After Unveiling Exodus and Stadium Financing Scheme, Commerce RI Hits GoLocal With APRA Fees
GoLocalProv News Team
After Unveiling Exodus and Stadium Financing Scheme, Commerce RI Hits GoLocal With APRA Fees
In recent months, GoLocal has published a series of stories about the agency's management and financing schemes.
Since its establishment in 2010, GoLocal has submitted dozens of document requests to Commerce under four governors. It has always received the records in a timely fashion and has never been charged.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTNow, just days after an article that unveiled that under Commerce Secretary Liz Tanner and Governor Dan McKee’s leadership nearly all of the top executives of the agency have quit, Commerce has a new policy for GoLocal.
The GoLocal report published two weeks ago outlined that under McKee, the number two position at Commerce — the president — has been a revolving door.
When McKee became Governor, the President’s position at Commerce was held by Jesse Saglio, who had served in the role for seven years, most of which were under Governor Gina Raimondo.
He resigned in February of 2022 after one year with McKee.
Hilary Fagan took over as President, and then she resigned in December of 2022. Since then, Bill Ash has served as “acting” president. Now, Ash has announced his departure, and the President’s position will be vacant again.
Under McKee, Commerce will now be looking for its fourth President in two years.
On February 22, GoLocal requested copies of all contracts executed with Zimmerman, the Florida-based advertising firm contracted by Commerce to handle the state's tourism work that has been executed in the past 36 months.
In addition, GoLocal requested:
- All invoices submitted by Zimmerman
- A list of all payments to Zimmerman
The work by Zimmerman has been widely criticized.
Alec Beckett, the creative partner at Nail Communications, took to social media with a damning post about Commerce RI’s new advertising campaign titled “All That.”
“The new tourism campaign from Rhode Island is not bad. But make no mistake it is definitely not good. In fact, it’s something worse than bad: it’s generic,” wrote Beckett.
"There’s lots of bland, generic work out there, so why am I picking on this particular campaign? Because I’m paying for it. Rhode Island taxpayers are footing the bill for the very worthy effort of attracting more tourists to our beautiful little state. So I really want it to work,” he wrote.
In addition, GoLocal was the first to publish a series of articles unveiling the cost of the funding scheme developed by McKee and Tanner to finance the state’s $27 million donation to the construction of the privately owned minor league soccer stadium in Pawtucket.
The cost of funding those dollars, due to a convoluted bond structure, will be approximately $140 million.
INVESTIGATION - Questions Emerge About State’s Due Diligence on Soccer Stadium
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EXCLUSIVE: Soccer Stadium Financing is Riddled With Questions, Says Former Financial Advisor
EXCLUSIVE: Cost of Pawtucket Soccer Stadium Borrowing Explodes, Bonds Scheduled to Close Today
Commerce Denies It Is Retribution
"For the past 14 years, GoLocal has submitted dozens of APRAs and received upwards of 100,000 pages of documents. These are public documents of financing deals and the expenditure of public monies. The charge is insignificant—$129 —but the message is clear. It is a further attempt to create more barriers to access public information to provide to the public," said Josh Fenton, CEO and co-founder of GoLocal.
"It's pathetic," Fenton added.
Matthew Touchette, the agency's spokesperson, claims there has been no policy change.