We’re going to take a buyout and use future money from a tobacco settlement–money that was supposed to go towards anti-smoking education and help alleviate the pain and suffering of actual smokers (ahem)–so that we can, among other things, pay for some overtime that some sheriffs didn’t work in the past, but that they should have had a shot at. Cool.
[Open full post]From an unsigned editorial in today’s Projo…
It is time to consider consolidating many more town and city services regionally. To that end, it might be time to revive Rhode Island’s four counties — Providence, Kent, Bristol and Washington (aka South County) to provide local services.Um, what happened to Newport County? [Open full post]
Surprise! After some weird deliberation, AG Lynch went ahead and signed the bond authorizing grabbing tobacco money as per the GA. He will supposedly elaborate at 4:30 today. Summary: much ado about nothing…except some PR, I guess.
[Open full post]If there are restrictions on how money from the tobacco settlement can be used, many other states are acting as if they are oblivious to them…
Pennsylvania, from today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette…
[Governor Ed Rendell], a Democrat, wants to use $35 million a year from the state’s $400 million annual tobacco settlement payment to make debt payments on a $500 million bond issue. The bond money would go for construction of biomedical research labs in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, State College, Hershey and other towns.West Virginia, from today’s Charlestown Gazette-Mail…
Exact numbers will be unveiled today on the impact an $807 million cash infusion will have on stabilizing the state’s critically underfunded teachers’ pension fund, a spokeswoman for Gov. Joe Manchin said Monday.Michigan, from a June 12 report from WZZM-TV (ABC 13)…
Manchin will announce this afternoon the finalization of the sale of $911 million in tobacco settlement bonds that went to market earlier this month.
The state sold the rights to roughly its next 25 years of annual payments from a 1998 settlement of a multistate lawsuit against the nation’s major cigarette manufacturers on June 14.
After putting $100 million into a required reserve fund and paying expenses for the various bond underwriters and bond counsel, initial estimates were that the state would net $807 million from the bond issue. By law, all the money will go to pay down a $4 billion-plus unfunded liability in the Teachers’ Retirement System.
The Michigan Senate approved a measure today that would eliminate half of state government’s budget deficit by selling part of Michigan’s future tobacco lawsuit settlement.Ohio, from the May 28 Canton Repository…
The legislation will reach Governor Granholm’s desk soon because it is part of an overall deal to balance this year’s budget without a tax increase or funding cuts to public schools.
The bill would provide about 415 million dollars up front to help with immediate financial problems, but the state will give up its rights to what would be larger settlement payments due in future years.
The Republican-controlled Legislature appears poised to pass Gov. Ted Strickland’s plan for using Ohio’s tobacco settlement money to pay for the construction of new schools and create tax relief for elderly homeowners.Etc.
However, some senators have said they’d rather see the expected $5 billion go toward higher education, while others are concerned about how the Democratic governor’s plan would be administered.
Collecting the settlement in 40 years of installments would net the state an estimated $18 billion. But a lump sum payout through a process called securitization — where the state would sell the right to its future settlement payments to investors in return for an immediate influx of cash — would allow Ohio to speed up planned school construction.
Ohio would be the 19th state to take a lump sum; California, New York and Michigan are among those that have already used payments to plug budget holes.
It doesn’t seem like diverting the tobacco money to government operating expenses should be a legal problem under the existing settlement terms, as long as a small percentage of the money goes to “reserve funds” and “bond management expenses” (see the WV example).
The details we know about this story don’t add up just yet. [Open full post]
It looks as if Andrew’s speculation might have been correct:
Lynch, who must approve such bonding authorizations, complained that he is being rushed. The problem: the tobacco money comes with strings attached.
“It’s dramatically different from other bonds that I sign,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve had to look at a bond along those lines.”
As of yesterday afternoon, he said he and his staff had not had enough time to examine all the strings. …
The state needs to be careful, Lynch said, because the tobacco companies, hoping to avoid paying some of that money, have begun challenging states that do not comply with the master agreement.
Lynch said he had no evidence that Rhode Island was not fulfilling its obligation under the pact, but he needs to be sure to avoid jeopardizing the funds the state needs for the coming fiscal year, and for additional money the state is expected to receive from the settlement further down the line.
There also appears to be a bit of ego fluffing involved, but it’s not necessary to emphasize that to be disgusted. For one thing, I’m not sure how the General Assembly’s inability to control its hand-out psychosis counts among “the societal costs of smoking.” More broadly, though, from the presumptuous money grab, to the misappropriation of the funds, to the willingness to throw away hundreds of millions of dollars to get a quick infusion now, the whole thing — and the whole state government — stinks.
[Open full post]A few minutes ago, one of the local TV news anchors teased a segment on the tobacco money issue with the question, “How would the General Assembly balance the budget?” Because Lynch didn’t emphasize potential, and because he could have examined the documents without a declaration about doing so, here’s my speculation: Whether it was planned this way or not, Patrick Lynch might be lobbing the General Assembly an excuse to raise taxes.
ADDENDUM:
I was going to add “or an excuse to cut spending,” but I hit the “post” button accidentally before I’d stopped laughing.
