Carroll Andrew Morse
According to the State Board of Elections, Rhode Island is facing “an imminent peril” to its “public health, safety, or welfare”. The imminent peril has forced the Board to call an emergency meeting to “[make] confidential the optional information on voter registrations of voters email addresses, telephone numbers and if interested as working as poll…
Woonsocket’s Mayor and City Council have proposed a 13% supplemental tax as an immediate solution to their city’s short-term fiscal crisis. They have also proposed building the supplemental amount into the city’s revenue baseline to help address longer term structural deficits. At the behest of the Woonsocket’s state representatives, the Rhode Island legislature rejected this…
For reference from an upcoming post, but also interesting in its own right… This table shows the residential property tax levy in each Rhode Island municipality, as a percentage of aggregate income in that municipality, as reported by the census bureau. The details of residential property tax levy, involving the separation of residential from commercial…
Another amended version of the East Bay Energy Consortium bill has appeared on the General Assembly website. This latest version of S2870 would allow two (or more) town/city councils to get together and create a corporation for the newly defined “essential governmental function” of developing “renewable energy resources”. A corporation created under this law would…
8. H7173/S2052: A statutory “bill of rights” for homeless individuals (H Judiciary; Tue, Jun 12). The section guaranteeing a “right to fair, decent and affordable housing in the community of his or her choosing, and access to safe and proximate shelter until such housing can be attained”, noted previously in these updates, has been removed…
What is the legislature working on, in what is almost certain to be their final week in session? Well, for one thing, giving lots of bills getting House and Senate hearings at the same time: Local Impact: Cranston 2, Exeter, Glocester, Middletown, North Providence, Portsmouth, Providence. 16. H7026: Allows the State Insurance Commissioner to grant…
Justin is liveblogging the Rhode Island House of Representatives’ budget deliberations at the Ocean State Current. He’s in the media section on the House floor, allowing him to immediately read (and blog about) floor amendments, as they are presented to the legislators.
As the state budget goes before the full Rhode Island House today, here are a few graphics showing how this year’s spending fits into the longer-term pattern of Rhode Island state spending. This first graph shows a slight breather, in terms of current dollars, in the continuing growth in state budgets that has been occurring…
1. The major national story is that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker won his recall election, 53%-46% despite substantial efforts to unseat him from organized labor groups who oppose the budget and collective bargaining reforms he has spearheaded. The real message here is that there are still many Americans who don’t like to be told that…
Some Rhode Island General Assembly members want to take the state into the wind farm business. They want to make an already-existing body called the “East Bay Energy Consortium” into a subsidiary of the RI Economic Development Corporation, so that the governmental parts of the EDC’s quasi-governmental authority can be leveraged by the EBEC, so…