Entries by Carroll Andrew Morse

Coming up in Committee, Tuesday, February 3: House Rules for 2015-2016

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2. H5258: Rules for the 2015-2016 Rhode Island House of Representatives. (H Rules; Tue, Feb 3)

There are at least three major changes of note:

  • A change to rule 12(f) makes clear that a vote to hold a bill for further study sends the bill to the Phantom Zone, where rank-and-file legislators are powerless to recall it, and only the super-powers of House leadership can bring it back.
  • A change to rule 12(a) gives House leadership the power to deny a hearing to a bill, according to a subjective criteria that “the issues presented…are substantially similar to those matters already heard”.
  • A change to rule 12(e) gives committee chairs, with approval of the Speaker, the power to cancel a bill hearing “at any time…[if] the bill is not ready to be heard in the committee”.

Coming Up in Committee: Twelve Sets of Bills to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, February 3 – February 5

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3. H5077: Charges the RI Board of Education with establishing “state-wide goals that are school specific for increasing the number of graduates who 10 earn certificates and degrees at both two and four year post-secondary public institutions of higher education” and requires the Board to develop and make available data on “college access and completion data…that includes data on students’ educational experiences and outcomes from early childhood through higher education in Rhode Island public institutions of higher education and into the workforce”. The bill then lists four specific metrics related to post-secondary enrollment, and also includes a reporting requirement on “excess credits” defined as “credits which the student earned and which were not required for the degree or certificate”. (H Health, Education and Welfare; Wed, Feb 4)

4. H5074: Raises the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour starting in January 2016 (up from $9.00 per hour currently). (H Labor; Thu, Feb 5)

5. H5013: Requires that transportation be provided for students residing further than two miles away from their school. (H Health, Education and Welfare; Wed, Feb 4)

6. H5174: An extensive set of new laws regarding the relationship between health insurers and pharmacy providers.

House Corporations Bills for Tuesday, January 27 Still Worth Watching Even if Postponed

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1A. H5099: Limits electric rate increases that can be approved by the public utilities commission to “no greater than five and 5 one-half percent (5.5%) or the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index…unless the increase shall have been previously approved by affirmative action of the general assembly”. The issue of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of price controls aside, it is a very basic violation of the principle of separation of powers for the General Assembly to make itself into a standalone board-of-appeals for other state agencies. A basic check on the power of the legislature is that it is not allowed to ignore the requirement (with a few expressed exemptions like proposing constitutional amendments) that its actions be submitted to the governor for approval or veto.

1B. H5079: Phases-in a requirement that, by 2035, 40% of the electricity sold at retail by large electric distribution entities be obtained from “eligible renewable energy resources”. The bill states that delays in the implementation schedule due to inadequate supply may not be for more than 3 years. Is this either technically or economically feasible?

1C. H5131: Prohibits electric distribution companies from charging “an interconnecting renewable energy customer for any upgrades to its electric power system that can and should be funded through rates assessed pursuant to its electric infrastructure, safety and reliability provision and plan, including specifically any maintenance, repair or upgrade of any component of the electric power system that has been deferred for more than thirty years.”

1D. H5175: Requires all public utilities in Rhode Island to “maintain a customer service operation physically located within the state which is reasonably staffed to meet the expectations of the public”. (H Corporations; Tue, Jan 27 postponed)

Coming Up in Committee Eventually: Six Sets of Bills to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, January 27 – January 29, Weather Permitting

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2. H5077: Charges the RI Board of Education with establishing “state-wide goals that are school specific for increasing the number of graduates who 10 earn certificates and degrees at both two and four year post-secondary public institutions of higher education” and requires the Board to develop and make available data on “college access and completion data…that includes data on students’ educational experiences and outcomes from early childhood through higher education in Rhode Island public institutions of higher education and into the workforce”. The bill then lists four specific metrics related to post-secondary enrollment, and also includes a reporting requirement on “excess credits” defined as “credits which the student earned and which were not required for the degree or certificate”. (H Health, Education and Welfare; Wed, Jan 28)

3. H5074: Raises the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour starting in January 2016 (up from $9.00 per hour currently). (H Labor; Wed, Jan 28)

Coming up in Committee: Five Bills to be Heard by the RI General Assembly, January 20 – January 22

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1. H5054: Creates a Joint Committee of the Repealer within the legislature, composed of six members from both houses, to “compile suggestions for repeal of statutes, regulations, and executive orders received from citizens, businesses, and government agencies”. (H Judiciary; Tue, Jan 20)

