Adventures in Town Government
This ruling is worth highlighting before it slips in the vast mire of news about Rhode Island’s fatally ill civic structure: The state-appointed receiver running Central Falls can go after Mayor Charles D. Moreau and the City Council to recoup legal fees spent defending the receivership law from Moreau’s unsuccessful state Supreme Court challenge, a…
It’s always appropriate to call for a greater sense of shame among Rhode Island’s politicians, but Ed Achorn was a little too specific in his column, last week: The politicians of Rhode Island would be ashamed of themselves, had they not lost the capacity for feeling shame long ago. Their determination to balance their enormous…
Apparently, when a municipal dictator (i.e., a “receiver”) deals with those who previously held power locally, it’s one thing when that power derived from the voting public, but it’s another when it derives from an organization that’s politically connected at the state level: Frank Flynn, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, which represents…
Reading this article, I thought it worth reminding everybody once again that, given the way local budgeting is done, property tax rates don’t really matter: After voting to take court action against Mayor Charles A. Lombardi’s vetoes, the Town Council changed its tune Wednesday night and voted unanimously to set the tax rate for residential…
This fiscal year, residents of Tiverton are paying $580,000 through their tax bills for trash collection. The town dump is approaching capacity, however, and due to decades of poor fiscal management, the local government lacks the funds to pay for its closure and for the initiation of an alternative method of disposal. So, the powers…
A recurring theme arose when the Providence School Board voted to eliminate administrator unionization: [Stephen Kane, executive secretary of the Association of Providence Public School and Staff Administrators] now worries that the fate of each administrator will be left to “the whim of the School Board. Of course, it’s going to get personal. It’s going…
Trying to follow public policy debates — particularly those having to do with the transfer of government money — is like trying to make sense of an incoherent dream. Whenever you hear or read that there is “confusion” or “ambiguity” related to a particular law, it’s a reasonable assumption that one or more parties are…
Last week, in Tiverton, the committee tasked to create an alternative to the financial town meeting (FTM) held a hearing on its proposal. Basically, the budget process would follow the same steps, with the Town Council and School Committee submitting budgets to the Budget Committee, which puts together a final request for the consideration of…
This one nearly slipped through the cracks, inasmuch as I haven’t noticed its being developed into a larger story: The overseer of deficit-plagued Central Falls could be replaced just five months after he was appointed to steer the city through its dire fiscal straits. Governor Chafee told public radio station WRNI that he is considering…
Every year, for the past several, Tiverton’s Financial Town Meeting has made a distinction between the amount that it was appropriating from “local funds” and the amount that it expected from state and federal aid. For fiscal year 2010, the state aid came in $367,165 less than predicted, and the school department took the money…