Rhode Island House
As you may have heard, the Rhode Island legislature voted in this year’s budget to reduce state reimbursement of the $6,000 local car-tax exemption to a reimbursement on only the first $500 of value. In the same budget article (Article 23), cities and towns were given the option of making up the lost reimbursement money…
Scott MacKay of WRNI’s On Politics blog summed up Rhode Island’s Tuesday-night primary election results by saying “the only real throw-the-bums out anger came from the Democratic left, not the GOP right”. MacKay also quoted Local AFL-CIO President George Nee’s reaction, “I’d say it was a pretty good night for organized labor”. Let’s take a…
Until the Kennedy announcement, the big political news was that Rep. Gordon Fox is now Speaker of the Rhode Island House. In his first speech as House speaker, Fox said “Change is absolutely necessary. We cannot continue [to conduct] business as usual. We must think anew and act anew.” With the state facing a massive…
The last paragraph of Alisha A. Pina‘s story in today’s Projo on Democrat Mary Messier’s victory in Tuesday’s District 62 special election (former Rep. Elizabeth Dennigan’s old seat, mostly Pawtucket with a little bit of East Providence) provides a perfect example of how the state Democratic Party’s intellectual bankruptcy on fiscal issues continues to propel…
…but he’s not ready to tell us what it is yet, reports Ray Henry of the Associated Press…[Gordon Fox], D-Providence, said he had proposals for reviving the economy but was not ready to discuss them. “For me to sit here today and say we’re going to do X, Y and Z, I think, is premature,”…
The procrastinators in the RI House continue their torrid pace, today joined by the Senate. Governor Carcieri points out the obvious: “They need to deal with the budget,” Carcieri said at an unrelated event. “They’re not doing that, and I think that’s really unfortunate because the problem is not going away; it’s getting worse.” Though…
Entirely unsurprising, now, isn’t it? It is budget-cutting day at the State House, but not when it comes to the free health care packages costing up to $17,296 that are given the state’s part-time lawmakers and their families. The $7.76 billion state budget headed for a vote by the full House of Representatives Wednesday afternoon…
… er, is it legal? While I caught only the last twenty minutes of the House session tonight, I sat next to a friend had arrived before myself. She cheerfully pointed out three or four House members who had voted on behalf of other House members. Each had pushed their own “Yea” or “Nay” button…
Warwick School Committee member Patrick Maloney has called attention to a proposed amendment to the “Open Meetings” law. According to House bill H5497 (sponsored by Representatives Hearn, Shallcross Smith, Marcello, Carnevale, and DaSilva): Written public notice shall include, but need not be limited to, posting a copy of the notice at the principal office of…
Speaker Murphy places muzzles on the other seventy four House members. Not very subtle. But neither are the half dozen proposed House rules designed to squelch debate, only one of which, Bob Watson pointed out on Friday’s Dan Yorke Show, has been withdrawn. [Marc has more here.]