2. H5051: “Neither the state of Rhode Island, nor its political subdivisions, shall engage in surveillance on any public ways of the state or its political subdivisions”. The bill then adds a list of six exceptions, the first of which is that the prohibition doesn’t apply where surveillance “is specifically authorized by statute”. (H Judiciary; Tue, Jan 20)

Monday’s Community Outreach Forum on Policing, Part 1

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My two biggest takeaways from Monday night’s forum on policing, at the South Providence Recreation Center, with Chiefs Hugh Clements (Providence Police Department) and Steven O’Donnell (Rhode Island State Police):

1. If good policing is built on strong communities, while the pathway to strong communities is cleared by good policing, there is a real chicken-or-egg issue with finding a solution.

2. A basic concept that our government and society seems to be losing needs a restoration, the idea that the top elected official of a city, town or state police force is the leader of the police force, not just ceremonially, but in a true operational sense.

Deadly Force and Grand Juries

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At the beginning of this year, the Projo‘s Amanda Milkovits compiled a list of “police shootings causing injury or death”, including the formal legal resolutions for the officers involved, going back to 2001. Several of the fatal shootings listed appear to be slam-dunk justified, e.g…

May 2012: Pawtucket officers Emmanuel Mejia and Jess Venturini fatally shoot Jamie Coyle, whose gun jammed as he tried to shoot them. A grand jury says the officers were justified.

July 2008: Providence Officer John Abatiello fatally shoots Eddy Tiburcio, who was stabbing a woman with a bayonet. A grand jury clears Abatiello.

…but nevertheless went into the grand-jury process.

In these cases, it seems at least possible and maybe probable that, had the shooters not been police officers, cases might not have been brought to a grand jury at all, e.g. if a non-police officer saw a friend or family member being attacked with a bayonet, and he shot and killed the bayonet-wielding attacker, would a prosecutor be expected to seek an indictment of the non-police officer who had used deadly force?

An important question I believe this raises is, in Rhode Island and elsewhere, by either law or custom (and I realize the answer will vary by jurisdiction), do all police uses of force resulting in the death or serious injury go to a grand-jury for a review? It is important to sort this detail out, because there may be some counter-intuitive consequences to prosecutors applying different standards to police versus non-police cases — even if, on the surface, it appears that the police officers are held to tougher standards — that cause the grand-jury system to not work so well in the police cases.

Yes on a ConCon

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With very few exceptions, the Westerly Sun editorial board was correct when they wrote…

Taken together, most of the arguments advanced against Question No. 3 on the November ballot constitute an insult to the intelligence and integrity of Rhode Island’s voters.

(One exception worth reading, if you are genuinely interested in the substantive case against a constitutional convention, is Brian Bishop’s GoLocal article on the subject, linked here).

But in the end, it comes down to this: If you think there are changes to the state constitution that should be made, you should vote to hold a constitutional convention.

If you think the fundamental structure of Rhode Island government cannot be significantly improved, and that changes at this time are likely to make it worse, you should vote against holding a constitutional convention.

Any changes proposed by a constitutional convention would have to be approved by the people, and the premise that the Rhode Island General Assembly is the best of all possible gatekeepers when it comes to evaluating and amending basic^H^H^H^H^H any structures of governance, is just insane.

I’m voting yes on 3 today.

Peter Kilmartin, Riding His Cluelessness About 38 Studios All the Way to the End

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Amazingly, at this late date, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin still doesn’t seem to understand what he voted for when he voted as a state representative to approve the loan guarantee program used to finance the 38 Studios deal. During an appearance this weekend on WJAR-TV’s 10 News Conference, Kilmartin tried to compare a non-payment of 38 Studios bonds to a Federal default on general obligation bonds.

Although most Current-Anchor readers will be aware of the facts that follow, since Rhode Island’s Attorney General apparently isn’t, I’ll summarize them once again; the 38 Studios bonds are not general obligation bonds, i.e. they are not backed by the full faith-and-credit of the state. They are only moral obligation bonds. According to the state constitution, bonded debt over $50,000 cannot be made the responsibility of the taxpayers of Rhode Island, unless approved by voter referendum. Because of this, there is no obvious way for non-payment of a moral obligation bond to severely impact general obligation borrowing rates, in the absence of Wall Street collusion.

