Rhode Island Politics
Question: does the money spent on redistricting get counted as campaign contributions for Rep. David Cicilline? The ProJo reports that Rep. Jim Langevin (among others) isn’t happy about this: Rep. Jim Langevin is accusing fellow Democrat David Cicilline of trying to use congressional redistricting to aid his re-election. A redistricting plan unveiled Monday night would…
Common Cause has posted three proposed maps of potential new Congressional Districts released by the Rhode Island Redistricting Commission. With that caveat that it is difficult to tell whether the new district lines and certain city/town lines are exactly contiguous on certain portions of the maps…There is a proposal to move most-or-all of Providence into…
Various redistricting proposals for General Assembly seats are available for examination at the Rhode Island Resdistricting Project website. In case anyone was worried, the “oversight” where state Rep. Joseph Trillo was drawn out of his district appears to have been corrected (h/t Rhode Island Common Cause, who has been attending & tweeting all of the…
First, they didn’t have Christmas Trees in 1663 Rhode Island, so the answer to the post title is “No.” I’m also pretty sure that, by now, as he looks down upon us, Roger Williams has gotten used to people calling upon his founding authority to help make the case against religion in the colony he…
To steal a line from Mark McGwire, the baseball slugger who was called before Congress to talk about steroids in baseball but would only answer questions with “I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to make a positive impact”. David Cicilline is looking to take the same tack and tell people to…
Teasing an hour-long pension special, Ian Donnis breaks this interesting tidbit: A poll of 400 likely voters, commissioned by the National Education Association Rhode Island, shows Republican John Robitaille narrowly beating Governor Lincoln Chafee and state Treasurer Gina Raimondo in a hypothetical matchup for the governor’s office. Walsh says the poll conducted by Abacus Associates…
In his post, Justin correctly points out that First, Rhode Island’s pension reform is simply not sufficient to solve the problem Many observers have marvelled at the scope of the reforms to the state pension system that just passed. The problem, the context that they miss is that the extent of the reforms are eclipsed…
In a post illustrating why he’s risen so quickly to the status of “must read” and why it’s so crucial to have intellectually curious people making their full-time livings investigating state-level politics and government, Ted Nesi responds to my incredulity at everybody’s willingness to accept the pension reform narrative. This is the most important paragraph…
In today’s Nesi’s Notes, Ted discusses an email from NEARI President Larry Purtill that was sent to NEARI members. Mr. Purtill talks about how Governor Chafee “lied” to NEARI during the campaign last year. Similarly, in a recent GoLocalProv article, NEARI executive director Robert Walsh said “I can assure you we received promises in writing.”…
I’ve placed the 5.5% privatization tax in the context of the General Assembly’s history of opposing such money-saving measures and pondered the language of the newly minted statute. My concern, in brief, is that there really isn’t anything limiting the application of the 5.5% “assessment” to state privatization. The only limit mentioned is to the…