The documents show disgraced and now imprisoned former House Speaker Gordon Fox and former House Finance Chairman Steven Costantino were involved in talks with 38 Studios long before previously disclosed.
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Kilmartin was a state representative when the law creating the loan program that turned out to be for 38 Studios. The 38 Studios deal was a bad one from the very start and was nonetheless pushed through thanks to malfeasance and inattentiveness at the State House.
Though it was not public at the time, $75 million of that was earmarked to induce 38 Studios, the video game company owned by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, to move its operations from Massachusetts to Rhode Island.
The story certainly isn’t going away – nor should it. The citizens of our state deserve a full accounting of what went wrong and steps be taken to ensure it never happens again.
Whitehouse says 38 Studios is “a tragic what might’ve been”.
On Tuesday, in his first public comments since last week’s release of a huge trove of documents from the civil lawsuit over 38 Studios, Kilmartin said the revelations about top House Democrats’ efforts to help the company have not made him reconsider whether to recuse himself from the criminal probe. Costantino is not named as a plaintiff in that lawsuit, but the documents show that he was aware that money was being set aside for 38 Studios. Fox is now in jail for unrelated corruption costs. In a deposition, former EDC director Keith Stokes said he met with Costantino and Fox at Costantino’s Statehouse office around the same time, according to a WPRI Channel 12 report. You might be asking me a different question.
Whitehouse says Rhode Island needs federal funding to rebuild the intersection of routes 6 and 10 at the Providence viaduct.
“I do not recall”, Costantino replied. At the time, Shumlin said he had known Costantino since the days they both served in their respective legislatures and said he understood him to be “dynamic, hands-on leader”.
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As for the court documents, he said, “I don’t think there’s anything that’s been a great surprise to us”.
