According to both the Projo’s 7-to-7 blog and NBC-10, the three paint manufacturers found liable for what could amount to billions of dollars in damages in the Rhode Island lead paint trial have filed suit in Rhode Island Superior Court asking for either a dismissal of the case or for a new trial to be held. This is a separate filing from the filing based on contingency fee issues reported earlier this month.
A joint press release issued by NL Industries, Millennium Holdings, and Sherwin-Williams details what they believe to be grounds for overturning last month’s verdict. The most compelling arguments are the defendants’ claims that the state never proved how much lead paint, if any amount at all, was sold by each company in Rhode Island…
Each defendant should have had a separate trial. The state consistently blurred evidence among defendants, resulting in an unfair trial to each;The other arguments are concerned with the basic premise of the case…
The state evaded a dispositive motion by asserting that it was not relying on a “market share” liability theory. At trial, however, the state presented national “market share” data rather than any proof that the defendants’ lead pigments are present in Rhode Island today and contributing to an alleged public nuisance. The use of market share data conflicts with Rhode Island Supreme Court precedent and doesn’t show that any company was a substantial factor contributing to the alleged nuisance;
The state defeated numerous summary judgment motions and succeeded in striking defendants’ affirmative defenses by assuring the court that this was not a product liability case. The state then turned around at trial and presented a product liability case, stripped free from any product-related defenses;
The state defeated summary judgment on the Manufacturer Immunity Act by contending that this case was not about the manufacture or sale of a product. But the state presented a case at trial premised solely and exclusively on evidence concerning manufacture and sale of a product;
The state failed to connect the evidence it promised — such as defendants’ advertising, marketing or sales activity — to the state of Rhode Island.
The jury did not have to find that the defendants had done anything wrong;…and with assorted technical legal errors that may have been made…
By presenting a fictitious public nuisance theory, the state defeated defendants’ efforts to join property owners, conduct property-specific discovery, and hold property owners responsible for not maintaining their properties. The court compounded the error by failing to instruct the jury about the responsibility of property owners to properly maintain their property,
Opening and closing arguments given by counsel for the state were so inflammatory and prejudicial that a new trial is necessary;[Open full post]
The State impermissibly sought to hold defendants liable for exercising their First Amendment rights to belong to trade associations, express their opinions and communicate with public officials;
The state convinced the court to delay its agency ruling for almost a year, promising additional evidence to legitimize the state’s use of Lead Industries Association (LIA) evidence. No such evidence ever materialized at trial. It was only after the LIA information had been conditionally admitted that the state conceded that it had no further evidence, and the court finally ruled in defendants’ favor. The incurable evidentiary damage, however, already had been done. The state then compounded this error by arguing “LIA” and agency issues during its closing arguments
Ed Achorn’s latest editorial A cap won’t solve R.I.’s tax troubles states:
It is encouraging that Rhode Island politicians — in an election year, anyway — are awakening to the public’s agonized cries over sky-high property taxes.
Senate President Joseph Montalbano (D.-North Providence), Majority Leader Teresa Paiva-Weed (D.-Newport), and Minority Leader Dennis Algiere (R.-Westerly) last week rolled out their proposal to lower the current ceiling on city and town spending increases to 4 percent, from 5.5 percent, of the tax levy, starting in fiscal 2008. Exceeding the new cap would require the majority of voters in a special election, instead of an act of the General Assembly…
That would be nice! But if a 5.5-percent cap served as the backdrop for today’s rampaging property taxes, it’s fair to wonder how much good a 4-percent cap would do…
…simply capping spending and calling that a break for taxpayers is not responsible government or courageous leadership. The question is how the money is being spent…
Leaders who were serious about restraining property taxes would act quickly to:
Limit inordinately generous pensions, early retirements and health-care benefits for public employees, which threaten to bankrupt local communities…
Restore management rights to local communities, so that they may spend money more carefully and demand accountability from employees.
Encourage the creation of a more robust economy, by drawing in wealthy taxpayers who could help pay for government, give to charity and create the jobs that generate tax revenues…
House Speaker William Murphy and his leadership team have done the risky work of addressing part of the problem, by proposing to bring Rhode Island’s income taxes in line with those in Massachusetts. That is the only real hope of drawing in well-to-do enterpreneurs to boost the economy.
But the Senate’s leaders, sadly, lack such courage.
None of this is theoretical anymore…
…Residents of other communities face enormous tax hikes to cover pension and health benefits, many of them going to retirees who have moved away to enjoy them in lower-tax locales.
