If Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello (D, Cranston) follows through with what he tells Ted Nesi, it will be an unambiguously positive development:

“My policy for as long as I’m speaker is going to be, 9 o’clock unless I can get it done by 10, and no later than 10 o’clock. I’ve heard from a lot of citizens, and the way we used to do business when I first got here – and that’s where I learned, when I first got here – the way they’ve always done it in the past is unacceptable today. The citizens don’t want it. So I’ve committed we’re not going to do it, and we won’t do it.” He added: “And we won’t do it as we finish session, either. It’s more important to me to do business at the right time than it is to get it done in a particular day. I’ll come back in the fall if I have to. I want to do business when our citizens can see what they’re doing and can be part of the process through their TV set or coming down to the State House and watching it, participating, rather than the early morning hours. That’s very, very important to me and that’s going to be a priority, and I’m going to maintain that as long as I’m speaker.”

The all-night, punch-drunk sessions of the General Assembly have been a real problem, not the least as part of the system that keeps Rhode Islanders confused and lets bad policy slip undetected into law.

Reviewing the terrible budget that just passed the House, in light of disastrous labor and regulatory legislation that seems to be coming closer to the finish line than it has in prior years, makes me wonder how much concessions like this are really just an acknowledgement that leaders now have a lock on the legislative game and don’t need the worst of the gimmicks.

It isn’t much of an exaggeration to compare Rhode Island political insiders, in this case, to thieves who are slowly discovering that they can just walk out the door with their booty rather than going through the trouble of sneaking.