Basic Government Functions
The Rhode Island General Assembly is calling its page for information about ideas and proposals related to its federal COVID handout the “American Rescue Plan Act State Fiscal Recovery Fund Recommendation Portal.” The Associated Press article about the portal maintains that framing: Rhode Island’s legislature has created a website to post the proposals it’s receiving…
The featured image for this post is the power outage map for National Grid at 7:00 a.m. Power is out across the entire state. It doesn’t have to be this way. Wires could be put underground, except that our government squanders as much money as it can so as to charge us additionally for basic…
Understandably, the president and CEO of the New England Cable and Telecommunications Association, Tim Wilkerson, is striving to get out ahead of rumors that the state government might give government-run Internet a try. Not only do such projects have a track record of failure, but also: Rhode Island already is one of the best states in…
Introducing discrimination into state contracting based on “equity” demands will create dreams deferred.
On first look, Rhode Islanders might not be inclined to despair that our capital city ranks 89 among 150 cities reviewed for on the WalletHub list of “2021’s Best- & Worst-Run Cities in America.” Our state has been run so poorly for so long that being (roughly) middle-of-the-pack on a list is something of a…
One long-time wish list item from Rhode Island cities and towns has been for the state to start taking ownership of the fixtures that illuminate roads the state owns, and it is now doing so. Of course, with new lighting technology, the savings to municipalities won’t be huge by local-budget standards (averaging a little more…
If the development on which Nicole Dotzenrod reports for the Valley Breeze begins appearing in other communities, it could be a sign of a worrying trend. In the town’s most-recent hiring effort, five applicants met the minimum standards, one chose a different career path, another didn’t pass the interview and background check, and one rejected policing…
Mark Zaccaria argues, for Rhody Reporter, that local officials should start getting used to having a line item for cyber-security as more and more of their activities move online. Of course, it would be nice if the costs of new technology could be offset (and then some) by the savings in labor and productivity that high-tech…
On his In the Dugout show, yesterday, Mike Stenhouse implicitly made that connection. On the one hand, Ken Block was on the show to talk about firefighter overtime abuse in Warwick, while on the other hand, pollster Jim Eltringham addressed public opinion on a proposed Transportation & Climate Initiative gas tax. Stenhouse also leveraged his baseball connections…
The Foundation for Government Accountability has published a short report titled, “Top 10 Examples of Outrageous Unemployment Fraud in 2020 — And How to Fix It.” Most of the blurbs concern specific fraud rings or techniques, but Rhode Island’s entry is more general: Ocean State Drowns in Fraud As recently as October 2020, Rhode Island…