Next Monday marks the last day of work for H. Philip West Jr., executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island for the last 18 years.

West’s colleagues are marking his departure with a farewell gala at the Rhode Island Convention Center that night, featuring Charlie Hall’s Ocean State Follies. (Monday also happens to be West’s 65th birthday.)

West, an ordained United Methodist minister, began his career working with street gangs in the South Bronx section of New York City. He worked at churches in Harlem and Brooklyn, then was executive director of a community center in the city’s Bowery section, one of the toughest neighborhoods in New York at the time.

From there, West spent 12 years as pastor of a church in northwestern Connecticut, before moving to Rhode Island when his wife, Anne Grant, got a job as director of the Women’s Center of Rhode Island. Grant also is a retired Methodist minister.

West’s first job in Rhode Island was as a copy editor at The Providence Journal. “It didn’t work out,” he said Friday. “I was new at the computer stuff.” At 47 years old, West said, “I spent a summer thinking, ‘I’ll never find another job. Nobody wants me.’”

He saw an ad in the paper for a job opening at Common Cause, and applied. The rest of the story will no doubt be detailed in next Monday’s tribute.

The high points, as West recalls them, include final passage in 2004 of the state constitutional amendment to enact separation of powers. The same issue, however, also provided a low point, that being the 1999 Rhode Island Supreme Court opinion that the state Constitution, as it stood then, did not require separation of powers and therefore bar lawmakers from serving on boards and commissions with executive power. At that point, West said, “I really had a sense — I’m going to die and we’re not going to have separation of powers.”

The Ethics Commission, too, provided a high point and low point in West’s tenure. The nadir, he said, was in May 2000, when the commission voted to gut the gift ban and allow lawmakers to receive gifts worth up to $450 from a single source — even a lobbyist with an interest in legislation on which the lawmaker might vote — in a calendar year.

Nowadays, the gift ban is $25 per gift and $75 from the same source in a year, and Rhode Island’s Ethics Commission “is without question the most powerful ethics commission in the United States,” West said. “The commission really is back, and it’s a strong commission again. It’s doing its work with regulations and with enforcement and investigation.”

In the most recent General Assembly session, West’s main role was to advocate for passage of bills to implement separation of powers. He stayed around through Election Day to advocate for passage of referendum Question 2 on tomorrow’s ballot, which would allow convicted felons to vote while they are still on probation or parole, after getting out of prison.

West’s next project: writing a memoir. “I’ve got it outlined,” he says. “There are a lot of stories to tell that haven’t been written anywhere.”

West’s successor, Christine Lopes, has already begun work. She was chosen in September after a nine-month search. Lopes, 30, of Providence, previously worked for the state legislature and nonprofit groups in Massachusetts.

West left the watchdog group’s staff with some parting words that hark back to his work in the Bowery. When he started there, at age 31, he remembers, “the previous director had been hired before I was born,” but staffers were still all too eager to remind West how that previous director had done things.

West says he told the Common Cause staff, “None of you must ever say, ‘Phil did it that way.’ ”

Next Monday’s event, which is also a fundraiser for Common Cause, begins at 6 p.m. with a cocktail and hors d’oeuvres reception preceding the main program. Tickets -- which cost $50 per person, or $500 for a table with 10 seats -- are available by calling Common Cause, (401) 861-2322.