Justin Katz
Any softening of Rhode Island’s new wish-list fire code are welcome, but this seems a little too typical of the state’s operating practices to inspire comfort: Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano testified at an open hearing on the code regulation changes that was held last September, to re-emphasize the Senate’s position that the code changes…
Kenny Cicerone, of North Providence, has caught the online-activism bug. His North Providence Taxpayers Association is seeking to file an ethics complaint against Senate President Joseph Montalbano “for being a municiple court judge in North Providence, where he solicits votes, and he was appointed as judge after voting to give the town council a raise…
Mark Steyn’s Sunday NRO column is a bit uneven, but much can be forgiven of the man who turns such masterful phrases as this: Terrific. In a Huckabee administration, nothing is certain but hope and taxes. Did he poll-test the line? Was it originally “What I didn’t raise was tobacco”? Or did he misread the…
Although I’m fully sympathetic with the inclination to ignore complications, I find it hard to believe that syndicated columnist Froma Harrop hasn’t heard the basic argument against the following assumption, spoken this time with reference to health insurance (emphasis added): You see, health care has become just another racket by which clever operators can scoop…
Some of the numbers floating about at tonight’s Tiverton Town Council meeting left me unable to suppress my guffaws. The town pays, if I heard right, $13,000 per family healthcare plan. Indeed, according to the outgoing town administrator, Glenn Steckman, the reason he included a healthcare buyback in the contract that he put forward for…
Clarity on meaning is going to be absolutely crucial as competing visions are put forward to solve Rhode Island’s ills, and one pair of concepts that may have confusing overlaps in education policy is “statewide funding formula” versus a “statewide teacher contract.” The former phrase, as came out in my discussion yesterday with Representative Joe…
Not to darken your day, but the latest bit of bad news brought to Rhode Islanders by Providence Journal business writer John Kostrzewa comes with a very important point: When cities and towns do revaluations required under state law, they will find the total value of their residential property has probably declined. With a lower…
“We teach our children every day not to accept the easy answers but to get all the information they need before they make a decision,” writes NEA-Tiverton President (and teacher) Amy Mullen in a letter to the Sakonnet Times (which is not online). What follows that opener is, not surprisingly, another iteration of the union’s…
I managed to restrain myself and hold on to a Christmas gift card to Barnes & Noble until Wednesday in order to put it toward the purchase of Jonah Goldberg’s new book. (As readers know, I was otherwise occupied on Tuesday evening, which is when the book was officially released.) Liberal Fascism was nowhere to…
Of the four General Assembly members whom I’ve contacted regarding the RI Economic Summit article in yesterday’s Projo, only Tiverton/Portsmouth Rep. Joe Amaral has gotten back to me. (That’s more a plus to him than a minus to the others, considering that it’s Sunday.) I’ll definitely say this: I was much too hard on him…