PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A legislative leadership panel chaired by House Speaker William J. Murphy voted behind closed doors on Wednesday to reimburse former Speaker John B. Harwood $25,540 in legal fees he says he paid fighting an ethics complaint in 2001.

The panel known as the Joint Committee on Legislative Services announced its unanimous decision to pay Harwood's lawyer, Lauren Jones, after a closed-door discussion and vote.

The fee emanates from a lawsuit that Harwood filed against his successor last year, in which he sought payment for his legal expenses fighting an ethics complaint filed against him by Robert Arruda, the former head of the citizens' advocacy group Operation Clean Government.

Operation Clean Government's complaint accused Harwood, a lawyer, of violating the ethics code by representing private legal clients before the state Department of Environmental Management and Department of Business Regulation.

It followed disclosures in The Journal that Harwood had handled four cases before state agencies, three concerning liquor license disputes before the state Department of Business Regulation, and the fourth representing a man accused of major wetlands violations by the state Department of Environmental Management.

In one of the cases, Harwood, representing a bar owner seeking a license renewal, cross-examined another legislator, Rep. Paul E. Moura, a Providence Democrat who was opposing the bar's liquor-license renewal and who owed his legislative position, deputy majority leader, to Harwood.

Operation Clean Government charged that Harwood's representing his private clients before the government agencies whose activities and budgets he influenced as speaker violated state ethics rules.

But the Ethics Commission dismissed that complaint, citing a state Supreme Court ruling in a seemingly unrelated case.

In that ruling, the court said that it has the sole authority to determine who can practice law in the state. In a November 2001 decision criticized by former commission members and staff, the commission - chaired at the time by Richard Kirby, now a Senate staffer - decided that meant it could not regulate the activities of public officials who are lawyers, such as Harwood.

Arruda denounced the commission as an "ethically challenged" group that remains "made up mostly of political operatives" and ignores its own regulations and staff. But Harwood's lawyer, Lauren E. Jones, said, "We're pleased to have the long, gray cloud lifted."