I’ve said it again and again over the years:  Rhode Island government is structured such that the state is the center of everything, and various committees, associations, chambers, and other organizations that people think represent the interests of various segments of civil society do not.  They are there to represent the state government’s interests to their constituencies and to allow politicians to claim that the groups and people they represent are actually onboard with this or that thing that the politicians want to do.

This is very evident in the backup that Erika Sanzi offers in her take-down of the RI School Committee Association’s president, Tim Duffy.  Scroll down to where she contrasts his contribution to a chain email among his counterparts from other states with those counterparts’ offerings.

She’s slightly wrong about one thing.  It’s not that he doesn’t care about parents so much as that he doesn’t care about any constituencies, even the ones he represents.  These are all patronage and/or machine jobs to fill a role that a civilized society tends to have, but it’s all show in the Ocean State.