Entries by Monique Chartier

Lally & Raimondo Throw in the Towel

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With the Ethics Commission hard on his heels, Kathy Gregg at the Providence Journal reports that

Former state Rep. Donald Lally has resigned his controversial job as the “small business liaison” in the Raimondo administration, in advance of an Ethics Commission ruling on whether his hiring violated the state’s revolving door law.

The RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s 2014 Freedom Index places then-Rep Lally 73 out of 113 legislators. This dubious voting record clearly made him a poor match for this position, underscoring the consensus that the main driving force behind his appointment was not considerations like track record and aptitude (and, dare we add, what would best serve the state) but the more base one of politics – i.e., a bargaining chip in horsetrading between Governor Raimondo and Speaker Mattiello.

If so, it will be interesting to see what “chip” replaces the one that had to be taken off the table.

Arlene Violet Calls Out Imperiousness of Raimondo & RIDOT

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… both at the now infamous “let me tell you something, pal” 6/10 meeting and more generally.

From today’s Valley Breeze.

… it certainly leads the public to wonder about the apparent elitism exhibited by the Raimondo administration where it acts as though it knows everything and the public nothing. A dog and pony show does not alleviate the perception but rather only reinforces that the only hijacker’s in the room are the “public servants.”

Arlene is correct: this is a completely inappropriate attitude on the part of those, both elected and appointed, who have chosen to take on the role of public servant.

Why Did RI Fail to Detect Food Stamp Fraud at One Store for Six Long Years?

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The Valley Breeze reports that

Sami Almuhtaseb, 45, of Smithfield, owner of Oasis Market, a convenience store located in Providence, pleaded guilty in federal court on April 15 to defrauding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, of more than $1.1 million.

Almuhtaseb was able to rack up a cool $1.1 million haul because the fraud took place over six years. Six long, lucrative (for the store owner) years. SNAP, or food stamps, involves both state and federal tax dollars. If the State of Rhode Island (or the feds) had detected this fraud much sooner rather than letting it go on for six years, the tax dollars stolen and squandered would have been far lower. It is unacceptable that our elected officials appear to hold our hard earned tax dollars in such low regard.

This store owner is certainly not the only one to have committed SNAP fraud, nor is SNAP the only social program that is the target of fraud. It is imperative that our elected officials get serious about detecting and preventing this fraud both because it is the right thing to do and because of the impact on government’s image. A continued casual attitude towards the unnecessary squandering of tax dollars will only contribute to the public’s dislike and distrust of everything that government is doing or proposes to do — not to mention (self-preservation consideration) a negative impact at the voting both.

News Stories Just in the Last 24 Hours Highlight the Excessive Generosity of RI’s Public Sector Compensation

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In today’s Providence Journal, we learn that the opt-out retirees brought in an expert to testify in their lawsuit about the change made by the City of Providence to their post-retirement healthcare coverage.

An expert hired by a group of city police and fire retirees testified in Superior Court on Monday that moving members of that group to Medicare from their previously promised city health care for life is exposing them to five-fold increases in health-care costs.

You mean they might be stuck with Medicare at age sixty five (like most people in the D.P.S.)? Oh no!

And the list of exceedingly generous benefits bestowed by contract on the retiring Cranston police captain who instigated Ticketgate is nothing less than obscene. The biggest one is that he is retiring AND STARTING TO COLLECT HIS TAXPAYER-FUNDED PENSION at age forty three. This is an absurdly generous and completely unaffordable benefit. Pensions should be paid to retirees starting at age sixty seven (or whatever the full retirement age for social security is/was at the employee’s start date of employment).

From the report yesterday by NBC 10’s Parker Gavigan.

A review of city and Rhode Island Treasury information shows Antonucci will receive $27,542 in state pension benefits. In addition, the now retired captain is entitled to approximately $15,879 in family healthcare benefits from the city of Cranston. The total package is approximately $43,421 a year, which could increase with the rising cost of healthcare. …

City records show Antonucci will also receive approximately $40,000 in what’s called “bust out pay,” an accumulation of unused sick, vacation and comp time.

Ken Block & WatchdogRI.org Call on Governor To Challenge Constitutionality of Legislative Grants

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[Watchdogri.org issued the following statement late this morning.]

