Rhode Island Politics
I tacked an addendum to a post on Wednesday putting forth the following hypothetical: What would be the cost to RI taxpayers if a married family with three 19–25 year old children all had public-sector jobs and piled their health insurance onto one plan, taking buyouts for the other four? Among other arguments, commenter Jake…
Last week, advocates for “clean elections” held a rally at the Rhode Island state house. The term “clean elections” refers to a system of public financing for political campaigns, so far favored mostly by authentically idealistic liberal good-government types, intended to reduce the influence of money in politics. Ian Donnis of the Providence Phoenix proivdes…
On the face of it, the concurrent efforts of Senate Majority Leader Paiva-Weed (PDF) and House Speaker Gordon Fox (PDF) to promote charitable giving by ex-pat Rhode Islanders is a good bit of pragmatic lawmaking: The legislation would prevent the state from considering a person’s charitable donations as evidence when determining for tax purposes whether…
It occurs to me that there’s a gruesome consistency to Senator Joshua Miller‘s activities thus far. His first two acts in his first year as a public servant were: To promote abortion in his place of business To push forward legislation of symbolic opposition to further military action in Iraq. In the first case, he…
I thought it worth noting the item “Special-interest solons” from today’s Political Scene column in the ProJo: [Rep. Douglas W.] Gablinske [D-Bristol]…recently asked the state Ethics Commission to address this question: “how full-time union employees, who are also legislators, are able to promote union interests through legislation.” In a letter to the commission, Gablinske said…
The Senate appears to be willing to tackle a couple issues that certainly seem to foster political corruption. S 0283, proposed by Senators Gibbs, Bates, Cote, Blais, and Breene, would amend the currently defined procedure for voting: Each person desiring to vote shall, before receiving his or her ballot, state his or her name and…
S 0271, proposed by Senators Maselli, Cote, Raptakis, and Felag, seeks to establish the Illegal Immigration Relief Act: It is hereby found and declared as follows: (a) That state and federal law require that certain conditions be met before a person may be authorized to work or reside in this country. (b) The unlawful workers…
It looks like the Senate is where momentum is building towards a decision on whether or not to allow more charter schools in the state. Right now, there are three bills on the table (that I’ve found, anyway). S 0238 was proposed by Senator Leo R. Blais (Deputy Senate Pro-Tempore) and simply seeks to revoke…
The Governor mentioned it in his State of the State and Rep. Paul Crowley (D) seemed to support looking into it and now a group of GOP legislators have introduced a bill that calls for a statewide teacher’s contract. H 5397 (sponsored by Representatives Loughlin, Gorham, Mumford, Moffitt, and Singleton) states: (a) Effective July 1,…
H 5307, sponsored by Representatives Dennigan, Crowley, Rose, Naughton, and Church seeks to create more oversight when it comes to state spending on non-state employee services. (a) All state expenditures by any state department for non-state employee contracts, legal services, consultant fees, business services, fees paid to temporary workers or individuals who are not employees…