In response to Justin’s previous post on the mediation process underway in Rhode Island, whose ultimate goal supposedly a change in state pension law, RI House of Representatives Republican Leader Brian Newberry offers the following thoughts…

You raise a point which I have been privately wondering about for some time. Irrespective of whether the 2011 pension reform was the right thing to do and whether it is constitutional or not, I have have been mystified from Day 1 about this whole “mediation” process. This is not about the Governor or the Treasurer, nor is it about the union plaintiffs. It is about the proper and lawful exercise of governmental power. Sure the Governor and Treasurer have the ability to informally discuss compromises with the plaintiffs to the suit but neither side in those discussions has the power to bind the state. Any compromise they may agree to will have to be ratified by the General Assembly and it strikes me that it would be a complete abdication of our role as elected legislators to simply rubber stamp a compromise that had been agreed to by others – regardless of whether the compromise is in the best interests of those who elected us. On the other hand, even if we fully vet and debate any such compromise to the extent we alter it at all we are, by definition, changing the agreed to compromise which will leave one of the bargaining sides (or both) unhappy and feeling as though whatever deal they had agreed to had not been treated with good faith.

In my private legal practice I engage in a lot of mediation. The first and most fundamental condition to a successful mediation is that the people with the power to decide the issue and agree to a binding arrangement be in the room and central to the negotiations. That is clearly not happening with this ongoing mediation process.