AG Peter Neronha with Col. Steve O'Donnell

Welcome back to the Tara Granahan Show, Steve O'Donnell filling in for Tara on a busy morning. I've asked our Attorney General to come on and talk about the Inspector General position. So from the Seekong Supply Hotline, welcome to the show, Peter, as you want me to refer to you by the Attorney General, Norona. Hi, Steve. How are you? Good morning. So I know it's political season. Won't ask you political questions. I don't think it's appropriate, especially from my perspective as a fill-in. But I know Inspector General is out there. And one of the things that I've noticed is Joe Walsh, 40 years ago, asked for an Inspector General, and here we are. We're getting one. For the listeners, the committee is consisted of, obviously, our Attorney General, Peter Nerona, Will Fletcher, who's the president of the Association of Inspector Generals. He's also an Inspector General overseeing New York, New Jersey, Passenger Rail Tunnel. Also, the other commissioners, I believe, are Jason Grammet, who's the Ethics Commission Executive Director. Secretary of State Greg Amory and General Treasurer James Dioz along with Will Fletcher. So talk about the commission and talk about the process of getting a person, their background interviews, and then that person, once they're hired, what will be their role? And then the second very piece is the legislation that carved out the legislatures from this process, if we can talk about that. Yeah, so really quickly, we've made good progress, the five of us, work well together. We have a posting up for the position. Obviously, it's public. It's on the Secretary of State's website, and I believe it's on ours as well. We're accepting applications for the next couple of weeks. We have a deadline to get three names to the governor by the end of September, and then he has some period of time in which to make a selection. So that's the process. Who would the Inspector General work for, General? Yeah, well, they would be semi-independent, you know. You know, it's sort of, they get their budget set by the General Assembly. And so, you know, as someone's been Attorney General now for eight years, the budget process, I think, is the weakness for any entity that is trying to find truth if it's set by somebody else. I mean, I had constant budget struggles over the course of my eight years. You know, the General Assembly itself was great. by and large, but the office just really had a lot of trouble. And I think, you know, once you, the Inspector General is, like the Attorney General, has a mission. And part of that mission is to find misconduct. And when you find misconduct, people get angry. And when people get angry, they try to push back. And the budget is one way of doing it. So it should be a dependent. But whoever has that job should anticipate.

a certain amount of negative pushback if you start shaking the apple cart. They're going to have to do that. That's the job. Will they be in collaboration with the AG? Because the AG, to your point, I understand the budgetary process. Yeah. The other prosecution... Not not... Yeah, I mean, you know, by statute... you know, there is the legislation, the statute lays out some of that relationship, but I think that's going to have to be a work in progress. But I know this, as attorney general, if I had an inspector general under my watch, which I haven't. You know, for me, the state police and, you know, Colonel, you probably have your own views on this. The state police and the AG are at the top of the pyramid when it comes to investigating this conduct. And I would hope that the Inspector General would defer to us while we are doing an investigation. And if they didn't, that would be a problem for me. And I would have to take that into account and doing our own investigation. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping, ridiculously fast acting, sky high sales stacking, championed at checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today at Shopify.com slash win. Mike Drop, hosted by former Navy SEAL Mike Ridland. How would you characterize your prowess? I'd say my style is that I just kind of outwork everybody until I get there because I'm not a quitter. It's just you. And that's yourself. Everything else is team-oriented. The motivation, it was a sort of anger at myself for being weak. That ends up being the driving factor. That anger, that pride, that ego, I think it's a muscle. It gets stronger. When you take that voice seriously, you start to change your life. Mike Drop, follow and listen on your favorite platform. No, I agree with you. And I think as this has been talked about over decades, I thought of the same thing. You have a similar role. So they would have to, the person would be collaborative with State Police and the AG's office to make it work because you set up an independent investigatory body. It's, you know, then State Police doing the same investigation. You're creating dual documents, and it'd be a nightmare for that. So somewhere they've got to be collaboration with the investigatory agencies. Yeah. Well, and I think, look, the Inspector General is going to be charged with doing one thing, right, finding weight fraud and abuse and then issuing a report. The report is critical. What I find fascinating is that there's a reluctance, frankly, even among some of the candidates running for Attorney General, not to issue reports like in ILO and in the Diocese. It's those very reports that we expect the Inspector General to issue.

I think the Attorney General should also have the right to do that with a grand jury, which would make those reports better and more powerful. But those are things that the legislature has yet to take up or pass more specifically. But look, I think there are a lot of, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out. But the commission is working very well. We will get names to the governor. And then the governor will make his choice. And we'll see what the future holds. Understood. And we get about 30 seconds left. General, anything of substance happening on your watch? I know it's probably not a really appropriate question because every day is of substance in that office. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we're, yeah, we are continuing to push back on Ren Island Energy. We were in 17 days of hearings down there fighting their efforts to raise electric rates to their profit rate to 10.75%, which is remarkable. If only Rhode Islanders could get 10.7. 5% return on their investments. We'd all be dancing in the streets. But we're really pushing back hard on them. I really feel like that is a company that needs to be watched very carefully. And I'm grateful to our team down at the Public Utilities Commission. been advocating for Rhode Islanders, you know, 17 days. And we filed our briefs a couple days ago, put out a press release yesterday about them, and people can find those briefs online. They'll learn quite a bit about what the real story is when it comes to energy. No, thank you. John, we appreciate your time. And I hope you have a good weekend. You too, Colonel. Good to talk to, as always. Start your day with the morning jolt of Drake C. Toll. See, now it's on demand. My podcast is kind of a radio thing, I think, but also it's a bit of a TV show, and it's about whatever I want it to be. It's listening live as it happened, when it happened, with the instant reaction. You're home for talking sports. We go back, the Great Toll Show, Westwood One Sports Network, and there will be on demand on your radio. Anywhere in the country, I'll see you there. Westwood One Sports Talk, your home for Drake C. Toll. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. platform.