“I’m grateful that the Army Corps has stepped up and seen the problem at Quidnessett,” Neronha said. “I will say that our office is looking at that matter very, very closely. And if we need to intervene in any action, or bring an action, then we will do that.”

The country club has filed a petition asking the state Coastal Resources Management Council to change the classification of the waters near the golf course and to thereby provide permission for the seawall after the fact. The council has begun a rule-making process to entertain that proposal.

But Neronha said the council should have dismissed the club’s petition and taken decisive enforcement action.

“To change it to Type 2 waters, which in theory would allow this thing, I mean this is doing legal gymnastics to try to bless an end run around Rhode Island law to the detriment of Rhode Islanders,” he said. “Frankly, it’s outrageous.”

He said voters should be asking their elected leaders where they stand on this issue. “Far too often on issues that really impact Rhode Islanders, leadership in some quarters is far too quiet,” he said.

The country club’s lawyer has told state regulators that the uses of the waters where the wall was built have changed since they were originally designated as so-called Type 1 conservation waters. The club contends the waters should be designated as Type 2, or low-intensity-use, and those types of waters have fewer restrictions.

The Coastal Resources Management Council has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking, gathering public comments and recommendations about the country club’s petition.

But Neronha said, “The answer is not to change the rules after the fact, to try to make legal what is in the first place illegal.”

Rather, he said, “This is the way this should work: They build the wall without permission, they get a notice of violation, they get an order to remove it. If they don’t remove it, the attorney general joins the action, we go to court, we try to get a court order to remove it. If we can’t get the court order to remove it, then we take it to the (Rhode Island) Supreme Court.”

He said the Coastal Resources Management has a track record of ignoring staff recommendations and making these kinds of controversial decisions. For example, he cited a years-long legal battle over a failed proposal to expand a Block Island marina.

“The amount of work that my office spends trying to fix the CRMC’s poor decision making is far too many,” Neronha said.

The long-term solution, he said, is to pass the legislation proposed by Senator Victoria Gu and Representative Terri Cortvriend.

“What that will mean is a professional agency that can do its work without the interference of a council that, frankly, doesn’t know what it’s doing,” he said, “or it is listening to people and voices that frankly, it shouldn’t be listening to.”

Topher Hamblett, executive director of Save the Bay, called for House and Senate leaders to act on those bills in the closing weeks of this year’s legislative session.

“This is about good government in the Ocean State,” Hamblett said. “The CRMC structure needs to go. It is a thick layer of politics that hangs over the professional staff of experts. The council causes delays in permitting and invites abuse. There’s no accountability.”

No one is publicly opposing the legislation that would replace CRMC with an executive branch agency, Hamblett said. But in the State House hallways, he said he hears concerns that the proposal is a “radical reform.”

“To that, I say, ‘The CMC structure itself is radical and it’s bad,’” he said. “Rhode Island is an outlier. The other New England states that have coasts — which is all but one — have coastal management agencies firmly planted in the executive branch.”

Hamblett said he also hears concerns about the cost of the proposal. But he said the costs would essentially be “a wash” because while the proposal calls for hiring a full-time attorney, the council now pays a private law practice. “Our coastal agency is way too important to not have a full-time staff attorney that’s fully dedicated and focused on the business of the agency,” he said.

Cortvriend, a Portsmouth Democrat, said she cannot understand why the Coastal Resources Management Council is not structured like the state Department of Environmental Management, as a regulatory state agency.

“I don’t understand this political process,” she said. “It’s inappropriate and and it’s outdated. And I think it’s really important that we move this bill forward.”

Gu, a Charlestown Democrat, said fishermen and those involved in aquaculture are often on opposite sides of issues but they agreed on the need to change the Coastal Resources Management Council structure.

“They both agree that the current system is not working,” she said. “So I think the question now is: Who is the system working for? I don’t think it’s working for Rhode Islanders, and we need this bill to make sure the CRMC can do its work to serve the people of Rhode Island.”

Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.

Utah-based Breeze Airways announced this week that it plans to double its presence at T.F. Green Airport over the next five years, making the Warwick airport one of its largest hubs in the United States, if not the largest.

The low-cost airline, which began flying out of T.F. Green three years ago, currently offers 132 weekly flights to 18 destinations. It serves more destinations than any other airline at T.F. Green.

Under the current expansion plan, the airline would offer 200 weekly nonstop flights to 35 destinations by 2029. The airline’s founder and CEO, David Neeleman, said the expansion would include adding flights to “three international or US territory cities.”

“We haven’t been able to fly internationally yet because we don’t have our final approval from the FAA,” Neeleman said in an interview with the Globe. “We hope to have it done this year, and then we’ll start flying internationally. We’re saying three destinations. There could be more, but I think we’ll add one to start and keep adding from there.”

Breeze flies between smaller, secondary airports such as Norfolk International, West Palm Beach International, and Westchester County. When it launched in 2021, its business model was to offer point-to-point service between these underserved airports. In New England, Breeze also operates out of Manchester-Boston Regional, Bradley International in Hartford, and Portland International Jetport in Maine. Service to Bangor International is scheduled to begin this fall. Currently, the longest flight Breeze offers out of T.F. Green is a seasonal service to Los Angeles.

“We reach places that you could previously only get to out of Logan,” he said.

