Projo Politics Blog

After toiling away in the basement of the State House for 10 years as chief legal adviser to the House Finance Committee, lawyer and Pawtucket City Councilman Robert E. Carr is getting a promotion.

House spokesman Larry Berman confirmed last week that Carr will succeed William Guglietta as chief legal counsel to House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox. Guglietta was, of course, sworn in last Friday to a new spot lawmakers created for a chief magistrate in the state traffic court.

As of late last week, Berman said, Carr’s new salary had not yet been nailed down, but it will probably be somewhere between the $92,917 a year he has been making in his Finance Committee role and the $134,153 paid to Guglietta, a former state prosecutor who once ran for attorney general.

Carr holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Notre Dame, a law degree from the University of San Diego and a master’s of law degree in taxation from Boston University Law School.

He is a native of Pawtucket, where he has been a member of the City Council since 1998. But he has announced that he does not plan to seek reelection in November and that he and his wife and three children are moving to Cumberland.

As legal counsel, Carr has drafted the last nine state budgets and has worked on all initiatives that have come out of the Finance Committee over that span, including the tax-cutting “flat tax” option for the state’s wealthier taxpayers, the “pension reforms” of 2005, and the legislature-approved agreement that paved the way for BLB Investors to buy the former Lincoln Park.

Like Carr, Guglietta also got his start at the State House as the legal counsel to the Finance Committee under former House Finance Chairman Antonio Pires, D-Pawtucket.

By Cynthia Needham, Katherine Gregg and Edward Fitzpatrick
Journal staff writers

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