Add this one to the growing list of recent examples of the state government, and specifically the General Assembly, stepping in to push municipal governments and fire districts to set policy in favor of labor unions:

Senate Majority Leader Dominick J. Ruggerio introduced legislation Thursday for the state to do what the city has failed to do — create a tax-stabilization agreement to limit commercial property taxes that private developers would pay for new construction on the now vacant Route 195 land in the capital city.

“This stagnation cannot continue as it has become an obstacle to job creation and development in Providence,” Ruggerio said in a statement.

Ruggerio, you may recall, makes big bucks as an administrator of a branch of the laborers’ union.  According to his group’s 990 form, Ruggerio received $154,161 in salary plus another $40,491 in “other compensation.”  Proving that irony is no hindrance to corruption, the name of Ruggerio’s group is the New England Laborers Labor-Management Cooperation Trust.

For businesses and for municipalities, cooperation means you act in the unions’ interests, or the unions will go over your head and change state law in inappropriate ways that undermine a system that is supposed to be a representative democracy.