Kilmartin said at one point during the Channel 10 debate “if there’s a problem with Wall Street, then I’m not afraid to go after it”. Well, there is a problem. Wall Street wants to ignore significant legal differences between moral obligation and general obligation bonds, which are clearly codified in laws specifically intended to protect Rhode Island taxpayers from leadership debacles like 38 Studios — but the Attorney General is unwilling to take the side of the people of Rhode Island on this matter, giving every appearance of being unwilling to go against the interests of his political insider constituency and their Wall Street benefactors.

For Peter Kilmartin not to see any problem here is for him to be ignorant of the law, or ignorant of his responsibilities, or afraid of Wall Street, or probably all of the above.

Jorge Elorza and an Incomplete Pantheist God

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Last week, Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Diocese of Providence, asked…

So, can anyone help determine: Is Jorge Elorza an atheist or not? It would be good to know before Election Day.
It is possible to anlayze Professor Elorza’s law-review article using the categories of conventional theology and find a place for — and some flaws with — the idea of the “memist” God that is the primary subject of his theological speculations on the nature of God.

(Hint: Re-read the title for an executive summary of the answer).

Gina Raimondo and Rhode Island’s Preemptive Surrender to the Threat of Collusion

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Gina Raimondo could stand with the people of Rhode Island on the 38 Studios matter and, with her venture capitalist background, could be an especially forceful advocate for the principle that the laws apply to everyone, from big bondholders to regular citizens. Instead, she has chosen to stand with big finance against the people of Rhode Island, taking the cavalier attitude towards representative democracy and the rule of law that has become the hallmark of Rhode Island’s political establishment.

Anthony Gemma, is All (or At Least Some) Forgiven?

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Allegations of mail-ballot shenanigans were made, at the very least, in the previous Rhode Island election cycle. In 2012, a private detective hired by Congressional candidate Anthony Gemma produced video of an individual offering to sell completed mail-ballots to a campaign, who was shown with purportedly sealed ballots in his possession as evidence he could deliver. However, according to the Richard C. Dujardin of the Projo, the State Police investigated the case and found some “procedural irregularities, but nothing that rose to the level of criminal conduct”.

One unintended benefit of Buddy Cianci running for mayor of Providence seems to be that people are taking what are at a minimum “procedural irregularities” a little more seriously now. They are now newsworthy in the absence of accompanying video, or maybe on-the-ground sources are a little quicker to drop-a-dime when Cianci is involved…

The state police are investigating possible ballot tampering at the state’s largest homeless shelter after two “official-looking men with clipboards” entered Crossroads Rhode Island on Wednesday and asked residents to hand in their mail ballots — and in one case asked for a resident’s blank ballot. (Tom Mooney, Providence Journal)

A quick memo to the future: If the most recent allegations of vote tampering or voter intimidation turn out to be true, the process should be cleaned up, even in elections where Buddy Cianci is not running and systematic mail ballot “irregularities” or worse are working to the advantage of Democratic candidates.

The Rhode Island state police should also give the public some sense of what would need to happen for prosecutable criminal conduct to occur in this apparently recurring area of Rhode Island get-out-the-vote activity.

The Message that’s Opened the Door for Cianci

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Boston Globe deputy editorial page editor and Rhode Island native Dante Ramos somewhat misses the mark, in his basic assessment of the Providence Mayoral race…

In Cianci’s Providence, as in James Michael Curley-era Boston or Edwin Edwards-era Louisiana, there’s a sharp divide between good-government reformers and a, well, more instinctive style of politics.

“Instinctive” is an appropriate euphemism for describing Cianci’s brand of politics.

However, “good-government reformers” cannot be used to describe an opposition that’s centered on political players who believe that corruption and mismanagement from a Mayor aren’t issues, as long as they are kept at levels that David Cicilline or Lisa Baldelli-Hunt would tolerate.

Coalition Radio Introduces Three Fiscal Topics into the 2014 Campaign

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Issue 1: Do any candidates for Rhode Island Governor or Rhode Island General Assembly support modifying or repealing Governor Chafee’s Wall-Street-first law regarding municipal priorities?

Issue 2: Will any of the candidates for Governor of Rhode Island have their fiscal staffs look immediately into the possibility of a Providence receivership. Will they tell us if they do?

Issue 3: Buddy Cianci, according to some research done by Michael Riley, once advocated for pension obligation bonds to help finance Providence’s pension system. Might he do so again?

