Rhode Island Politics
The temporary end of this particular controversy was easy to miss, and the manner in which it occurred tells us much about the folks who precipitated it: The debate over proposed changes to the House rules was put to rest last week when Rules Committee Chairwoman Rep. Eileen S. Naughton, D-Warwick, announced that she would…
This press release put out by Immigrants United the General Assembly, announcing a campaign of legislation, is a jaw-dropper: -(2008 – H7967), by Representative Segal, which ensures a person’s race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or lack of English language proficiency shall not constitute reasonable grounds for the police to inquire into a person’s immigration status.…
So I’m at the Tea Party event hosted by the Portsmouth Republicans. So far, Steve Coaty and Mayor Laffey have spoken. (Unfortunately, I didn’t get set up in time to catch some of Laffey’s pithy phrases, but I’m sure we’ll be hearing them around the state over the next few years.) The striking thing —…
Why do our legislators have such difficulty seeing the problem with bills like this: Already successful in securing enactment of legislation to increase the level of hearing aid coverage in health insurance policies, Rep. Robert B. Jacquard (D-Dist. 17, Cranston) has introduced a bill aimed at assisting more hearing-impaired citizens. Under Representative Jacquard’s bill, health…
Marc’s already mentioned RIGOP Chairman Gio Cicione’s op-ed in yesterday’s Providence Journal, but two related points are worth making. First, Gio reins in his argument a bit more than is accurate. This is dead-on: We face a choice between a centrally planned economy run by and raided by the leadership on Smith Hill, or an…
The broad based tax proposal predicted by many has reared its ugly head on Smith Hill. House Bill 7873, introduced by Representatives Slater, Segal, Ferri, Diaz and Almeida on Tuesday, would lower the state sales tax from 7% to 4.5% but apply to just about every service offered in the state, as well as food…
I don’t want to overwhelm with charts, but I’ve got ’em! Similar to my previous posts–based on the ProJo’s work–on cost per resident for footing the payroll for schools (with some elaboration), I’ve compiled the same data for other areas of government. But instead of “embedding” all of those into this post, I’ll just give…
RI GOP head Gio Cicione takes on “corporate welfare queens” and Rhode Island’s Groundhog Day-like “economic development strategies” in an op-ed in today’s ProJo. A portion: For eight years, I was responsible for policy development for the Economic Development Corporation….I realized that the economic development strategies of this state were never intended to grow the…
To my recent post that featured a table of the Cost/Resident to foot the payroll for their local public schools, Thomas Schmeling commented: It’s probably also useful to recognize that some communities have higher proportions of children than others so that, even if two communities are spending the same amount per resident, they might be…
Working off of the data provided by the ProJo, I’ve come up with a few lists of what it costs per resident of every city and town in the state to pay the salaries (important: salary only, benefits not included) of each state and local government employee. To start, here is the data on Schools…