Higher Ed Commissioner and Health Exchange: How State Government Sees Ethics and You

Back-filling the Ethical Gap

After my earlier post regarding Democrat Governor Lincoln Chafee’s intention to plod right through the state Code of Ethics in order to appoint the chairwoman of the Board of Education as an interim commissioner of higher education, John Marion of Common Cause Rhode Island issued a statement opposing the move.  Now, multiple sources are reporting that the candidate, Eva-Marie Mancuso, will seek a waiver from the Ethics Commission, according to a provision I pointed out on Saturday:

…unless the Ethics Commission shall give its approval for such appointment or election, and, further provided, that such approval shall not be granted unless the Ethics Commission is satisfied that denial of such employment or position would create a substantial hardship for the body, board, or municipality.

The idea is that not appointing Mancuso will create a hardship for the board, so it should be able to do so, despite the dubious ethical nature of that maneuver in general. Sizing up the information that’s already available in the news reports, I’d suggest that the Ethics Commission will only further erode its authority and independence if it agrees.

First and foremost, it simply isn’t plausible that the governor and board always intended to seek a waiver, as his office’s spokeswoman now says. One would have expected, in that case, Friday’s press release to have included that information.  After all, the release constituted Chafee’s “recommending” Mancuso for the job, which is an act that should have been expressly contingent upon its being ethical to do so.  Moreover, Richard Dujardin’s article in the Saturday Providence Journal clearly gives the impression of an administration expecting a vote tonight, perhaps with a start date of tomorrow.

More broadly, though, the big mess of who’s doing what job for how much money ought to make the hairs on the backs of the Ethics Commission’s necks stand on end.  Here’s Kim Kalunian reporting for WPRO:

Chafee said he wanted Mancuso to fill the role because he likes “continuity” and doesn’t want “zig-zagging.”

“Eva Mancuso has been doing this job, I think she should continue to do it,” he said.

And yet, remember from Saturday:

If the board goes along, [Mancuso] will succeed Raymond M. Di Pasquale, who for the last four years held the post of both commissioner of higher education and president of Community College of Rhode Island for a combined annual salary of $265,000. Under an arrangement previously agreed to, Di Pasquale will go back to becoming the full-time CCRI president while keeping the higher salary.

According to the RIOpenGov project of the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, based on information directly from the state Department of Administration, DiPasquale’s base pay went from $180,000 to $265,000 when he took on the additional role of Commissioner of Higher Education.  So what has he been doing to earn that extra $85,000 (which he’s going to keep going forward) while Mancuso was “doing this job”?

A more relevant question to the current controversy, however, is how it can possibly represent a hardship for the board if they’ve been paying somebody $85,000 a year to do the job and the chairwoman of the board has been picking up any slack?  It seems to me that there should be plenty of time to conduct a search without subverting the state’s ethical rules.

The bottom line is that one can always claim that appointing a board member to a job that the board oversees is helpful for reasons of “continuity.”  With Rhode Island’s unemployment as it is, surely the government can find somebody willing to supplement DiPasquale’s $85,000 efforts for “part time” pay of somewhere between $0 and the $115,000 difference between DiPasquale’s boost and a full-time salary for this position.

The whole episode sheds some light on how Rhode Island’s officials view their own role, as well as how they view the awareness and intelligence of the people over whom they rule.

How the Health Benefits Exchange Sees Rhode Islanders

On that note, Rhode Island’s ObamaCare health benefits exchange unveiled its name and logo, today, along with a Web site.

My first reaction to HealthSourceRI was to note that its logo is a mix of green (like money) and blue (like the state’s politics), with what appears to be a giant funnel pouring into a wave.  I presume that’s indicative of more dollars being directed into a surge of government involvement in and control over our lives.

But the posters are even more enlightening.  The first one shared on Twitter is for a general audience, and viewing it, one might wonder if the only men in Rhode Island are grandfathers.  All of the pictures are of women, one of whom appears to be with her pre-teen son, except for an older guy who appears to be joined by his daughter and her baby.  Is this the exchange’s view of typical Rhode Island families?

That’s a saddening commentary, indeed.

In response to my tweet to that effect, the exchange sent back another picture, this one themed “Big Healthcare Solutions for Small Employers.”  Three of the four adults (each alone) are indeed men, so it appears that the government understands that there are some of us in the workforce, if not in families.

A deeper demographic interpretation of the four small-business owners is possible, but I’ll leave that to any young humanities majors in the audience.  My interest in that angle was derailed by fascination that the daughter of the man in the upper left spoke up on Twitter and explained that he’s a violin maker in Pawtucket.

What a cool job. I wonder if — the violin market’s being what it is — it would leave time to pitch in as a Commissioner of Higher Education.

 

CORRECTION: The picture that I interpreted as a man with his daughter and grandchild apparently is of a married couple.  The father is Keith Munslow and the mother is Melissa Bowler.  I apologize for the error, although I’d note that their Facebook pages state that Munslow was born (on the 4th of July) in 1965, while Bowler graduated from high school in 2001.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in The Ocean State Current, including text, graphics, images, and information are solely those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the views and opinions of The Current, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, or its members or staff. The Current cannot be held responsible for information posted or provided by third-party sources. Readers are encouraged to fact check any information on this web site with other sources.

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