By JIM BARON

PROVIDENCE — Huddling behind closed doors in a high-level “executive session” the top leaders of the General Assembly voted unanimously to pay $25,000 to former House Speaker John Harwood to reimburse him for legal fees incurred to beat an ethics complaint back in 2001.

Harwood filed a lawsuit against Murphy last August, alleging that Murphy had reneged on a promise to  pay the legal fees through the Joint Committee on Legislative Services (JCLS), because the ethics complaint was defended on behalf of all legislators who are practicing attorneys.
After coming out of the executive session, Murphy said the JCLS voted 5-0 in favor of reimbursing Harwood and acknowledged that he participated in the vote to use public funds to settle a lawsuit brought against him.
Harwood, the controversial Pawtucket lawmaker, successfully defended himself against the ethics complaint filed by Operation Clean Government that challenged the practice of legislators who are also attorneys representing clients before executive branch agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency. Harwood, an attorney in private practice, had represented various clients before a number of state agencies.
The complaint argued that because the legislature voted on the budgets for the various agencies, it was a conflict of interest for lawmakers to appear before those bodies as private attorneys.
The Ethics Commission dismissed the case, pointing to a Rhode Island Supreme Court ruling in which the high court reserved the right to police the activities of attorneys in the state.
Harwood applied to Murphy, his successor as House Speaker, and the JCLS, which is chaired by the Speaker, to reimburse him for the 25,540.38 he paid to attorney Lauren Jones for legal fees and expenses related to the case.
In an August, 2008 lawsuit filed against Murphy, who is also a lawyer-legislator, Harwood said both he and Jones submitted invoices seeking payment for the legal fees, which Harwood contends were accumulated on behalf of all lawyer-legislators, but he said Murphy never presented the bills to the JCLS.
Harwood paid the bill himself and sued Murphy individually, as Speaker of the House, and as Chairman of the JCLS, which handles the legislature’s business affairs.
The JCLS is made up of the Speaker, the Senate President, the majority and minority leaders of the House of Representatives and the Minority Leader of the Senate.
A phone message seeking comment on Murphy’s participation in a vote to pay JCLS funds to settle the lawsuit against him was not returned late on Wednesday night.
It was not clear on Wednesday what precedent the JCLS’s vote set to reimburse legislators for legal fees incurred in defending ethics complaints filed against them.