WJAR-TV (NBC 10) is reporting that…
Attorney General Patrick Lynch said Monday that he won’t sign off on the General Assembly’s plan to use tobacco settlement money to close the state’s budget deficit.(h/t Dan Yorke)
WPRO’s Colleen Lima reporting that AG Lynch hasn’t quite said he won’t go along; he’s said he has until 3 pm tomorrow to provide his required sign-off, and has not yet reviewed the legislature’s plan to his satisfaction.
AG Lynch on with Dan Yorke. If the state does not meet certain requirements that come with the tobacco money, the state might lose some or all of it.
Yorke asks Lynch what the odds are that he won’t sign off. Lynch answers “I don’t gamble”.
RAMPANT SPECULATION:
Because of developments in other states, Rhode Island’s chances of ever seeing money from the lead paint settlement have become 50/50 at best. If over the next year or two, Patrick Lynch becomes the Attorney General who lost both the lead paint money and the tobacco money (even though “lost” wouldn’t be a fair characterization in the lead paint case, but we’re talking about perceptions here), his chances at winning elective office in 2010 would be nil. So he’s going over the tobacco agreement with a fine-tooth comb, to make sure nothing that the General Assembly is proposing allows the tobacco companies to back out of the deal. [Open full post]
In Sunday’s Projo, Froma Harrop writes approvingly about recently-turned independent New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg…
He started out as a Democrat but turned Republican to run for mayor. He’s governed as a friend of labor, education, the environment and surplus budgets….But if the main qualification of a Presidential candidate is a willingness to raise taxes to pay for increased government spending, then what’s truly special about Michael Bloomberg? Aren’t all of the standard-issue Democrats seeking their party’s Presidential nomination promising to raise taxes to expand government as well? [Open full post]
A year after 9/11, when Bloomberg raised property taxes rather than slash city services, the sclerotic right went into a war dance. Writing in the conservative City Journal, Steven Malanga accused Bloomberg of being “the defender of big government and the municipal workforce” and of committing “catastrophic errors” that would drive away businesses and rich people. The article was titled, “Bloomberg to City: Drop Dead.”
What the conservative wind-up dolls didn’t get is that taxes, wisely spent, can be an investment for the future. The devastating attacks had sent New York’s economy into a swoon, and sure, Bloomberg could have responded by laying off public workers who had kept the city’s soul together. He could have let things get shabbier.
One of the side conversations in the comments to my “Media Bias” post concerned the possible resuscitation of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” which Sen. Diane Feinstein floated on FOXNews Sunday:
WALLACE: So would you revive the fairness doctrine?
FEINSTEIN: Well, I’m looking at it, as a matter of fact, Chris, because I think there ought to be an opportunity to present the other side. And unfortunately, talk radio is overwhelmingly one way.
WALLACE: But the argument would be it’s the marketplace, and if liberals want to put on their own talk radio, they can put it on. At this point, they don’t seem to be able to find much of a market.
FEINSTEIN: Well, apparently, there have been problems. It is growing. But I do believe in fairness. I remember when there was a fairness doctrine, and I think there was much more serious correct reporting to people.
Of course, the counter-argument is that–what is really going on–is that liberals don’t like talk radio because they can’t make it work for them. Just ask Jim Hightower or Mario Cuomo or, most recently, Air America: all failed to become the Left’s version of Rush Limbaugh. Heck, Air America couldn’t even make it in deep-blue Rhode Island!
I don’t know why conservatives do better at talk radio. And I don’t know why liberals do better at comedy, but they do. Witness Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It’s probably a deeper issue than business models or who controls what. Maybe it’s a combination of temperament and style. Whatever it is, liberals will drive themselves crazy if they think they will be able to get total media saturation across the entire spectrum. Isn’t 90% good enough?
Michelle Malkin has republished photos of what actual non-separation of church and state looks like. Others have rightly emphasized the silence that this oppression inspires on the international stage, but given recent discussion around here, I’ll make a tangential point:
Some Westerners apparently believe that allowing Christians to buck the secularist system within their own organizations or Christian leaders to explain how their religious beliefs apply to politics would unleash the demon evident in these images. I’d suggest that a look at the landscape as it truly is reveals that the evil actually inches forward with each new manacle placed upon the West’s religious citizens. Heed George Will:
When the McCain-Feingold law empowered government to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political campaign speech about government, it was predictable that the right of free speech would increasingly be sacrificed to various social objectives that free speech supposedly impedes. And it was predictable that speech suppression would become an instrument of cultural combat, used to settle ideological scores and advance political agendas by silencing adversaries. …
Some African-American Christian women working for Oakland’s government organized the Good News Employee Association (GNEA), which they announced with a flier describing their group as “a forum for people of Faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day. With respect for the Natural Family, Marriage and Family Values.”
The flier was distributed after other employees’ groups, including those advocating gay rights, had advertised their political views and activities on the city’s e-mail system and bulletin board. When the GNEA asked for equal opportunity to communicate by that system and that board, they were denied. Furthermore, the flier they posted was taken down and destroyed by city officials, who declared it “homophobic” and disruptive.
The city government said the flier was “determined to promote harassment based on sexual orientation.” The city warned that the flier and communications like it could result in disciplinary action “up to and including termination.”
A scrawled “Oppressor” on the hood cast over the bound Christian or traditionalist’s head must not be allowed to draw attention away from the hand that holds the whip — not the least because that hand may find it snatched away from its delicate grip.
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