For the file of quotations that nobody noticed, but that ought to open eyes:

“Legislators know what the issue is, they just lack the political will to do it,” says Stephen M. Robinson, a Providence lawyer who has been retained by the school committees in Pawtucket and Woonsocket to work on a school formula lawsuit. “The only way to do it is if the court orders them to do it.”

The option overlooked, here, is for the small-time politicians to step away from their comfy local positions and challenge the representatives in the statehouse and form political alliances — involving, you know, campaigns of persuasion — in other districts. Running to the courts as the “only” remedy suggests that even among the class of Rhode Islanders who ought to be most apt to run for statewide office, there’s a sense that senators and reps aren’t actually replaceable.