Board of Elections Rules for Healey 7-0, 4-3, 4-0

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Sam Wroblewski and Andrew Augustus of WPRO (630AM) have a quick breakdown of the results of the individual challenges made by the Rhode Island GOP to Robert Healey’s placement on the ballot as the Moderate Party candidate for governor…

The first related to if Spooner properly withdrew is candidacy for Governor….the board unanimously decided that Spooner had properly withdrew his candidacy.

Next the board needed to determine if Gilbert was recognized by the state as the Chairman of the Moderate Party and could appoint Healey as the gubernatorial candidate for the Moderate Party. After a lengthy debate and by a vote of 4-3 the board determined that Gilbert was officially recognized by the state as Chairman.

Finally, the longest debate came if Healey was eligible to run as a member of the Moderate Party….Bell argued that Healey needed to be a member of the party for 90 days before he could become eligible. By a vote of 4 in favor and 3 abstentions, the board determined that since Healey was an unaffiliated voter, he was eligible to run as a member of the moderate party.

Republican Party Challenges Healey

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Dan Yorke (630 WPRO-AM) just reported on-air that the Republican Party will challenge Robert Healey’s placement on the Rhode Island general election ballot as the gubernatorial candidate of the Moderate Party.

Paraphrasing what Dan Yorke relayed, the challenge will be based on James Spooner’s withdrawal from the race being conditional upon Healey agreeing to run, and on questions about whether William Gilbert, who officially made the appointment to replace Spooner, is properly the Moderate Party chairman.

A hearing at the Board of Elections has been scheduled for Wednesday morning.

UPDATE:

According to Katherine Gregg of the Projo, the hearing is scheduled for Wednesday at 3:30 pm.

With 99% of Precincts Reporting…

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Two precincts are still not reporting, according to the RI Board of elections website, as of 8:45 the day after election day (Schofield Armory in Cranston, First Unitarian Church of Providence in Providence). With that disclaimer, here are the official numbers from last night’s contested statewide races:

R Governor:
Allan Fung: 17011 (55.0%)
Ken Block: 13932 (45.0%)

R Lieutenant Governor:
Catherine Taylor: 17120 (66.6%)
Kara Young: 8587 (33.4%)

R Congress 1:
Cormick Lynch: 6282 (72.3%)
Stanford Tran: 2404 (27.7%)

D Governor:
Gina Raimondo: 51770 (42.2%)
Angel Taveras: 35803 (29.2%)
Claiborne Pell: 32986 (26.9%)
Todd Giroux: 2198 (1.8%)

(More under the fold….)

The Democratic Primary Where the Candidates Agree on Constraining Democracy

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The Democratic gubernatorial primary is where there is substantial agreement that the scope of democratic and representative decision-making needs to be narrowed (ironic, isn’t it?), so that special interests will encounter less interference with their ability to extract resources from the people. All three candidates with a chance of winning tomorrow seem comfortable with a government that gives more governing power to private interest groups at the expense elected public bodies, and even the people themselves.

The candidates are willing to ignore prohibitions on burdening the taxpayers with debt without their direct consent, and to ignore direct language that places retiree benefits outside of the collective bargaining process, because special interests do not approve of these laws. This kind of “leadership” is moving our system in a direction where certain privileged special interests are assumed to sit above the government, with a right to exercise powers that are above the law, that the government of the people never consented to, and cannot change.

GOP Gubernatorial Primary: After the Campaign, Allan Fung is the Clear Conservative Choice

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Neither Allan Fung nor Ken Block would claim to be an idealized conservative. The difference between them is this: where Allan Fung doesn’t have fully-conservative positions or has moved to more conservative positions over his political career, he tends towards telling us what the substance of his positions is now (e.g. finding a real limit to the pro-choice position at late-term abortion; having evolved on gun-control), while Ken Block tends towards telling us that a number of issues of importance to conservatives aren’t important enough to merit attention right now (put the “social issues” aside until the economy is fixed; won’t move the needle one iota either way on gun control, etc.).

The area where Ken Block has most directly tried to define his plan, if not himself, as conservative is in the area of making government more efficient. No one doubts that Block is sincere about this, or that he is probably capable of administering government better than it is being administrated now. But, by itself, wanting government to be efficient doesn’t define a conservative position. Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras sincerely want government to be more efficient too.

