Operation Clean Government Panel Audio (Continued 2)

The following audio continues where the related post left off, in keeping with Anchor Rising’s live blogging of Operation Clean Government’s spring forum:

  • WPRO’s Dan Yorke asked where the side that’s supposed to counterbalance special interests has been, to some confusion over whether he means elected representatives or voters, with short responses from General Treasurer Frank Caprio: stream, download (29sec)
  • Representative Elizabeth Dennigan (D., East Providence, Pawtucket) says the public has to do its homework, seeming to imply that citizens ought to analyze portions of the budget; “help us out”: stream, download (1min 7sec)
  • Yorke specifies the question to ask why the General Assembly leadership isn’t in the room; “Do you think they give a damn?”; audience, “No!”: stream, download (57sec)
  • Dennigan attempts to compliment her leadership, but slipped up to say, “I’ll give them kudos for letting me be here”; 30 seconds of audience turbulence, including one shout of “there’s the diagnosis”; Yorke pursued, and Dennigan responded awkwardly: stream, download (1min 29sec)
  • Yorke questions whether anybody is in the room from labor, alludes to labor YouTube videos, compliments Bob Walsh, calls labor’s point of view “legitimate,” and lists the various issues that politicians must be able to address: stream, download (2min 49sec)
  • Yorke prods Caprio on how he would battle the General Assembly and test labor if governor; when he said, “You dig in with the General Assembly,” an irate audience member stood up and started shouting, “You’re grandfathered in”; Caprio clarified that “you dig in against them”: stream, download (3min 52sec)
  • Having turned the question toward the “one thing” that a governor has to insist upon to turn the state around, Yorke points to Department of Administration head Gary Sasse begins on cutting taxes: stream, download (32sec)
  • Prompted to provide her philosophy on taxation, Dennigan says, “No new taxes; why can’t we decrease them?”: stream, download (1min 1sec)
  • URI economics professor Leonard Lardaro jumps in to say that “the people of this state have to demand results”: stream, download (1min 35sec)
  • Yorke asks what business(es) the state government ought to get out of: stream, download (2min 14sec)
  • John Hazen White, Jr., President and CEO of Taco, Inc., replies “government”; Yorke asks if he’s “advocating for chaos”: stream, download (1min 2sec)
  • Sasse cites pension reforms, management rights, and tenure reform as areas that need to be accomplished more efficiently; he enumerates that government should be in education, infrastructure, and “realistic safety nets”; “everything else is irrelevant”; “We haven’t discussed what we can afford. That’s why we’ve become an entitlement society, because we never assess what we can afford.”: stream, download (5min 16sec)
  • Dennigan responds that we need “pension reform” and begins to ramble: stream, download (1min 33sec)
  • Sasse raises provinciality, which becomes a sort of take-away for the morning: stream, download (58sec)
  • Caprio says that we don’t need “government layers on top of government layers”: stream, download (1min 17sec)
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Roland
Roland
14 years ago

With all the kudos to Gary Sasse and the rarest of all compliments from Dan Yorke that he’s the smartest man Dan knows, why doesn’t Gary run for Governor?
When asked if the state really has a plan, he said, no, not really.
Honest and smart. I like it although he would need to brush on some making a strong presence.

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