Re: Another Indication of Rhode Island's Rut

Justin's question of...

Who's Winfield?

...referring to Representative Thomas Winfield (D - Glocester/Smithfield) and his rumored run for Speaker of the House against Gordon Fox, provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the Anchor Rising legislative scorecard in action.

Begin with this simple observation: Rep. Winfield scored a 1 out of 10, while current speaker of the House Gordon Fox scored a 3 out of 10. But as I said in the original post and on the Matt Allen Show, sticking a number next to a legislator's name is not the ultimate goal of this system; the goal is to provide a guide that can help voters learn about the major decisions their incumbent Representatives have made regarding taxes, cost-of-government and cost-of-mandates. And for a potential (or at least a self-declared) leadership candidate like Rep. Winfield, a closely related question is what did he do to earn a score 2 points worse than Speaker Fox.

Rep. Winfield did worse than Speaker Fox for two reasons...

1. He voted for the the amendments attempting to weaken the new Mayoral academies in 2008 (but then voted for their start-up funding in 2009, along with Fox), and
2. He changed his position on relieving cities and towns from educational unfunded mandates, voting for relief in 2009 but against in 2010, incurring a penalty for going wobbly.

The sources of Rep. Winfield's differential with Speaker Fox (coming late to structural ed. reform, changing his mind on unfunded mandates to not support lifting them when it could have helped municipalities adjust to changes in state aid), along with the reasons for his generally low score to begin with (including his being one of the reps who voted in favor of the amendment lowering the car-tax exemption from $3,000 to $500 but who then voted against the final bill) do not suggest someone who is poised to become an effective leader of a steady movement to restore Rhode Island to a semblance of governmental sanity.