Rhode Island Politics
This factoid, coming out of the revolt in Tiverton, keeps ringing in my ears: … Mr. Cotta and other officials said that legally the school budget cannot be cut below what it was for this year… Is that true? If so, it’s insane! Efficiencies, need, and priorities can’t shift? I’ll have to look into that…
Will Ricci at Ocean State Republican points out that House leadership wisely sent back to committee H7767, which would have enabled political pamphlet anonymity. “Disclosure,” when it comes to politics, is a very good thing. Sunlight is a great disinfectant — we need more; not less. If you allow people to make what are in…
Updating Marc’s post of last October, a federal Grand Jury has indicted former RI DMV clerk Dolores Rodriguez-LaFlamme on twelve counts. From today’s Providence Journal: The 12-count indictment, jointly announced in a news release today by U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente and Rhode Island State Police Superintendent, Col. Brendan P. Doherty, was returned by the…
PREAMBLE ADDENDUM Ahem. It is with considerable embarrassment that I note that Andrew did a far more timely post on Jim Baron’s column. My lame excuse for this duplicative post is … that I wanted to give Jim extra exposure. Yeah, that’s the ticket … In his column “Politics As Usual” of a couple of…
Having conducted no research along these lines, I can only speculate, but I wonder whether the sentiments expressed here, by Jason Burns of Johnston, are increasingly permeating the state: Regarding the May 1 letter “My job working in danger for peanuts”: The problem with unions is that we taxpayers pay members’ salaries, then the members…
While RI politicians continue to avoid dealing constructively and aggressively with the structural problems underlying the state’s financial crisis, some of our neighbors in Massachusetts are heading in the completely opposite direction. Yes, in the state formerly known as Taxachusetts, a band of activist citizens are pushing for a statewide vote to eliminate the state…
As those who listened already know, Don switched with Andrew for this Wednesday’s segment on the Matt Allen show. His commentary related to his post on Rhode Island’s failure to address its current crisis can be streamed by clicking here (or download). Next Wednesday at 6:50 p.m., Andrew will have his moment in the spotlight.
From today’s Valley Breeze. It is said that every man and every woman – somewhere over the course of their life – must have their moment. It is a moment of recognition that something larger than the day to day details of our own family life is beckoning and we must answer to it. I…
One wonders whether Senate Democrat Doyenne Teresa Paiva Weed feels that this came out wrong: But while House leaders have declared themselves in support of the move [to require legislators to contribute to their healthcare costs], which has both financial and symbolic significance in a year when the state is facing a huge deficit and…
The appraisals which justified and, therefore, facilitated the purchase of wet, polluted, unusable land from former Mayor William Macera (D-Johnston) and his family by the RIRRC, aka the Central Landfill, for many times its actual value. Mike Stanton reported in Sunday’s Providence Journal: Resource Recovery paid $163,000 an acre for the property, the current audit…