By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — Former Sen. John Celona, the key government witness in the CVS bribery trial, admitted on the witness stand Monday that he “took a walk” when his Senate committee considered Pharmacy Freedom of Choice legislation, leaving the room rather than cast a vote against a bill he had previously supported and co-sponsored.

Asked by prosecutor Stephen Dambruch why he took a walk, Celona replied: “I was on CVS’ payroll. I didn’t want to publicly change my position. I wanted some cover.”
He said he was asked to leave the room by former Sen. William Irons who was at the time chairman of the Corporations Committee.
Celona, who had previously been a high-profile proponent of the Freedom of Choice bill, which would have forbid Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island from requiring its subscribers to get their covered prescriptions filled at certain pharmacies, said, “Deep down, I knew (that) was the right position to take.” But he did not take that position, “because I was being paid by CVS.”
When asked by Dambruch what else he did for CVS in 2000, the first year of his 1,000 a month consulting contract with the company, he responded, “other than take a walk on the bill, nothing.” But that answer was ordered stricken from the record by U.S. District Judge Mary Lisi after defense objections.
Celona took the stand Monday about halfway through the session of the U.S. District Court trial of former CVS executives Jack Kramer and Carlos Ortiz, who are charged with 23 counts including conspiracy to deprive the citizens of Rhode Island of Celona’s “honest services” as a senator, mail fraud and bribery.
As soon as Celona was sworn in Dambruch reviewed his plea agreement and conviction for selling his honest services, which Celona defined as “getting paid in return for voting” in what he called “the pharmacy scheme, the insurance scheme and the hospital scheme.”
Celona was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison on January 31 of last year after admitting to selling his Senate votes to CVS, Blue Cross and Roger Williams Medical Center. He acknowledged that the government reduced his sentence in return for “total cooperation and truthfulness, testifying truthfully in all legal proceedings.” He added that the federal government did not intervene in his sentencing to 48 months at the ACI to run concurrently with his federal sentence on state charges for many of the same actions on behalf of the same companies.
Appearing with a bald head, without the formerly ever-present and much-derided toupee he used to wear in the Senate, Celona said he was approached to work as a consultant for CVS by Kramer at a 1999 fundraiser for Sen. Michael McCaffrey at a Knights of Columbus hall in Warwick. Celona testified that Kramer told him “CVS could use a consultant,” and that there were no previous discussions about a consultantship for Celona and that he had not asked for a job.
While he was a proponent of the pharmacy choice legislation in the 1990s, before signing on as CVS consultant in 2000, he had been lobbied by both Kramer and Ortiz and by CVS lobbyists Joseph Walsh, the former Warwick Mayor, and Patrick Lynch, the current state attorney general.
At a later meeting at CVS headquarters in Woonsocket, Celona said Ortiz “he had observed me in the Senate,” and thought “I could be an asset to CVS.”
When he was being hired, Celona said, Ortiz asked about the ethics of Celona being on the payroll. Celona said he told Ortiz he contacted the RI Ethics Commission  and was told the arrangement was acceptable because “I didn’t specifically benefit from the issues I voted on. What he did not tell Ortiz, but told the court, is that he contacted the commission “by phone,” and didn’t specifically identify CVS as his employer.
Asked why he didn’t name CVS, Celona answered, “I didn’t want to. I wanted to give myself cover.”
In an e-mail, Celona warned his new bosses that many in the community and particularly the elderly “perceive CVS as a corporate giant taking away their right” to decide where to get their prescriptions filled.
When Celona became chairman of the Corporations Committee in 2001, Ortiz brought him to see CVS spokesman Todd Andrews, Celona testified, “because now that I was chairman, we need a title for my position in case anything came up.” Ultimately, they decided on “community services consultant.”
When the 2001 version of the pharmacy choice legislation came before the Corporations Committee with Celona as chair, “it never got a hearing” or a vote, Celona told the jury of four women and 12 men, four are alternates.
The defense says Celona was hired as a consultant for legitimate public relations work, especially with the elderly, and not to buy his vote on the pharmacy choice legislation or any other bill that came before the Senate.
Celona testified Monday that he made several suggestions to Kramer as part of his consultant relationship, such as good-will visits to senior complexes with CVS store managers and other employees where an infomercial or slide presentation could be displayed; handing out fact sheets, refrigerator magnets and discount coupons, or sending a film crew to record Kramer’s interactions with the public. None of those things were ever done, however.
Celona said that in 2000 he twice invited Kramer on The Celona Statehouse Report, a cable access show Celona was hosting at the time, to publicize CVS’s golf and road race charity events, because he was getting paid by CVS and “trying to justify it” because “I wasn’t doing anything else” for the company.
Defense attorneys will cross-examine Celona when the prosecution finishes its direct examination. The onetime North Providence Democrat is expected to be on the witness stand for several days.
The trial resumes today.