Providence has been an important market for Breeze. The airline’s service was launched there in July 2021, and it became a base shortly after. According to Neeleman, who founded JetBlue and Azul, Breeze is expected to reach profitability this year as it aggressively expands its fleet. Breeze took delivery of its 25th Airbus A220 this month and plans to add 65 more A220s over the next five years.

To increase its footprint at T.F. Green, the airline is receiving $2.9 million in tax credits from the state with the understanding that it will create a minimum of 58 jobs in the first year, increasing annually to 116 jobs by year five. The credits are part of the state’s Qualified Jobs Incentive program, created to expand the workforce of companies operating in the state.

“It’s just a win-win deal,” Neeleman said in describing tax credits. “The airport has been underserved for a long time, and we have a lot of airports we can fly to and a lot of places we can put it and put our service, and so we just always do win-win deals where the city wins, and we win. It’s as simple as that. It’s a good deal for everybody.”

Neeleman said the T.F. Green expansion will increase the number of Breeze employees in Warwick from approximately 200 to 400. The airline will also base 12 aircraft at the airport.

“This is an exciting day for Rhode Island,” Governor Dan McKee said in a statement. “We’re proud to be home to one of the top 10 airports in the world, and we’re even prouder to have Breeze.”

The airline announced a sale to celebrate its third anniversary with 33-percent-off fares. Earlier this year, it launched a co-branded credit card with Barclays.

Christopher Muther can be reached at christopher.muther@globe.com. Follow him @Chris_Muther and Instagram @chris_muther.

PROVIDENCE – The correctional officers’ union is bringing up the 2010 arrest of Wayne Salisbury as they ramp up their fight to keep McKee’s pick to run the state Department of Corrections out of the job.

The charge – obtaining money under false pretenses – was later dismissed.

Richard Ferruccio, president of the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers, said: “Rhode Islanders deserve to have governmental leaders they can trust to do the job they’re appointed to do. It is disheartening that Governor McKee has chosen to appoint a leader to the Department of Corrections who was charged with a felony for stealing from his employer.”

In addition, Ferruccio:

• faulted Salisbury as “unqualified” to be the director and questioned whether he could be trusted to fulfill the duties and responsibilities as required.
• Claimed that the prisons are less safe under his leadership.

The union urged members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject McKee’s nomination and called for a national search “for a qualified leader who doesn’t carry the baggage of a felony arrest.” 

McKee stands by Salisbury

McKee remained solid in his support for Salisbury, who has served as the interim director for 16 months.

“As acting director with over three decades of experience in corrections, Wayne Salisbury has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to manage challenges in the field of corrections, from assembling a task force dedicated to recidivism reduction, to renewing the department’s focus on staff development and succession planning,” spokeswoman Olivia DaRocha said in a statement.

“We appreciate the Brotherhood of Correctional Officers’ concerns,” she continued. “DOC leaders have and will continue to work with their membership and the advocacy community to identify and implement best practices in areas such as officer safety and recruitment, as well as inmate discipline and education.”

Salisbury stands by his own record

Salisbury also stood by his record.

“As it has been previously reported, the 2015 unsubstantiated charge involving Interim Director Salisbury was dismissed,” corrections spokesman J.R. Ventura said in a statement. “Interim Director Salisbury remains focused on leading the Department of Corrections by advocating for its staff and positioning those in its custody for success upon reentry to the community.”

Ventura also noted that a 2012 settlement was reached without a finding of fault in another lawsuit involving the 2008 death of Chinese detainee Hiu Lui “Jason” Ng while in the custody of immigration officials at Wyatt Detention Center.

A federal judge approved a multimillion-dollar settlement on behalf of Ng’s family. Salisbury was one of over two dozen parties named a defendant in that case.

Looking back: Rocky career at Wyatt Detention Center

Salisbury began as a corrections officer at the publicly owned and privately run Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in 1993 and rose to the rank of warden.

He was fired as warden in 2007, but rehired later that year under new management. He was fired again in February 2010.

In April 2015, the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office dismissed a charge against Salisbury alleging that he had obtained money under false pretenses by falsifying the amount of unused vacation time he was owed at Wyatt and collecting more than $16,456 from the jail.

Prosecutors dismissed the single felony count in “the interest of justice,” a filing noted. Witnesses had provided new information that “may impact the ability of the state to sustain its burden” of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The filing noted that Salisbury had been compliant with his bail terms since his arrest in 2010 and had paid restitution.

The Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation, which operates Wyatt, voted unanimously to “permanently terminate” Salisbury and his wife, Tammy L. Novo, the jail’s top financial administrator.

The correctional officers’ union noted in its statement that Novo was the CFO at the Wyatt when these payments to Salisbury were made.

Blistering Wyatt report

A 2009 report by Michael V. Fair, a former corrections commissioner in Massachusetts, was highly critical of the jail’s management team and its relationship with its board of directors.

The report detailed that Salisbury reworked the jail’s organizational chart by placing the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Corporation under him instead of having Novo, his wife, report to the board “as an equal to the warden as it was originally established by the board.” 

“This one act, implemented by the warden without the benefit of discussion or approval from the board, has placed the warden in a position with much more authority and power than the board ever conferred on him,” the report said.

The report stated that the CFO previously “noted that she took a risk by withholding her responses thereby delaying the issuance of the audit report. She was aware that the audit report was to be a `Going Concern’ and that she wanted to avoid such an opinion.”