As long as Rhode Island’s political leaders ignore these well-documented trends — and the voters let them do so — the taxpayers will get pounded.
If towns and cities were simply forced to live with a lower cap, what would be squeezed? Road repairs, no doubt. Textbooks and school sports. Parks, libraries and other services that make communities pleasant. Communities would, essentially, be further hollowed out. Meanwhile, obligations to public employees, postponed year after year, would build up toward their inevitable explosion.
Unfortunately, there is no politically painless way out of this mess, which is why Ocean State property taxes continue to soar, despite politicians’ bi-annual expressions of sympathy and concern. Making serious changes in Rhode Island would pit lawmakers against some very powerful and well-vested interests.
If they truly wanted to serve the public, politicians would have to say no to their “friends.”…
It’s certainly much easier to set a spending cap…
Achorn’s view about the exploding public sector costs resulting from years of contractual giveaways is reinforced by a Standard & Poor’s public pension study released in February, as discussed in a Wall Street Journal article (available for a fee) entitled S&P Study Notes Shortfall and Warns That Stresses Threaten Creditworthiness:
[Open full post]Underfunded public-employee pension plans are straining state budgets just as states face other rising expenses and steep debt levels, according to a Standard & Poor’s Corp. analysis to be released today.
The report said state pension plans fell short by about $284 billion nationwide in 2004, the latest year for which data are available, leaving the plans in need of hefty contributions. The budgetary stress could ultimately hurt states’ creditworthiness, leading to higher borrowing costs for some governments, which sell debt to finance all types of projects, such as roads and schools…
While state revenue growth is stronger than it has been in the past five years, states face a “double-whammy” of declining pension fund assets and rising liabilities, which means they must contribute more money, according to the report.
As of June 30, 2004, the value of public pension fund assets fell to 84% of projected liabilities from 100% or more in the late 1990s, according to the report. The drop stems from several factors, including the bursting of the stock-market bubble, the promise of enhanced benefits and weak financial contributions by state and local governments…
When the stock-market bubble burst early this decade, pension funds saw their funding levels sink, and state and local governments were on the hook to make up the difference. As a result, states have had to boost their contribution rates.
But many still have large holes to fill before their pension plans are fully funded. Among the most underfunded plans in fiscal 2004 were West Virginia, Oklahoma and Rhode Island.
The need to contribute more money comes as states face other budgetary pressures, including skyrocketing costs for Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for the poor. Costs are rising at about 7% a year. State and local governments will also have to start setting aside money to pay for retiree health benefits as the result of a pending accounting change; for the first time, governments will be required to disclose these obligations. States are also carrying an enormous debt load of $288 billion, which they must finance in both the long and short term.
Because of the rising budget pressures, ratings firms such as S&P want to see pension asset-to-liability ratios reach 90% or more so that contribution rates can level off…
In a Washington Times editorial, Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney writes about Reforming Education:
I was in high school when Sputnik happened. Russia’s lead in space frightened us. It also woke us up…
One could argue that there have been quite a few Sputniks lately, but that we haven’t noticed… It’s time we get moving, starting with education. First, close the Excellence Gap. American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 OECD countries in math literacy and 19th in science. Fifteen years ago, the United States and Asia produced about the same number of Ph.D.’s in math and physical science: 4,700 a year. Today, we graduate 4,400; Asia graduates 24,900. Second, close the Achievement Gap. Failing urban schools are a dead end for too many minority children. This is the civil rights issue of our generation.
How to close the education gaps? The teacher’s unions have their answers: simply spend more money and hire more teachers for smaller classroom size. But the data show that those are not the answers at all. Massachusetts tests our kids regularly; when studentproficiencyis matched with classroom size and per-pupil spending, there is absolutely no relationship…
We found our education prescription by interviewing parents, teachers and principals, studying actual data, mining lessons from successful districts and charter schools, and digesting the recommendations from commissions and experts. Here are some of the real answers:1) Make teaching a true profession. The 19th-century industrial labor-union model doesn’t make sense for educating children. Teachers aren’t manufacturing widgets. Better teachers should have better pay, advancement opportunities and mentoring responsibilities. Better pay should also accompany the most challenging assignments — needed specialties like math and science, advanced placement skills and extra effort.
2) Let the leaders lead. Superintendents and principals must have authority to hire, deploy resources, assign mentors and training, and remove nonperformers. Seniority cannot trump the needs of our children.
3) Measure up. Over union objections, Massachusetts implemented standardized testing and a mandatory graduation exam. With measurement, we finally see our successes and failures and can take corrective action. Without measurement, we were blind.