The problem is that trying to be “conservative” on fiscal issues, while declaring neutrality on many others, cedes the setting of government goals to liberals. Actively disengaging from other conservative priorities in the name of a total focus on economic efficiency, helps advance (intentionally or not) the liberal, Democratic one-way-ratchet-towards-more-and-bigger-government ideology of governance, because the balance point between a liberalism that believes in expanding government and a “conservatism” that restricts itself to getting government to be more cost-effective at whatever it’s doing is a government that constantly expands, just not at the full-speed-ahead rate that liberals would like.

Conservative voters want Republican leadership willing to support conservative solutions from the outset. And, to bring a legitimate issue up one more time, as their positions on Obamacare showed, Allan Fung is the candidate in this race that is comfortable immediately considering conservative positions on substantive issues, while with Ken Block it seems that liberal solutions have to be tried first and not work as well as promised, before he’s ready to start thinking about whether it’s time to start thinking more conservatively.

David Brussat Diagnoses a Source of Opposition to the Common Core

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In today’s Projo, David Brussat explains the intellectual roots of at least one major strand of opposition to the common core (the one coming from the political left) and to school testing in general…

During the 1970s and ’80s, deconstructivists in schools of law, departments of literature and other academic fields sought to use [Jacques Derrida’s] ideas to undermine legal, literary, sociological and other knowledge. If better social and political systems were to be built, they claimed, society’s intellectual structures had to be dealt with first. The main method was to destabilize meaning.

What’s that you say, Brussat’s column is actually about architecture? Well, the ideas he describes have deeply impacted education too.

After all, how can students be expected to pass basic reading and math tests, when there is no common meaning to anything that anyone can be expected to learn?

Interview with Steve Frias, on the Work of the Constitutional Convention Preparatory Commission

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The excerpt I would pick to introduce my interview with Steve Frias, about the work the preparatory commission for a constitutional convention has done, would be this one…

Steve Frias: There will be an argument that there are reforms that people want in this state that are not happening, because the General Assembly refuses to give them serious consideration, for instance, the line-item veto. Rhode Island is one of the few states not to have it. On Ethics Commission jurisdiction, the Supreme Court made their decision in 2009, I believe, and five years later, while there have been votes on it in one chamber or another, it hasn’t been adopted yet….

This is a way for the people to amend the Constitution, and get things into it, that the General Assembly has shown by its behavior in recent years that it is just not willing to do.

However, when I asked Commissioner Frias directly what the most important thing he thought people could get out of the commission’s report was, his answer was…
SF: That the 1973 Convention was really cheap.
(In 1973, the convention cost about $20K, to be exact)

The entire interview, including a view on what a complete cost-benefit analysis of a constitutional convention should involve, is available below the fold.

GOP Gubernatorial Primary: A Final Word on Ken Block’s Vote for Obama

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When choosing a President based on the very legitimate criteria of his influence over the Supreme Court, had Ken Block considered what it might mean for basic issues of religious freedom, the right to bear arms, and economic rights?

Republicans want a leader who is going to do more than work around the strange ideas that liberals have, after they’ve been implemented in government. His good work on the master lever notwithstanding, the votes for Obama are a strong suggestion that Ken Block isn’t that type of leader.

Explaining a World Without a Theist God, in Less Than 60 Pages

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Jorge Elorza makes a sweeping claim that all possibilities of God can be reduced to “four views of God that cover the entire spectrum: the theist, deist, atheist, and what I call the memist view”. The meaning of the atheist possibility is clear: there is no God. The deist God, meanwhile, “does not perform miracles, does not interact with His believers, and does not intervene in the natural world”, while the memist God, according to Elorza, “resides entirely in the minds of its adherents”.

Remember, it’s Elorza who claims that his categories are comprehensive. And, in the end, what Elorza said in the law review article is different from what he said on Newsmakers….

There’s Bad Driving in RI, but Head North for the Worst

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Providence ranks 196 out of 200 in Allstate’s 2014 “Best Drivers Report”, ranked by average years between accidents. Apparently it’ a regional thing, since 3 of the 4 cities below Providence are in Massachusetts (with Washington D.C. as the 4th)…

195. Baltimore, MD; 5.4 yrs
196. Providence, RI; 5.4 yrs
197. Springfield, MA; 5.4 yrs
198. Washington, DC; 5.1 yrs
199. Boston, MA; 4.4 yrs
200. Worcester, MA; 4.3 yrs

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