Providence City Solicitor Joseph M. Fernandez, who has been quite public about his interest in running for Attorney General, has stepped down from his post to pursue "other opportunities." This just in from Mayor David N. Cicilline's office:

Mayor David N. Cicilline today announced that City Solicitor Joseph M. Fernandez is stepping down after seven years of strong leadership as the City’s chief lawyer.

Cliff Montiero, president of the Providence chapter of the NAACP, says he may seek support from his national organization to bring legal action challenging the paucity of minorities in municipal public safety positions in some Rhode Island communities.

Montiero, who made the statement during a taping this morning of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers, would not identify specific communities.

-- In terms of so many schools canceling school today -- with nary an accumulation of snow yet on the ground -- is it that we hardy New Englanders have turned into a bunch of cringing weenies?

-- US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a fellow former US attorney with Eric Holder, and someone who has been supportive of Holder's nomination as AG, is due to speak on that during this afternoon's Senate Judiciary hearing.

The New York Times continues its strong Rhode Island-based reporting on immigration, using a lengthy front-pager today to highlight the meager returns generated by the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility for its host community of Central Falls, and how the privately managed prison functions as a cog in incarceration's answer to the war on drugs

Providence City Solicitor Joseph Fernandez isn't allowing his nascent 2010 campaign for AG to completely cast away the possibility of working in the Obama administration.

Last Friday, during a taping for next Sunday's broadcast of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers (we taped two shows, due to the holiday this week), Fernandez revealed that he is among the 350,000 or so people who have submitted a resume to Change.

The Rhode Island Family Life Center is an important voice in the local cause of criminal-justice reform, so this is troubling news:

Providence, RI, December 15, 2008-- As the growing impact of Bernie Madoff's outrageous scheme unfolds nationwide, Rhode Islanders might be surprised to hear that a local non-profit has been affected by Madoff's massive fraud.

Providence City Solicitor Joseph Fernandez, whose candidacy for AG in 2010 was first reported here, has a fundraiser set for Monday:

Host Committee
Kim Ahern, Mary Kim Arnold, Chris Blazejewski, Pat Crowley, Kas DeCarvalho, Jorge Elorza, Devin Driscoll, Meghan Grady, Jill Harrington, Chris Hunter, Matt Jerzyk, Lorraine Lalli, Rep.

I'll cedit the departing chief justice for mostly remaining accessible through his tenure. Let's roll a few clips.

Williams sat down with me for a Q+A when he succeeded Joseph Weisberger, and I noted a bit of the background:

Although judges are meant to be models of probity and rectitude, the record in Rhode Island sometimes reads more like the plot for a television melodrama.

Ariel returns to the pages of the Phoenix with a look at Stronger than Their Walls, the Family Life Center's new documentary about the need for probation reform and the word on some upcoming screenings.

A precondition for state inmates' release to probation is their promise to "preserve the peace and be of good behavior."

US Attorney Robert Clark Corrente scored a win with this week's conviction of Robert Urciuoli. Yet given the relative lack of forward public momentum on Operation Dollar Bill -- which Corrente himself once identified as an active investigation of seven politicians and an equal number of companies -- the probe has thus far failed to meet its expectations.

From the US attorney's office:

A federal jury today found Robert A. Urciuoli, the former president of Roger Williams Medical Center, guilty of corruptly employing former Rhode Island Senator John Celona to advance the Medical Center’s interests in the General Assembly. The jury acquitted former hospital vice president Frances P.

This just in from the RI affiliate:

Last December, a major snowstorm hit the state when Governor Carcieri was out of the country. Traffic gridlock left some school children stranded on buses for hours. Upon his return, Governor Carcieri announced that Major General Robert Bray, head of the National Guard, would be in charge should similar situations occur in the future.

Richard Egbert, the quintessential super-tough defense lawyer, has died at age 61. Over the years, he represented a number of clients in Rhode Island, including, of course, Buddy Cianci during his Plunder Dome trial in 2002.

As part of a profile written before the trial, I met with Egbert in his Boston office and gleaned a telling detail that wound up in Mike Stanton's The Prince of Providence

Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch joins Steve Aveson, Arlene Violet, and myself this week to talk about immigration, his opposition to a federal shield law, his support for FISA, and other topics during WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers.

The show will be broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 am on Channel 12 and at 10 am on Fox 64.

As he gears up for 2010, AG Patrick Lynch has assembled an eclectic and sometimes contrary portfolio of issue-related stances.

As I wrote back in January:

The AG seemed a progressive champion — and he incurred the wrath of Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin — when he ruled that the marriages of same-sex couples who wed out-of-state should be recognized in Rhode Island (a week earlier, his sister, Pawtucket City Solicitor Margaret Lynch-Gadaleta, had married in Massachusetts her longtime partner).