4) Let freedom ring. When parents, teachers and kids are free to choose their school, everyone benefits. Charter schools free of union restraints and, yes, even home schools, teach lessons we can apply to improve standard public schools.
5) Pull in the parents. Teachers tell us that the best predictor of student success is parental involvement. For our lowest-performing schools, I’ve proposed mandatory parental preparation courses. Over two days, parents learn about America’s education culture, homework, school discipline, available after-school programs, what TV is harmful or helpful and so on. And for parents who don’t speak English, help them understand why their child’s English immersion in school is a key to a bright future.
6) Raise the bar. Our kids need to be pushed harder. Less about self-esteem; more about learning. I have proposed advanced math and science schools for the very brightest (the one we have is a huge success, but we need more); advanced placement in every high school, more teachers with serious science and math credentials, and laptop computers for every middle- and high-school student. We’ve also added science as a graduation exam requirement, in addition to math and English.These ideas should sound familiar — they turn up in virtually every unbiased look at education. The opposition comes from some teachers unions. They fight better pay for better teachers, principal authority, testing and standards, school choice and English immersion. With their focus on themselves and their members, they have failed to see how we have failed our children. But that will change as testing produces data and data debunks the myth that more and more spending is the answer.
A continuing failure to close the excellence and achievement gaps would have catastrophic consequences, for individual human lives left short of their potential, and for our nation. Students around the world are racing ahead of ours. If we don’t move, we’ll become the France of the 21st century, starting as a superpower and exiting as something far less. Education must be one of our first priorities…
For more on the problems with public education today and how school choice is the solution, read The Moral Imperative for School Choice.
[Open full post]Republican Dave Talan kicks off his campaign for Mayor of Providence tonight. Here are the issues motivating Mr. Talan to run as described in his official campaign announcement…
On education, Talan wants every child to be able to attend a good school, close to home, of their parents’ choosing. If that choice is a private or parochial school, Talan would provide vouchers to ease the financial burden – both for the 8,000 children who have already fled the public schools, and for the 10,000 more he believes would leave if they could afford to. Talan’s plan would save taxpayers about $25 million. It would also benefit children who stay in public schools, by relieving overcrowding; ending cross-town forced busing; and providing competition that would force the teachers unions to relax their stranglehold on needed reforms. Talan, who attended public schools (Lexington Ave. Elementary; Reservoir Ave. Elementary; George J. West Jr. High; Classical High; URI & CCRI), would fight for an unlimited number of public charter schools; and would ease the way for experts to teach math and science.[Open full post]
On taxes & spending, Talan would balance the budget by reducing spending; rather than by raising taxes and relying on unlikely increases in state aid. As already mentioned, his school voucher plan would save $25 million. Talan would also fight to end all unfunded state mandates, that require spending on unnecessary things of little value. He endorses Mayor Steve Laffey’s “Taxpayers Relief Act”, that would clarify management rights, and lower pension and health care costs.
On ethics & honest government, Talan will continue the practice of refusing all contributions from city workers or people who do business with the city. He would expand this to the City Council, and push for an ethics ordinance, in order to promote more economic development in the city. Investors want to know they will not have to pay bribes, kickbacks, or campaign donations, in order to do business.
Talan is putting together a team of 35 Republican running mates to campaign together with him (15 City Council; 7 State Senate; 13 State Representative).
Providence Mayor David Cicilline says the only way to fix Providence’s failing schools is for the rest of Rhode Island to give more money to the Providence school system. However, combining the Governor�s 2007 budget with the student population data from the Rhode Island Information Works website (results below) shows that Rhode Island is already very generous towards the state’s capitol core. While accounting for only about 26% of RI students, Providence, Pawtucket, and Central Falls already receive about 44% of the total education aid given directly to cities and towns.
Since there is not much money in the form of state aid left to be taken from non-urban communities to fund urban school boards (some communities receive less than $1,000 per pupil compared to Providence’s $6,772 per-pupil), Mayor Cicilline and “education adequacy” advocates are looking for new methods for raiding the non-urban tax base. Given the existing funding situation, “education adequacy” means using mostly statewide taxation to pay for urban core education while using a mixture of property taxes and state aid to pay for urban ring and suburban education. People in the urban areas will only be required to pay once — for their school system, through statewide taxation. People not in urban areas will be required to pay twice — for both their own community’s schools and for urban schools.
