appeared in this column two weeks ago concerning the nefarious
ways of the BeloJo advertising department rang a bell with a Vo Dilunduh who
had a run-in with the Other Paper's obit department. For obvious reasons, she
has asked that we refrain from using the names of those involved. We'll call
her S.
Last summer, a close friend's young daughter had died on the West Coast. The
parents flew out to have her body cremated, bring the ashes home, and they
asked S. to help in arranging the local details. She called the Urinal to
inquire about obituaries and death notices and was told that a paid death
notice is almost mandatory since the paper won't run an "in lieu of flowers,
please send contributions to" item as part of an obit. She was also told that
the paper would not hold obits -- they would be printed in the next edition
after being received.
The memorial service was to be held on a Wednesday and the parents wanted the
information in the Sunday paper. S. arranged for the $140 death notice to run
in the Sunday paper, holding the obituary until Saturday (the day before, as
she had been told), whereupon she e-mailed it to the paper.
On the Sunday in question, the death notice appeared, but not the obituary.
The paper had apparently found the death of sufficient interest to contact the
parents and do an "obituary feature," which S. discovered, after many calls to
the paper, would run on Tuesday.
In what she describes as "a stunning display of greed," the paper charged S.'s
credit card twice for the death notice. "I had followed all their rules . . .
submitting the obituary the day before I wanted it to run, arranging for the
death notice to run on the same day. But they violated their own rules and I
was expected to pay for it."
After three phone calls had not been returned, S. finally reached someone at
the paper, and "after much struggle, they, in their `generosity' refunded $40
of the second charge for the second death notice. I was too tired and sad to
fight any more."
Where does the money go?
After Ian Donnis's reports in this paper on all the buyouts, cutbacks, and
various belt-tightening employed by the mighty Belo Corporation of Dallas,
owners of our daily BeloJo, you may wonder where all the saved money is going.
After all, they couldn't have blown it all on that dumbass :CueCat.
We're sure that Providence Newspaper Guild members, still laboring without a
contract, will be happy to know that Belo paid Burl Osborne, who retired last
summer as publisher of the Dallas Morning News and president of Belo's
publishing unit, a little $2 million retirement package last year. That's part
of their supplemental executive-retirement plan and doesn't count his 2001
salary of $610,000
But wait, there's more! According to the Wall Street Journal of April
10, Belo agreed to pay Osborne another million this year, as well as an
additional $436,811 for unused vacation and medical costs. Some may wonder how
a company that suffered a net loss of $2.7 million last year can afford to
shell out this kind of money. Maybe that's why they closed the Newport bureau.
Sleep tight, Ms. Simmons.
Send stuffies, nods and winks, and Pulitzer-grade tips to p&j[a]phx.com.
Issue Date: April 12 - 18, 2002
