The Johnston Town Council has to re-vote on taking land intended for affordable housing by eminent domain

The Rhode Island Attorney General found that the Council had violated the Open Meetings Act in their first vote by not properly noticing the meeting.

The land in question

When the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office concluded that the Johnston Town Council had violated the Open Meetings Act (OMA) at its January 28, 2025 meeting when it voted to approve Resolution 2025-10 without sufficient supplemental notice, they instructed the Council to make it right by re-noticing and re-voting on the resolution within 10 business days. You can read the Attorney General’s entire decision here. To comply with the order, the Johnston Town Council has scheduled a special meeting Thursday at 5:30 pm to comply with the order.

Here’s the notice:

Background:

After publicly declaring that he would “do everything in his power to stop” the construction of 250 affordable housing units, Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena Jr. announced that the Town would take the land by eminent domain to construct a new public safety complex. The money to build the new public safety complex would be diverted from the proposed construction of a new high school. The Town Council voted 4-0, with one member absent, to allow the Mayor to begin the process to take the land. I covered that meeting here.

Johnston resident Gerry Willis and I filed separate Open Meeting Act complaints [that were collapsed into one case by the Attorney General] citing three possible violations:

1. People were not admitted: The small space chosen to hold the Town Council meeting was not large enough to accommodate the large number of people interested in attending. Though the Attorney General had decided (in a previous case I brought against the Johnston Town Council years ago) that keeping people out of a meeting because the space is too small is not a violation of the OMA, I found evidence that people were intentionally prevented from attending the meeting. I covered that evidence here.

2. A sign, seen through the building’s window, stated that cameras were prohibited in the room. That sign might be appropriate and lawful in a courtroom’s everyday use. However, the courtroom was being used for a town council meeting, and under the Open Meetings Act, cameras and recording devices are legal.

3. The agenda was not specific about the meeting’s topic, noting only that it discussed a numbered parcel of land. No mention of affordable housing, eminent domain, a new public safety complex, or diversion of school building funds was on the agenda.

The Attorney General did not find a violation in the first two items above but did find a violation for item number three. As a result, the Council must re-vote on the resolution to take the land by eminent domain. [The Attorney General also suggested that the sign prohibiting recording be taken down or covered up during council meetings in the future.]

Things have changed, though:

After the Town Council voted to take the land, the Polisena Jr. Administration did just that. The only problem was that the owners of the land, Ralph and Suzanne Santoro, Lucille Santoro, and Salvatore Compagnone, filed a lawsuit to expose the Town of Johnston’s “sham land grab and unconstitutional use of government powers to take the family’s property under false pretenses.” I covered that lawsuit here.

As explained by Attorney Kady Valois of the Pacific Legal Foundation, representing the owners of the land,

“Last week, after filing an action in federal court to prevent the Town of Johnston from using eminent domain to take our client’s property, the Town of Johnston named itself the owner of this land. They changed the land record without notice or due process and asked the State court for permission to put money into a court registry. Our clients did not learn of this until after the fact.

“[The owners] were then told that they would be trespassed from their own land if they did not move all of their belongings from this property. But yesterday, the court set things right, ordering the Town to rename our clients as owners in federal court and granting the extraordinary remedy of a temporary restraining order. This will prevent the Town from taking further action against our client’s property until we can litigate the case’s merits.”

When the Johnston Town Council votes on Thursday night, they will not simply be voting to allow the Polisena Jr. Administration to take the land through eminent domain; they will be voting to enter a lengthy and costly legal battle that has already gone badly for the Town in both state and federal court.

It will be interesting to see what they decide to do.