| School District | State Aid | Students | Aid-per-Student |
| Central Falls | $41,335,813 | 3734 | $11,070 |
| Providence | $188,940,591 | 27900 | $6,772 |
| Pawtucket | $64,874,304 | 9654 | $6,720 |
| Woonsocket | $45,937,020 | 6928 | $6,631 |
| Bristol/Warren | $20,024,144 | 3688 | $5,430 |
| Burrillville | $13,540,919 | 2590 | $5,228 |
| WestWarwick | $19,972,977 | 3838 | $5,204 |
| East Providence | $26,284,707 | 6386 | $4,116 |
| Newport | $11,581,802 | 2826 | $4,098 |
| Glocester | $3,159,848 | 793 | $3,985 |
| Chariho | $14,667,680 | 3863 | $3,797 |
| North Providence | $13,091,637 | 3473 | $3,770 |
| Middletown | $10,423,773 | 2769 | $3,764 |
| Foster | $1,378,500 | 369 | $3,736 |
| Exeter/W Greenwich | $7,511,299 | 2204 | $3,408 |
| Coventry | $19,903,170 | 5862 | $3,395 |
| Foster/Glocester | $5,641,416 | 1693 | $3,332 |
| Johnston | $10,903,894 | 3285 | $3,319 |
| Cranston | $35,253,290 | 11222 | $3,141 |
| Warwick | $37,365,858 | 11993 | $3,116 |
| Tiverton | $5,896,220 | 2224 | $2,651 |
| North Kingstown | $12,008,646 | 4626 | $2,596 |
| South Kingstown | $10,516,526 | 4174 | $2,520 |
| Cumberland | $13,206,064 | 5349 | $2,469 |
| North Smithfield | $4,806,225 | 2006 | $2,396 |
| Portsmouth | $6,574,703 | 3066 | $2,144 |
| Smithfield | $5,802,003 | 2710 | $2,141 |
| Lincoln | $7,545,267 | 3649 | $2,068 |
| Scituate | $3,474,634 | 1817 | $1,912 |
| Westerly | $7,060,711 | 3710 | $1,903 |
| Narragansett | $2,091,859 | 1673 | $1,250 |
| Little Compton | $396,888 | 327 | $1,214 |
| Jamestown | $587,030 | 545 | $1,077 |
| New Shoreham | $135,660 | 151 | $898 |
| East Greenwich | $2,178,616 | 2466 | $883 |
| Barrington | $2,906,626 | 3434 | $846 |
In case you — like me — missed it, here’s an MP3 file of Addie Goss’s radio piece on Rhode Island blogs for the Brown Student Radio show Off the Beat (which, for some reason, never found its way onto the show’s archive page).
(I didn’t realize how halting. my. speech. can. be. when I’m trying to make points extemporaneously. I’ll have to work on it… or else stick to well-memorized talking points as others in the opine business do.)
I have to admit that Froma Harrop’s rhetoric, in the following single instance, does resonate a bit for me:
The centerpiece is the lowered tax on investment income, which Republicans are trying to keep at 15 percent. As a result, the idle rich living off their stock portfolios are taxed at 15 percent, while the working husband and wife, each earning $40,000, pay a marginal tax rate of 25 percent. Even Ronald Reagan was content to have dividends and capital gains treated like “sweat” income.
Of course, she fails to leaven her attack with another perspective: Harrop would have that working husband and wife (hardly sweating their bills with a household income of $80,000 a year), as they seek to get ahead and to plan for increasingly investment-based retirements, taxed to earn the money and then taxed again to grow it. The fair rates for either round of taxation are certainly arguable, but the Harrops of the world too often gloss over the reality that life’s inequities are more fundamental than the tax code.
Those who do not work for a living (a group in which some might be tempted to include professional opinionists) will find themselves in better circumstances no matter the socio-economic scheme under which they live. What progressives too often fail to see — beyond their narrow-eyed focus on “progress” — is that the rich will overstep new obstacles with ease, while those attempting to emulate their strategies, in a small way, will stumble and fall.
Yesterday, Providence Mayor David Cicilline walked out of meeting with Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri on the subject of improving education in Rhode Island’s urban core of Providence/Pawtucket/Central Falls. Both John Castellucci of the Providence Journal and Jim Baron of the Pawtucket Times have reports in their respective newspapers.
