Rhode Island Politics

On Thursday morning of this week, that is the headline that some of you might be reading in your local newspaper. UNLESS somebody comes forward to run in the next few days. All candidates for State Legislature must file their Declaration Of Candidacy, at the City or Town Hall in the community where they are…

Did you catch state Senator Lou Raptakis (D., Coventry) in the Providence Journal? It is no accident or coincidence that as Rhode Island is mired in an economic and budgetary crisis, our General Assembly has been operating in the shadows. When hundreds of bills are considered at the last minute, when significant new proposals are…

Heavy metal/punk rocker Henry Rollins used to (and may still) do free-form monologue shows — sort of a cross between stand-up comedy and academic lecture. As you might imagine, his commentary was often sordid and aggressive, but in my youth, I found there to be an underlying goodness, even wisdom, in his talks. One skit…

… pointing out that the bill lacks critical financial information, especially as to the state’s take, and questioning why the bill by-passes the right of the proposed host communities (Lincoln and Newport) to hold their own referenda on the matter. Now, it passed the House with an apparent veto-proof majority of 62-12. The Senate is…

On one level, it’s peculiar that so much attention should be paid to a simple change of law to make some minor fireworks legal. On another level, the issue is emblematic of Rhode Island governance. When I first read of the change, slipped into an article about municipal receivership, I made a light-hearted note in…

In yesterday’s Providence Journal, House Speaker Gordon Fox describes how the new Rhode Island fireworks law came to be. “It was my intention to put it in just to get the discussion going for next year,” Fox said. “And the members just liked it. So next thing I know, they’re like, ‘We want to vote…

Ed Achorn joins those of us for whom the just-passed session of the General Assembly had the effect of bringing the representative nature of our state government into question: Rhode Island leaders enjoy having the power to defy the public and render its representatives impotent. But that power trip costs us dearly. An informed and…

Further to my post pointing to the Hummel Report about overpriced school repairs carried out by Iron Construction under the authorization of Mayor Moreau, someone kindly sent along a list of campaign contributions made by the president of that company. Let’s see. Thanks to Hummel, we know what Mr. Depasquale appears to have received by…

This week’s Hummel Report [h/t WPRO’s John Depetro] returns to the scene of a prior potential crime to discover that Mayor Charles Moreau has had a heavy hand in choosing the vendors for repairs to Central Falls schools [Superintendent Fran] Gallo quickly found out, though, Mayor Moreau held the checkbook, and was calling all of…