Ken Block, Chairman of WatchdogRI, is calling on Governor Raimondo to ask the Rhode Island Supreme Court for a written opinion on the constitutionality of the corrupt legislative grant program.

Rhode Island’s constitution empowers the governor’s office to ask the RI Supreme Court to create an opinion on a legal question in Article X, Section 3, which states in its entirety:

Advisory opinions by supreme court. — The judges of the supreme court shall give their written opinion upon any question of law whenever requested by the governor or by either house of the general assembly.

For years, many Rhode Islanders have taken exception to the legislative grant program. This program dispenses millions of dollars a year in what many believe to be an unconstitutional scheme. The recipients of these grants are selected by legislative leadership, and the entire program runs without any input from the Executive branch of government.

The grant program likely violates RI’s constitution as it pertains to separation of powers.

Legal challenges to the grant program have been mounted before – notably by former Rep. Nick Gorham. In a surprising move, the RI Supreme Court declined to hear Gorham’s complaint because he was deemed to not have legal standing to bring a lawsuit over the grant program. Based on the Supreme Court’s ruling, it is unclear that anyone would have standing to challenge the grant program legally.

The corruption of the program came vividly to light after media accounts highlighted the fact that Speaker Mattiello granted $126,000 to himself for projects in his hometown.

The time for wink and nod politics must end in Rhode Island if we are to become a competitive state for business and jobs. The reluctance of our General Assembly to do the right thing and eliminate this program necessitates that others step in and force reform on the General Assembly.

Governor Raimondo has the power to issue a legal challenge that could end the corrupt legislative grant program. Will she use this power, or by declining to do so will she be complicit in allowing this corruption to continue?

6% and Flawed Models: Why We’re Skeptical of AGW

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A second day, a second applause-worthy editorial by the Providence Journal yesterday. They politely call out Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who

… asked [US] Attorney General Loretta Lynch whether the Justice Department had considered pursuing fraud charges against those who have, in his view, misled people about climate change. ….

This is troubling: a U.S. senator and attorney general, both sworn to uphold the Constitution, mulling legal action against American citizens and companies for the “crime” of challenging a scientific theory.

The ProJo correctly points out that

… it is vitally important that America not discard its essential values of freedom.

With Earth Day coming up this Friday, it’s important to note the two simple facts that make so many of us skeptical of the theory of anthropogenic global warming. 1.) Man only generates 6% of all greenhouse gases. 2.) The heart of the case for AGW, the climate models, are flawed (see here and here, and lots of other places).

Accordingly, the proposal by Senator Whitehouse and others to silence by prosecutorial bullying those who question AGW not only violates, as the ProJo points out, free speech, one of America’s essential values, but also comes across as someone who … well, doesn’t want to hear why he may be wrong about something he believes in. It’s fine to disregard facts and evidence that contradict your belief in something. It crosses the line to narrow-minded despotism, however, to propose the use of the considerable powers of government to punish people or companies attempting to present such facts and evidence.

ProJo Editorial Endorses RIPEC Education Findings

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Many of us were shocked and bewildered when the Providence Journal’s editorial board inexplicably went all in on Governor Raimondo’s highly damaging tolls. We haven’t either forgiven or forgotten that the board pretended to fall for the patently lame reasons put out by the Governor to get her completely unnecessary, politically selfish toll program passed. The result since then is that some of us look askance and even skeptically at the ProJo’s editorials.

But credit where credit is due. In an editorial yesterday, they echoed the conclusions and brook-no-excuses sentiment of RIPEC’s recent report on education. For that, the ProJo’s editorial board should be applauded.

The data shows Rhode Island public schools generally plod along near the national average, while Massachusetts students consistently outperform those in most other states on national tests, and its schools overall are among the best in America. …

The RIPEC report stands as a useful guide to the differences of Massachusetts and Rhode Island education reform. We hope key policymakers read it, absorb it, and follow its key recommendations to move the Ocean State along.

Just Like That, Cost of 6/10 Greenway Tunnel Project Rises by $100 Million

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The Providence Journal reported Saturday that

Burying a rebuilt Route 6 and 10 interchange beneath an earthen cap will likely cost $100 million more than initial estimates, state transportation officials said in a request for federal grant funding this week. The project is expected to cost $595 million, not counting a potential bus rapid transit line with stations, according to a grant application filed Thursday.

