Projo Politics Blog

Jeffrey J. Greer, the Department of Business Regulation’s associate director of commercial licensing and racing and athletics, has a new, $108,625-a-year role in the Carcieri administration: deputy legal counsel to the governor.

He recently was appointed to the post Claire Richards vacated the same day Carcieri announced that failed lieutenant governor candidate Kernan “Kerry” King would succeed Andrew Hodgkin as executive counsel. Richards’ tenure had stretched back to the Almond administration.

Greer, once described in a headline as “thick-skinned, chatty,” did not respond to inquiries late last week, and it could not immediately be determined if and when the administration plans to fill his former job as the head of a division at DBR that regulates gas-pump pricing and signs, auto wrecking, auctioneers, bedding and upholstery, mobile homes and the “sin industries” — boxing, liquor sales and distribution, and licensing issues at Lincoln Park. At one point, Greer called his unit “the kitchen sink division.”

During a tense budget hearing last April, House Finance Chairman Steven M. Costantino injected a bit of levity with a comment about the new collar-grazing hairstyle of Greer, who had previously appeared before him with a shorter coif more typical of an attorney and government bureaucrat.

Greer told Costantino, “When you’re the liquor, racing and boxing commissioner, you have to appeal to your clientele.”

Meanwhile, his new boss, King, is still actively involved in party politics. As chairman of the RI GOP Anchors Club, he is co-hosting with GOP Chairman Giovanni Cicione and the GOP’s fundraising chairman, Joseph. B. White, a breakfast this week featuring Randy Bumps, Northeast political director of the Republican National Committee.

The GOP Web site says this about these big-dollar donors: “As an Anchor, members [receive] admittance into all RI GOP events. They are the backbone of the Party, providing the highest level of financial support.”

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