By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — For the fourth time in his six years in office, Gov. Don Carcieri has settled a complaint against him with the Rhode Ethics Commission.

Carcieri will pay $2,500 to clear up a charge that he improperly hired Stephanie Accaputo, his “niece-in-law,” for a job that pays $52,000 in the Office of Constituent Affairs. Accaputo got the job shortly after Carcieri took office.
As part of the deal between Carcieri’s lawyers and the commission, the governor also acknowledged that continuing to employ his wife’s brother’s daughter in the governor’s office was a violation of law and ethics regulations once a nepotism provision was “clarified” last year.
For his part, Carcieri got to list three “mitigating factors” that explain his actions: (1) Carcieri “believes” that before 2007, the ethics code’s nepotism provision “was not organized in a way” to make it clear that Accaputo was considered a relative for purposes of the law; (2) that he asked for an advisory opinion on Accaputo’s ongoing employment after the 2007 change in the code; and (3) he renewed that request after the complaint was filed by Democratic Party Chairman William Lynch.
The first advisory opinion request was rejected by the commission. The second was never forwarded by the staff because the complaint had already been filed.
The text of the settlement said the mitigating factors “are the sole representations of (Carcieri) and are in no way adopted by the commission or the prosecution.”
In a terse, four-paragraph statement issued after the settlement was agreed to, Carcieri’s office — the governor himself was not quoted — acknowledged the penalty and restated the mitigating factors.
It did contain one bit of news: “Ms. Accaputo is no longer employed by the State of Rhode Island, having submitted a letter of resignation effective Friday, Nov. 14, 2008.”
A portion of the written ethic settlement providing for Accaputo to be transferred to a position where Carcieri would not be her boss was scratched out of the text.
The statement from the governor’s office concluded with this sentence: “The Governor considers the matter closed and does not plan to comment further. “
Carcieri attorney Christopher Gontarz was similarly tight-lipped. Asked about the settlement outside the ethics hearing room, he said only, “Under the circumstances, it’s fair.”
Dianne Leyden, the ethics commission prosecutor, said the settlement is significant because the governor admitted violating the code of ethics and also acknowledged that Accaputo is his niece, not the once-removed “niece in law” description by which the case came to be known.
Leyden said the admission of wrongdoing by the governor “is absolutely significant. The issue here was the governor stated he checked with all his people back when the hiring occurred and that everything was fine. Well, it wasn’t.”
Carcieri paid the $2,500 penalty Tuesday. Spokeswoman Amy Kempe said it was paid with the governor’s own money, not from a campaign account.
In 2005, Carcieri paid a $750 penalty to settle a complaint that he had accepted an invitation to watch part of a Patriots playoff game in the luxury box of the now-defunct Fleet Bank. He was also found to not have filed a financial disclosure statement on time.
Last year he paid a $1,000 penalty to settle a complaint, also brought by Lynch, that Carcieri had sent a letter soliciting campaign contributions from state employees.
Leyden said it is “ironic” that Carcieri’s first executive order as governor was to require government workers to follow the code of ethics. She said this governor has “an obvious track record. There have been four complaints, two were consolidated (the Patriots and the financial disclosure), there were three cases and three fines have been paid and we still have two more years to go.”