Rhode Island

McKee’s Health Chief of Staff Is Now the Hospitals’ Lobbyist

Virtue Forge briefing · Based on the HARI staff directory (checked Oct 3, 2026), Ian Donnis / Ocean State Media (Oct 2, 2026), the EOHHS contact page, and Rhode Island Current (Sep 17, 2025)

What happened

The Hospital Association of Rhode Island’s public staff directory now lists Daniel Connors as executive director, with the address danielc@hari.org. Checked Saturday, Oct 3, 2026, that page does not list Michael Sroczynski. No HARI press release announcing the hire turned up; the directory is the on-site confirmation.

Connors is still listed as chief of staff on the contact page for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. Ian Donnis’s Oct 2 Ocean State Media TGIF roundup reported that Connors, chief of staff at EOHHS, starts Monday, Oct 5, as HARI executive director—and that HARI had already listed him among staff as of Friday, before that start date. Donnis wrote that Connors said he believes he was hired for his legal, legislative, and administrative experience, and quoted him: “I’m excited to get started.”

The same roundup describes Connors as a former state senator from Cumberland (1996–2010), Democratic majority leader for part of that time, and a key member of Gov. Dan McKee’s kitchen cabinet as McKee tried to survive the September Democratic primary. HARI is a statewide trade organization that lobbies for its member hospitals.

Separately, and as sourced context rather than the hiring announcement: in September 2025 the state Board of Elections fined Connors $2,500 for campaign-finance violations, Rhode Island Current reported. An elections-board audit found he transferred more than $8,700 into his campaign account over about five and a half years beginning in January 2020 without reporting the deposits, withdrew the same amount for personal use, and failed to report $2,000 in campaign spending. Connors wrote: “I apologize for the sloppiness and I admit the error was mine and mine alone.” He also said campaign funds were accounted for and that no money went missing, blaming an inadvertent link between the campaign account and personal bank accounts. That 2025 story described him then as director of interagency operations at EOHHS. That is an earlier title. The EOHHS roster today lists him as chief of staff.

Fact check: The executive-director title is what HARI’s staff page shows as of Oct 3. The Monday, Oct 5 start is Ian Donnis’s reporting, not a HARI release; Donnis also noted the directory listing ran ahead of the start. EOHHS still listing him as chief of staff fits a roster that has not been updated for a Monday start. Do not treat any account of Michael Sroczynski moving to a Massachusetts hospital group as established—that line is a single-outlet expectation, and this briefing does not use it. The $2,500 figure is a Board of Elections campaign-finance penalty as reported by Rhode Island Current, not a criminal conviction; do not inflate the unreported transfers beyond what the audit and Connors’s own statement say. Do not use the 2025 “director of interagency operations” title as his present job.

Virtue Forge commentary

This is the revolving door in one directory listing. The chief of staff inside McKee’s health and human services secretariat—the office that sits over the health apparatus hospitals bargain with—is the person HARI now prints as executive director of the statewide hospital lobby. The title is already on the trade association’s site. Donnis says the job starts Monday. The state’s own contact page still has him as chief of staff. There is no HARI release explaining the move.

Bias check: Hospitals are free to hire whomever they want, including a former senator with legal and legislative experience. That is ordinary advocacy in a free society, not a crime. The civic problem is the pattern: a senior official leaves the secretariat the industry petitions and immediately becomes the industry’s chief advocate, with the lobby’s masthead updated before the public payroll page is. Do not invent a motive, and do not treat a $2,500 campaign-finance fine—which he admitted as his own sloppiness—as proof he was hired to sell access. It is part of the public record of the man taking the job. It is not a corruption conviction.

Competence and honesty ask for a cleaner line between the people who run the health bureaucracy and the people paid to lobby it. Rhode Islanders can see this one without a press release: McKee’s health chief of staff is now the hospitals’ lobbyist, on HARI’s own staff page, with a Monday start still ahead of him.

Original reporting

Read the underlying sources:

Hospital Association of Rhode Island — Staff (Daniel Connors, Executive Director; checked Oct 3, 2026)

Ocean State Media — TGIF: Ian Donnis’ Rhode Island politics roundup for Oct. 2, 2026

Rhode Island EOHHS — Contact (Daniel Connors, Chief of Staff)

Rhode Island Current — Former R.I. senator and housing leader fined $2,500 for breaking campaign finance laws (Nancy Lavin, Sep 17, 2025)