General Assembly
Ed Fitzpatrick catches a telling rhetorical cliché in a column about state representative and congressional candidate David Segal (D., Providence) (emphasis added): “I have a constituency in (his House district) that voted for me at a 70/30 rate over the years in primaries, and I think that I will be framed as a progressive as…
So, yeah, the General Assembly has managed to keep its hands pretty clean when it comes to raising taxes, but Rhode Islanders shouldn’t expect to have more money in their pockets — at least not unless they get involved in local government right now. As we’ve seen, in Tiverton, the state bureaucracy is willing to…
Every year, the General Assembly’s budget is full of optimistic assumptions meant to make the budget seem balanced on paper, with hundreds of millions of dollars to be found or taken throughout the year. This time around, though, we’ve reached the level of parody: As initially proposed by Carcieri, the Assembly’s budget plugs deficits with…
The comments to Marc’s post on the number of General Assembly members who benefit from public pensions are understandable, but most miss the point. Cutting the General Assembly’s pay and authority isn’t going to address the essential problem — namely, that an official position that doesn’t pay much will attract those who have other motivations,…
Justin, along with many of us avid watchers of the State House, was a little startled to learn that former Speaker Pro Tem Charlene Lima (D, Cranston) had not only dropped by the Tea Party Thursday but had offered expressions of camaraderie. Converted politicians are certainly welcome to the good government cause. It is difficult,…
Have I been missing something, all these years, or does the appearance of Rep. Charlene Lima (D., Cranston) in this article about the Tax Day Tea Party seem a bit disorienting? State Rep. Charlene M. Lima, D-Cranston, stopped by after the Assembly finished its business for the day. She said that lawmakers couldn’t hear the…
I’m of the opinion that Rhode Island doesn’t need to spend any public dollars on economic expansion — unless you’re one of those who calls it “spending” when the government doesn’t take as much from other people’s earnings. Cut taxes; eliminate mandates; lighten regulations. Even from that position, though, it seems as if there must…
Sometimes, in the noise and rancor of politics and budgeting, one’s attention becomes monopolized by particular details. Consider the following: [The state’s public-employee unions’] chief target: a proposal to limit annual pension increases to the first $35,000 in retirement pay initially. The $35,000 would go up each year, in keeping with the Consumer Price Index,…
Here they go again: Bills have been introduced by Sen. William A. Walaska (D-Dist. 30, Warwick) to increase medical insurance coverage for hearing aids and to require insurance coverage for surgery and services associated with hearing aid implants. Without a doubt, hearing loss increases the difficulty of one’s life. So does poor eye sight and…
The Rhode Island Statewide Coalition has been making a concerted effort to peruse all of the legislation making its way through the General Assembly and recently unearthed this gem from Senator Charles Levesque (D., Bristol, Portsmouth), creating a Highway Maintenance and Public Transit Trust Fund, financed as follows: … There is imposed a surcharge of…