How many other cost revisions – not to mention cost overruns – will occur with this project? Rather than simply repairing what is already there, RIDOT is proposing an unnecessarily over-engineered project that gets mighty close to the description of boondoggle.

Note, by the way, that we’re not supposed to call the underground part of this project (what they would build in place of overpasses) “tunnels”. Apparently, they figured out that’s a scary word evoking Boston’s Big Dig project. No, they’re calling it a “capped highway”. “Capped”. It’s just a cap! Nothing scary about that!

The issue I raised previously still stands. Even stipulating the difficult-to-believe idea that the construction cost of a tunnel or capped highway is the same as that of an overpass, what is the comparative maintenance cost of these structures?

Why Is RIDOT Inducing the Truck Toll Legal Challenge?

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You may recall that the toll gantry on the Sakonnet River Bridge was removed a couple of months ago, oddly, on Super Bowl Sunday night. NBC 10’s Bill Rappleye has learned, exclusively, it appears, that

The State of Rhode Island intends to install a truck toll by this time next year, using the old Sakonnett River Bridge tolls, DOT director Peter Alviti told NBC 10 News.

“I think the basic logic of it is we can get a couple of them up right away because we’ve already got the gantries,” Alviti said. “If that causes a legal challenge, then so be it.”

Throwing the floor open here to speculation, rumor, gossip, innuendo and, if necessary, hard facts. The smart, if reprehensible, thing for the Raimondo administration and RIDOT to do would be to lock the state into tolls by proceeding full blast to rack up all kinds of expenses – the big ones being the purchase and installation of gantries and the issuance of bonds – that could only be repaid via toll revenue. Why would they veer away from this apparently surefire course?

ADDENDUM

In his conversation last night with WPRO’s Matt Allen, NBC 10’s Bill Rappleye said he is hearing that the gantry will go on Route 95, either in Exeter or near Exit 4 (on a “bridge”, presumably). So if tolls are green-lighted, they will benefit Providence and the 6/10 Greenway “Big Dig” yet will come, initially, from toll revenue collected far down the highway.

Pension Case: Public Retirees Complain About Not Getting Dessert When So Many in D.P.S. Won’t Get Supper

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The so-called opt-out case by some Providence retirees continued this week. Testimony yesterday did not include absurdly elitest and damaging references to BMW’s and international travel as it did at the start of the trial. Nevertheless, the lamenting of the loss of a pension COLA

During two hours of testimony in the trial involving the retirees who opted out of a 2013 pension settlement with the city, Stephen T. Day explained that he anticipates his 3% COLA would add about $800 to his pension check by 2019, providing a boost to his finances and allowing him help his family and retire.

is quite simply impossible to relate to by so many of us who don’t have any kind of (or only a woefully inadequate) retirement fund or a (quaintly antiquated) pension, much less a COLA. It’s important to note that so many public retirees in Rhode Island receive a very generous base pension to begin with, often goosed by overtime pay and – perhaps the most expensive component – one that so many retirees began collecting after only twenty or twenty five years of work.

To add to that a legal demand to keep a COLA comes across to most of us in the Dreaded Private Sector (D.P.S.), who are underwriting all of these highly quizzical promises, as someone demanding dessert after a five course meal when so many of us won’t be getting supper.

I cannot speak to the legal merits of this case. But by any measure, both the COLA’s and the bulk of public pensions are plainly inequitable. And from a p.r. perspective, the optics of this trial couldn’t be worse.

Time to Return R.I. Tourism Marketing Back to Regional Boards

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Governor Raimondo reduced the budgets of tourism boards around the state with the explicit goal of coming up with a unified marketing campaign for Rhode Island as a whole. And now her administration is giving up on a key component of it???

The tagline is ‘Rhode Island,’” the state’s commerce secretary said Wednesday, announcing that Rhode Island will not look for a new slogan to replace the maligned and abandoned catch phrase “Cooler & Warmer” as it moves ahead with a $5-million marketing campaign.

So why are we here? Put everything back the way it was. Leave tourism promotion where it has clearly belonged all along: in the hands of regional boards who know best how to promote their area of Rhode Island.

In a closely related matter, the Raimondo administration has clearly not made their case for an additional $5 million in tax dollars for tourism promotion. The track record here is a strong warning that these dollars would simply be squandered.

Wait, What? Why is Such a Big Chunk of the Toll Money Going to 6/10 Greenway “Big Dig”?

