Central Falls
The city of Central Falls is surely better off without Mayor Charles Moreau in office, and many of us likely share the opinion (from afar) that he’d best serve the state by taking this opportunity to quietly exit public service (which phrase I type with some difficulty, in this context). But let’s take a moment…
Little by little, we appear to be moving Rhode Island’s political structure in the right direction: A new law championed by East Providence officials has changed how its candidates and Central Falls’ election contenders collected voters’ signatures. A provision in each of the communities’ charters said voters could sign only one candidate’s nomination papers. The…
In the last couple of Projo stories on the Central Falls receivership situation, no references have been made, in the voice of the omniscient news narrator, to the power of the receiver to either raise taxes or fire city employees. For example, today’s news staff story about the city’s bond rating being cut to a…
I am becoming increasingly uneasy with the scope of the powers being attributed to a “municipal receiver” in Rhode Island. John Hill‘s story in today’s Projo on the situation in Central Falls describes a broad range of executive and taxation authority being suddenly transferred to one man, perhaps working in tandem with the court system…
Here is one aspect of the aforementioned exploration. Receivership usually means that an organization, as it has been, is going away. A city itself, of course, can’t actually go away solely due to fiscal problems. And only in the most extreme of circumstances could a city government go away, or even change very quickly, because…
Pardon me for asking what might be a silly question here, but what does a municipal receivership of the kind being undergone by Central Falls actually mean? I’ve looked through the Rhode Island General Laws, and there is no mention of municipal receivership there that I am able to find. There’s something in Federal law…
The press releases are coming out concerning an administration-union deal in Central Falls. First in the emailbox was the union’s take: The Central Falls Teachers Union and the Central Falls School District reached a tentative agreement Saturday to implement a transformation plan for Central Falls High School for the 2010-11 school year in a way…
In today’s Providence Journal, Mike Stanton and W. Zachary Malinowski do a thorough follow up investigation into the story, originally broken by the Hummel Report’s Jim Hummel, about outrageous board-up fees which were facilitated by the official action of that city’s mayor. In it, we learn that Mayor Charles D. Moreau has hired counsel. Moreau’s…
Ok, vent over this: The police chief of Central Falls is drawing criticism for collecting a $43,000-per-year pension while also continuing to work and draw an annual salary of $72,000….Moran “retired” two weeks ago, then signed a five-year contract under a deal approved by the city retirement board, city lawyer, and mayor….Moran says he made…
Let’s order things clearly: It was objectionable for a Central Falls high school teacher to dangle an Obama doll upside down with a sign saying “Fire CF Teachers,” because it involved the students in a union dispute. Talk of its being a hate crime is utterly outlandish: To Clifford Montiero, president of the Providence branch…