PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The state's troubled Economic Development Corporation has been unable, over a two-week period, to account for how much, if anything, it paid the nation's top-bond rating agencies -- including Moody's Investors Service -- to rate its doomed $75-million investment in 38 Studios and other bonds.
On June 21, The Providence Journal asked both the EDC, a quasi-public agency, and the state controller's office for a detailed accounting of amounts paid Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings for bond ratings and any "other goods/services'' provided since Jan. 1, 2010. From the EDC, chaired by Governor Chafee, The Journal also requested all related correspondence.
The question arose after Moody's waded into the legislative debate over the first direct payment for the EDC's disastrous investment in retired Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's now bankrupt video-game company.
Within hours, the state controller's office responded with a detailed accounting of the $573,413 the state of Rhode Island had paid the three rating services.
That included the $188,720 the state had paid Moody's, since Jan. 1, 2010, to rate for investors the worthiness of more than two dozen bonds issued by a variety of state agencies, from the Department of Transportation to the now-defunct Board of Governors for Higher Education.
On Monday, after 10 business days had elapsed -- and the General Assembly had voted to make the first payment and adjourned for the year -- EDC's senior Communications Manager Melissa Chambers responded.
Her letter said the agency needs the additional 20 business days the state's open-records law allows for "good cause'' to respond. At that point, she said, the EDC would require a $45 payment up front for an estimated four hours of retrieval time at $15 an hour "with the first hour free.''
That would put the potential date for EDC's response to The Journal's June 21 inquiry around Aug. 2.