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On WPRO’s Morning News this morning, host Gene Valicenti articulated what we are all wondering: we were told that tolls were needed to fix all of the structurally unsafe bridges around the state. Why is so much of that money going only to the 6/10 Connector?

Pam Gencarella & Brian Bishop have a very good op-ed in today’s GoLocalProv, echoing this point and highlighting other serious problems and risks of RIDOT’s proposed, costly 6/10 “Big Dig”, including the issue of cost overruns on such an expensive project

If the federal government is paying for 60% of the 6/10 ‘Big Dig’ and the DOT incurs cost overruns of just 10%, that means an extra $100 million. Will the federal government fork over $60 million more for overruns or will the RI taxpayers pick up that entire additional $100 million?

as well as the ridiculously high price tag to repair such a small number of bridges.

Further, Director Alviti has continually said the billion dollar plan only covers 7 bridges in the 6/10 interchange itself, not the connector to 95! That’s another boondoggle waiting to happen.

Best/Worst List Highlights Insanity of Bill That Would Jack RI’s Already High Energy Costs

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As part of its informative Best and Worst Bills of 2016, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity highlights this especially egregious bill.

Despite Rhode Island having some of the highest energy rates in the nation, a bill that would impose a new fee on carbon-based energy, resulting in even higher energy costs for most families and businesses, ranks among the worst bills yet to be voted on according to the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, which today updated its list of the BEST and WORST bills of the 2016 General Assembly session.

Most of us, including myself, will greet with champagne and hearty applause the invention/discovery of a cheap, widely available, reliable, sustainable, “green” energy source, if and when this ever happens. Meanwhile, the sole effect of taxing (let’s call it what it is) politically incorrect fuel sources will be to needlessly make it even more expensive for individuals to live in RI and businesses to operate here.

(By the way, check out how your own legislators are doing so far this session on the Center’s 2016 RI Freedom Index.)

Fall River’s Mayor Privatizes Trash Collection

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Simply amazing! There’s actually an elected official someplace who doesn’t believe that the main purpose of government and the provision of public services is the well-compensated employment of public (labor union) employees.

Mayor Jasiel Correia also announced that he’s privatizing the city’s trash services, which will cost some city workers their jobs.

R.I. Supreme Court Body Slams APRA

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The ProJo’s Kathy Gregg, on twitter, correctly called this ruling stunning.

The state Supreme Court ruled Monday that The Providence Journal is not entitled to records of the state police investigation into a 2012 graduation party hosted by then-Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s son that left an underage girl hospitalized and the governor’s teenage son accused of violating the state social-host law.

Their reasoning?

The high court agreed: “When the release of sensitive personal information is at stake and the alleged public interest is rooted in government wrongdoing, we do not deal in potentialities — rather, the seeker of information must provide some evidence that government negligence or impropriety was afoot. Because the Journal failed to provide any such evidence, the public interest can, at best, be characterized merely as an uncorroborated possibility of governmental negligence or impropriety.”

Obviously a standard that borders on impossible. When it comes to the public’s access of the vast majority of public records, officials need to be presumed “guilty” until the records exculpate them (if they do). With this misguided ruling, the state Supreme Court, however inadvertently and unintentionally, will exacerbate the public’s mistrust of its officials at a time when exactly the opposite is needed.

Latest Red Flag Rating: Rhode Islanders Carry Eighth Highest Tax Burden

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Thanks to the Providence Business News’ Lori Stabile for picking up on this.

Rhode Island has the eighth-highest tax burden in the nation at 10.36 percent, according to personal-finance website WalletHub.

With a week to go before Tax Day, WalletHub said it compared the tax burdens of all 50 states by measuring property taxes, individual income taxes and state and gross receipts taxes – three components of state tax burden – as percentages of the total personal income in each state.

Another red flag; another opportunity to ask: what are state leaders doing to mitigate this burden on taxpayers? (Hint: it involves reducing rather than increasing spending.)

Question for RIDOT: What is Cost to MAINTAIN a Tunnel Versus an Overpass?

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RIDOT is holding an accelerated series of Potemkin … er, public hearings about their plan to repair the 6/10 Connector as they rush to meet a deadline this week to submit their request for federal funds.