Governor Carcieri wanted to discuss increased cooperation between the school districts. This is from the Times article…
“There was never talk about an urban school district,” Carcieri told reporters after the meeting. “What I wanted to do was get together with the mayors and see if this idea of more collaboration, finding ways of looking at what could be done between the three cities had any merit. I suggested that we look at it because of all the things you’ve heard me say in terms of curriculum alignment, in terms of transportation, they all have building issues, all of that.Mayor Cicilline walked out of the meeting because the only “reform” he is willing to consider is increased state funding for the Providence school system…
“My sense is that both Pawtucket and Central Falls are willing to look at it,” the governor said. “Unfortunately, Mayor Cicilline wanted to talk about funding formulas and that’s all he wanted to talk about. That’s not what I was here trying to get at. That would all fall out of any discussion as you go forward.”This is what Mayor Cicilline had to say…
Any “serious conversation” about public education, Cicilline asserted, should focus on Rhode Island’s “over-reliance on the property tax” to pay for schools. “We still don’t have a funding formula” to finance education costs in the state’s 39 cities and towns.The state government already is and will continue to be very generous towards the City of Providence. According to the Governor’s proposed 2007 budget (see page 456), Providence will receive about $3,900,000 more in state aid this year than it did last year. This is, by far, the largest increase in state education funding that any single community will receive. The only other communities budgeted for an increase of more than a million dollars are Warwick ($1,500,000 increase), Cranston ($1,300,000 increase) and Pawtucket ($1,100,000 increase).
“Property taxes in every city and town are too high,” Cicilline insisted, and in every budget the governor has proposed “he has shifted a greater percentage of the burden to the property tax.
But a disproportionate increase in aid-per-student is not enough for Mayor Cicilline. He wants either tax increases or service cuts in the rest of Rhode Island to pay for even more funding for Providence schools. This is hypocritical. The Mayor won’t consider working with neighboring communities to improve education, either through the Governor’s proposals, or through the Cranston school choice proposal, but expects people in all of Rhode Island’s other communities to send additional money to the Providence school system.
Part of Mayor Cicilline’s attitude comes from the urban arrogance that tends to infect city officials. They fall into the trap of believing that city problems are the only problems big enough to matter, that urban pols are the only ones sophisticated enough to deal with the problems big enough to matter, and that smaller cities and towns exist solely for the purpose of supporting big cities.
But there is also a political arrogance behind Mayor Cicilline’s walkout. The Mayor feels comfortable snubbing the Governor because he must feel confident that Providence’s education funding will be increased at the expense of the rest of the state via the “education adequacy” proposal currently being sought by the legislature. How much more of your community’s tax revenue your legislator supports sending to the Providence school system is something you may want to inquire about before voting in the fall elections. [Open full post]
In today’s Washington Post:
Lincoln Chafee was cleaning a horse stall on his well-manicured farm one recent early morning, describing his latest encounter with hostile home-state Republicans.
The GOP senator had appeared the previous night before the Scituate Republican Town Committee to seek the endorsement of the small but influential group. In his halting, soft-spoken way, Chafee defended his opposition to the war in Iraq, domestic wiretapping and the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. as the principled positions of an old-school conservative.
Chafee, 53, once could count on voters in Rhode Island to tolerate his maverick ways, but this time the response was blank stares. “Nobody listened to my reasoning,” Chafee recounted as he piled hay into a wheelbarrow. “They support the president on everything.”
Few paths to victory are more convoluted than the one Chafee must travel to win election to a second term this year in this strongly Democratic state. Chafee will face Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey, a conservative, in the Sept. 12 GOP primary, and he must convince voters that he is “Republican enough,” despite his numerous defections from the party and President Bush. If he survives the primary, Chafee then must hope that he can hold the Republican vote while wooing moderate Democrats and independents to stave off what is sure to be a strong Democratic challenge.
“I’m running for opposite constituencies,” Chafee said. “It’s impossible.”
. . . [Cranston Mayor Steve] Laffey, 43, energetic and ebullient, is Chafee’s political opposite. Although he became wealthy working for a Memphis-based financial services company, he grew up as a lower-middle-class Cranston kid…Although Laffey raised taxes as Cranston mayor — a heretical act for a conservative Republican in Washington — he is admired for having turned around a troubled city, including by bucking powerful unions and even a platoon of highly paid school crossing guards. State and national Republican leaders strongly urged him to run for lieutenant governor, but Laffey believes his financial management skills can be put to better use in Washington. “I’m not into that,” Laffey said of the intraparty pressure. “I’m an outsider. I’m running against what’s going on down there.”
At least some Rhode Island Republicans agree: the Scituate Republican Town Committee. The group decided to back Laffey the morning after Chafee’s appearance.
Imagine that, Republicans supporting a Republican President on such issues as War and Supreme Court nominations. Whoda thunk?
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