Ethics Commission drops charges against O'Toole

State ethics investigators waited more than three years to level charges against Michael J. O'Toole, a former state public safety official accused of a conflict of interest in handling more than $1.1 million in police grants.

Yesterday, those three years proved fatal to the Ethics Commission's case.

Acting on a petition by O'Toole's lawyer, the commission dropped its charges on procedural grounds and acknowledged that the three-year statute of limitations had run out by the time it finally made its formal allegations in January 2007.

The commission said its own investigators somehow overlooked months of intense news coverage about the case in late 2003 and early 2004, then missed the final deadline to file charges by a matter of weeks.

Ethics Commission officials declined to be interviewed. In a statement, the commission said it never made any determination as to whether O'Toole violated state conflict of interest laws. The commission's delays were denounced by an advocate of aggressive ethics prosecutions.

"It is incumbent on the Ethics Commission to act promptly and not let these cases languish for years," said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a government watchdog group.

"It's disappointing," she said, "because the public is the loser in such cases."

O'Toole could not be reached for comment. Yesterday's ruling was made by the five-member Ethics Commission after Douglas S. Brooks, an attorney for O'Toole, filed a petition for summary decision.

"On behalf of Michael O'Toole, we are gratified and appreciative of the Commission's decision," Brooks said yesterday in a statement.

More than 20 prominently displayed stories on the police grants program appeared in The Boston Globe and Boston Herald in late 2003 and early 2004. The articles described how officials in the Executive Office of Public Safety awarded state grants to police departments, and how O'Toole and others in the office later went to work for a consulting firm that earned $2 million by helping police departments obtain the grants.

While he was not the primary focus of the stories, the stories detailed O'Toole's role as a grants administrator at the state agency. They also said the FBI was investigating the case, which never resulted in indictments or charges.

Despite the heavy media attention, Ethics Commission investigators did not note the coverage until January 2004, when an investigator happened to read an account of the controversy in a Boston Globe editorial that urged an Ethics Commission investigation, according to documents released yesterday.

As a result of that report, an investigator conducted "an internet search, which turned up various news articles relating to an FBI investigation concerning public safety grants," according to the commission documents. Charges still did not result for three more years.

Karen L. Nober, Ethics Commission executive director, declined to be interviewed. In a statement released by a spokesman, Nober said the ruling "makes clear that there is a duty of inquiry for the enforcement division to look into matters that receive extensive media coverage if those matters might suggest violations of the conflict of interests laws."

During a five-day period in March 2003, O'Toole authorized the payment of $1.1 million in discretionary grants to five police departments, the commission alleged in its now-dropped complaint. Three weeks later, O'Toole left his state manager's job to join Crest Associates, a consulting firm that had reaped large fees for assisting those police departments in obtaining the grants.

Crest was founded by Richard St. Louis, O'Toole's predecessor as the state agency's grants administrator.

Sean Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com.