A state doesn’t get to Rhode Island’s current condition unless every institution that’s supposed to be a corrective to the corrupting power of government is perverted.  And so:

[According to the state Ethics Commission, it] is OK for School Committee Chairwoman Andrea M. Iannazzi to participate in decisions that affect school bus drivers and mechanics, even though her father administers a benefits fund for the labor union that represents those employees. …

The ethics advisory opinion was based on a letter to the commission written for Andrea Iannazzi by Ronald F. Cascione, School Committee lawyer. Cascione said Donald Iannazzi’s fund works on behalf of a North Providence unit of Local 1322 — not the unit that represents Cranston school bus drivers and mechanics.

Rhode Islanders have to consider the Ethics Commission to be a detrimental force to the extent that it effectively becomes a board to determine the outermost limits of conflict that are allowed, thereby defusing any political controls against corruption short of that.  Put differently, voters can and should insist on a higher ethical threshold than the commission possibly can, because voters are not bound by legal language and regulatory restrictions, but they are less likely to be able to do so in the face of official rulings.

The realities of electoral politics, especially at the town level, make the commission’s advisory opinions a sort of clean bill of health for fundamental corruption, thwarting the power of the public’s common sense.

Worse, this clean bill is acquired at taxpayer expense, because they are paying the lawyers who massage the legalisms for incumbents.  Meanwhile, as with campaign finance reporting, newcomers who just want to serve their communities in elective office become targets for smears because they lack those taxpayer-funded resources.