General Assembly
Two interesting points are buried within Randal Edgar and Philip Marcelo’s article on voter-ID legislation currently under consideration in the Rhode Island House. The first is the degree to which Rhode Island ACLU Executive Director Steven Brown’s inane argument implies ulterior, political motives: “When we have no charges filed, when we have no convictions filed…
While the story of legislators looking for ways to advance a bill that apparently cannot get committee approval on its own merits was playing out at the RI Statehouse last week, in another part of the building, according to accounts that have been provided to me from several sources, a group of Representatives was working…
Last week, the RI House Labor Committee reviewed two bills: In both cases, the views were sharply divided, with labor supporting and cities and towns opposing a bill that would allow municipal employee collective-bargaining contract terms to continue after a contract expires and also allow monetary issues in those contracts to be decided in binding…
Most people probably have an idealized image of the legislative process as one in which legislators draft bills that they desire, other legislators sign on as they’re interested, and everybody votes according to their understanding of the consequences. It seems somehow foreign to everyday life to trade votes on unrelated issues and such, but in…
New plan. Better plan. Instead of trying to post something on all of the bills that have been submitted during a week, the week after they have been submitted (which, to be honest, was an interesting experience but was starting to make my eyeballs bleed from too much staring at the computer), I will post…
The legislation has so little chance of coming anywhere close to enactment that proposing it is mainly theatrics, but it’s definitely a show worth performing, if only to remind people that the process exists to make it happen: [The bill by Rep. Joe Trillo (R, Warwick)] would rewrite the rulebook on negotiations with public-employee unions,…
It doesn’t quite rise to the level of Whitehousian attack, but RI House Representative John Edwards (D, Portsmouth, Tiverton) does give a tax reformer reason to wonder how evenly his representation applies: “There is a loophole in that law that some groups have been employing to avoid reporting campaign activities around a Financial Town Meeting,”…
Although his bill has entered the limbo of “held for further study,” state Representative Brian Newberry (R, North Smithfield) deserves recognition for submitting it. An article about the bill’s hearing raises two points that merit comment: The committee ultimately held the bill for further study, a move that Committee Chairman Helio Melo said will allow…
This being Rhode Island, one expects it to be a long shot, but it’s worth noting that Patricia Morgan (R, Coventry, Warwick, West Warwick) has filed legislation to repeal the Caruolo Act: The Caruolo Act allows school committees to file suit against their taxpayers when they overspend their budgets. Rep. Morgan’s legislation would eliminate this…
How powerful are the Rhode Island Speaker of the House and Senate President? Not only have they convinced their respective legislative bodies that every bill must have their approval when no such requirement exists in the rules, but they can even erase from the minds of other legislators — and of newspaper reporters — memories…
