Warren’s solicitor believes Bristol could owe Warren as much as $1.5 million, apart from the funds the town will have to come up with as a result of the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s recent decision over funding within the Bristol Warren Regional School District.
Warren Town Solicitor Anthony DeSisto said Monday that the $1.5 million is not part of the original lawsuit Warren filed over educational aid. Rather, he said, its existence was uncovered by Warren during the discovery process for that lawsuit.
When the state Department of Education (RIDE) started phasing out the statewide regionalization bonus, RIDE officials began making “transitional aid” payments to regionalized towns “to lessen the blow of taking away this regional bonus money,” Mr. DeSisto said.
In the past, that money was given in separate payments to each town. But in the Spring of 2015, he said, Warren officials learned that RIDE made an error in calculation and as a result made a transitional aid payment to the Town of Bristol of more than $3 million, and none to Warren. Warren town officials and Mr. DeSisto’s office found out about the error during the discovery process for their original lawsuit, and determined that Warren should have been paid $1.5 million.
When Warren officials found out about the shortfall they informed RIDE; Mr. DeSisto said the agency fixed the payment error the following year but did not make Warren whole with respect to the $1.5 million.
In addition to contacting the state, Warren officials also asked Judge Luis Matos, the Rhode Island Superior Court judge hearing Warren’s original case, to add the matter onto their lawsuit. He declined, saying “that that was an issue that would require a separate lawsuit” as it was unrelated to Warren’s original funding claim.
When members of the Warren Town Council were apprised of the need for a new lawsuit to settle the $1.5 million matter, the council “as a show of good faith chose not to pursue that lawsuit, and that was communicated over to Bristol,” Mr. DeSisto said.
However, he said Monday, “the possibility of the lawsuit remains open.”
Bristol Town Administrator Steven Contente said he is unaware of the "transitional aid" payments and whether the state overpaid Bristol. Mr. Contente was a member of the Bristol Police Department at the time and was not involved when the lawsuit was originally filed and researched. He has repeatedly said Bristol owes $1.4 million to the school district for the 2015-16 school year, not the $2.9 million Warren claims with the addition of the transitional aid funds.
"This is news to me," Mr. Contente said of the additional $1.5 million. "The way it was explained to me, it was $1.4 million.
Mr. Contente said the town is considering going to bond for the $1.4 million in back payments, after having borrowed $550,000 from the town's reserve fund to make up part of the shortfall.
Mr. Contente declined to comment on the potential lawsuit. Town Council President Nathan Calouro and town Solicitor Mike Ursillo were not immediately available to comment Monday.