Rhode Island Politics
Here’s an interesting tidbit from last week’s Political Scene. The Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, which collects dues from the state’s municipalities in order to act as their advocate to the state — thus lightening the necessity of representatives and senators to do their job, one suspects — held some focus groups while…
Yes, for six months, David Cicilline, you willfully withheld from the City’s Internal Auditor financial documents. Yes, James Lombardi – an auditor for the City of Providence, not some meddling outsider – had to file a public information request under the state’s open records law (!) in order to obtain from your administration the documents…
Rep. David Cicilline is in town and defending his record as Mayor of Providence, explaining to the ProJo that he cut hundreds of jobs, renegotiated benefits and took other steps to mitigate budget deficits, including tapping into the reserve fund. If you have groceries that cost $500 a month and this month groceries cost $600…
When a new audit confirmed last month that David Cicilline had depleted Providence’s reserve fund, he defended the action, saying We had to make some difficult choices, people can disagree with those to accomplish a balanced budget, I believe those were the right choices in terms of protecting services and balancing all the equities. Then-Mayor…
Ted Nesi notes the similarity between the Central Falls and Providence deficits: [Central Falls’] budget shortfall was also pegged at about 17% when it filed for receivership during its 2009-10 fiscal year. But because of its small size, the actual amount of Central Falls’ deficit was only $3 million – a rounding error compared with…
Copied below is an excellent analysis compiled by John (under this post). To it, I would append one item – an additional culpable party: decades of elected officials who possessed the power to implement realistic benefits for tens of thousands of public employees and chose, instead, to further their own selfish political ends by making…
Normally, it would have been big enough news that the magnitude of Rhode Island’s unfunded pension liability is such that it made PBS’s NewsHour (tonight, best I can tell). This has been completely dwarfed, however, by some remarkable statements made during the program by Rhode Island’s General Treasurer. [NewsHour Economics Correspondent] PAUL SOLMAN: So, what’s…
Yay, according to Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, the Generally Assembly abided by the open meetings law–which they don’t think applies to them–abut 90% of the time. Political cover: check. Of course, as the ProJo reports and RI Common Cause’s John Marion emphasizes, that’s like saying you spent more days in first place even if…
From the AP via Turn to Ten. Rhode Island’s U.S. senators are asking that part of the $2.5 billion in funding for Florida’s high-speed rail projects be redirected to their state after Florida’s governor turned down the money earlier this week. See, there was a reason Florida turned down that money, a reason that the…
For the most part, I agree with Ed Achorn’s sentiment about Rhode Island: It’s not too late. Rhode Island can defuse the pension time bomb, perhaps the way businesses have had to, even though few workers were happy about it — by moving public employees into 401(k)-style plans. The state can move toward competitive taxes…