General Assembly
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…
Mark my words, this will go down as one of the all-time-great quotations to come out of the General Assembly: “I’ve been here a year and a half now,” said freshman Rep. Scott Pollard, D-Foster. “There aren’t any corrupt people in the building … you smile, but I know them and you don’t, OK?” Well,…
A quick observation from another article about RI House Speaker Gordon Fox (D, Providence): Thirty eight years later, the new speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives is a bit more reserved in his choice of words — but not much — when he talks about gambling, taxes, public employee pensions and the difficulty…
If you put your ear to the exterior walls of the State House, you might actually be able to hear the antiquated gears of the General Assembly’s brains whirring a little harder to come up with a strategy for getting away with tax increases: The plan was broadly outlined by Grafton H. Willey IV, co-chairman…
Perhaps a more politically savvy operative than myself would see opportunity in it, but I find it discouraging to watch spats between factions of Rhode Island’s ruling party, because neither side will run the state well. It’s a bit like watching two ogres battle over who gets the larger portion of your flesh, with little…
Rep. Joseph McNamara (D, Pawtucket) — himself the Alternative Learning Program Director for the Pawtucket School Department — recently published an op-ed defending legislation that he submitted (and which passed) that created a healthcare panel to design insurance benefits for all of Rhode Island teachers. (The legislation, incidentally, inspired the introduction of our legislative stooge…
A letter by Middletown Republican Town Committee Chairman Antone Viveiros in the Newport Daily News directs attention to H7563, submitted by Rep. Amy Rice (D., Portsmouth). The legislation would add the following language to Rhode Island tax law: Opting out of the domestic production deduction. — All corporations doing business in the State of Rhode…
Honestly, I don’t know how Rhode Islanders can read articles like this one without wanting to storm the State House. In brief, the General Assembly is now letting months pass by without resolving this year’s nine-figure budget deficit, and every day of delay makes the task more difficult, thus building political tolerance for the most…
Additional video from the Rhode Island Voter Coalition Burrillville “meet the candidates” General Assembly Q&A may be found in the extended entry.
It’s a small thing, perhaps, but then they’re all small things, from a certain perspective. This is just too perfect an emblem of the government under which we’re living: All the funds raised for those three [charitable] purposes, listed on the “Rhode Island Checkoff Contributions” portion of the tax return, go directly into the state’s…
