Allege Corruption Killed UMD Merger Bid
By DAVID KIBBE,
Standard-Times staff writer
July 22, 2005
BOSTON -- The Student Bar Association at Southern New England School of Law
filed a lawsuit yesterday against Suffolk University Law School and a former
Romney administration official, alleging they used "corrupt and undue
influence" to block a proposed merger of SNESL and UMass Dartmouth last
spring.
The state Board of Higher Education voted 8-3 to kill the proposed merger with
UMass last March, following heavy lobbying against it by the Romney
administration, Suffolk and several other private law schools.
The heart of the lawsuit is a claim that Charles Chieppo, as a Suffolk
consultant, violated state ethics laws by writing a damaging report against the
merger less than a year after he left the Romney administration.
The lawsuit alleges Romney administration officials who reported to Chieppo or
worked with him were reviewing the law school merger while he was policy
director of the governor's administration and finance office.
State ethics law prohibits former state employees from lobbying a state agency
on an issue that was their "official responsibility" as a state
employee for a year after leaving the job.
"The purpose of all those ethics statutes is pretty clear," said
lawyer Leon Blais, who filed the lawsuit yesterday in Superior Court in Taunton.
"The purpose is to keep public officials and public employees from using
their former positions to make money immediately after they get out of
them."
A spokeswoman for Suffolk did not have an immediate comment yesterday. Chieppo
did not respond to phone and e-mail messages by press time.
Last spring, Chieppo wrote a report that said the merger would cost $39 million.
UMass officials said it would cost $1.7 million, because SNESL had already spent
millions seeking American Bar Association accreditation.
"I have not heard a single attack that went to the substance of the
report," Chieppo said in April, when he was under fire from supporters of
the merger. "Clearly, the reaction has been to attack me personally. I
think that speaks to the quality of the report."
Blais and his law partner, Carey Parent, are 2001 SNESL graduates and have an
office in Mansfield.
"The present students and prospective students are really the ones that are
being harmed by this, more than any institution," Blais said. "The
whole point of this was to provide a reasonably priced legal education to people
who otherwise might not be able to afford it. That has all been stymied by an
unfair process."
In addition to Suffolk Law, two other private law schools, identified only as
"Doe" schools of law 1 and 2, are named in the suit.
Blais said the identities of those schools were not yet known.
The lawsuit also names the state Board of Higher Education and its chairman,
Stephen Tocco, but only to make the board's vote against the merger null and
void. It also seeks unspecified monetary damages for the members of the Student
Bar Association, which includes the 260 full- and part-time students at the
school.
The Student Bar Association is independent of the law school's administration.
Blais and Parent simultaneously filed an ethics complaint against Suffolk and
Chieppo with the State Ethics Commission.
Once the lawsuit is served on Chieppo, Suffolk, and the state, they will have 20
days to respond.
The legal action is the latest twist in the controversy over the board's law
school vote. The UMass Board of Trustees overwhelmingly approved the merger in
December, and it had the strong support of UMass President Jack M. Wilson and
UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack.
Romney pledged neutrality on the merger in meetings with UMass officials, but
called undecided Board of Higher Education members the night before the March 31
vote to urge them to defeat it.
By hiring Chieppo, the lawsuit alleges, Suffolk and one or two other law schools
were "obtaining improper, unfair, corrupt and undue influence and sway over
the proceedings and deliberations of the board, including but not limited to its
committees, subcommittees, members and staff, for the purpose of defeating the
merger proposal between the University of Massachusetts and the Southern New
England School of Law."
Chieppo was director of policy in the Executive Office of Administration and
Finance under Romney. Since leaving the office, he was hired as a consultant to
the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority and the Governor's Environmental
Policy Office.
Chieppo left as Romney's policy director around the end of the year, according
to the lawsuit. He was hired by Suffolk as a consultant sometime between Sept.
1, 2004, and March 31, 2005, "to write and deliver a report critical of the
application of the University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth to merge with the
Southern New England School of Law," Blais alleged in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit names a number of Romney administration officials who reported to or
worked with Chieppo and met with UMass staff members about the law school merger
during the fall and winter.
The lawsuit seeks to bar Chieppo from providing information to the Board of
Higher Education should it take up the law school merger in the future.
Chieppo was fired as a weekly Boston Herald op-ed columnist in April after it
was disclosed that he was simultaneously working as an Environmental Affairs
consultant in Romney's administration. Chieppo said he had previously cleared
the arrangement with the Ethics Commission.This story appeared on Page A1 of The Standard-Times on July 22, 2005.