At last night’s contentious public meeting, RIDOT Director and former Laborers International official Peter Alviti repeated his statement that RIDOT’s plan to repair the 6/10 Connector, which involves building tunnels, would cost the same as rebuilding the existing overpasses. (Oops, excuse me, we have to call them bridges.)

[Alviti] claims DOT’s favored plan of burying the highway with a boulevard on top would cost the same as only rebuilding the existing bridges

This stretches the limits of credibility, especially as RIDOT’s track record all but guarantees cost overruns. (The R.I. Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s proposed public-private-partnership would vastly minimize potential cost overruns, by the way.)

But let’s stipulate for a moment that the construction costs for a tunnel is the same as for an overpass. Question for RIDOT and Governor Raimondo: what is the cost to maintain a tunnel versus the price tag to maintain an overpass/bridge?

Yikes: Lowest Bidder No Longer the Federal Mandate for State DOT Engineering Contracts

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In today’s must-read-as-always Political Scene, the ProJo’s Kathy Gregg reports that RIDOT spent $41.7 million in 2015 on outside consultants. RIDOT Director and former Laborers International official Peter Alviti was undoubtedly thrilled to point out that this was roughly $5 million lower than the prior year. (Sure, because they want that spending brought in-house and returned to unionized public employees. Not to mention that $5 million will be a drop in the budget in the budget of a department whose spending is about to explode from Governor Raimondo’s onerous, highly damaging, completely unnecessary tolls.)

Further in the article, however, Alviti points out that

“Federal law requires that engineering firms be hired based on most qualified, rather than low price or overhead rate,” Alviti said Friday, in an email. “It is much like selecting a physician for a complicated operation — seeking the one with the most expertise rather than the one with the lowest price.”

“Most expertise”? “Most qualified”? The main point here is that it is alarming and definitely bad for the taxpayer for government to move away from the standard of “lowest (qualified) bidder” when it comes to public contracts. But there is also the concern that “most qualified” would seem leave room for an unwelcome eye-of-the-beholder element rather than a more objective one. What constitutes “most qualified”? True industry standards? Or will federal officials incorporate irrelevant, feel-good, politically correct elements into their official definition of “qualified”, thereby moving away from both cost-effectiveness and, potentially, safety?

So Why Is Rhode Island’s Governor Not Pushing For the Line Item Veto?

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In an op-ed in today’s Providence Journal, Ken Block does a very good job making the case for the line-item veto.

A line-item veto provides greater budget transparency by allowing a governor to strike out pieces of the budget, forcing the legislature to hold an override vote for each struck item. With the line-item veto, a more nuanced debate can be had in the legislature regarding the merits of each struck item, making it very difficult to override vetoes of particularly bad parts of the budget.

It sure seems like a no-brainer for Rhode Island to join forty four other states and give the line-item veto to its governor. Why is Governor Raimondo, who is unquestionably a numbers person and, accordingly, must see the value of this tool, not rallying public support or lobbying legislators to implement the line-item veto in Rhode Island?

Whoa: RIPEC Report Says State Policy, Not Funding, is Reason RI Schools Lag Far Behind Mass

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WPRI’s Dan McGowan covers. Thank you, RIPEC.

In a 57-page report released Thursday, RIPEC makes the case that state policy – not funding or socioeconomic factors – is one of the key reasons Rhode Island lags far behind its neighbor to the north when it comes to student performance.

Mike Stenhouse: Empowerment Schools Cannot Replace Charter Schools or School Choice

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In today’s Providence Journal, R.I. Center for Freedom and Prosperity CEO Mike Stenhouse expresses concern about proposed “empowerment schools” and calls for an all of the above approach to education in Rhode Island.

Only an all-of-the-above approach can meet this demand. So, if the empowerment school program is added to the existing school choice menu, then it’s a positive step.

However, if empowerment schools are being positioned as alternative charter schools, it would actually dis-empower parents, reducing their options, and would be yet another deceptive ploy by our government to advance a hidden, special-interest agenda.

Re-Election Worries? Speaker Turns To Former Republican Strategist

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GoLocalProv is reporting that

Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello has hired veteran campaign operative Jeff Britt as a political consultant.

And the ProJo’s Kathy Gregg reported on Twitter that

Britt has been hired by Democrat Mattiello’s Fund for Democratic Leadership as a $25,000 consultant.

Though Britt’s most recent gig was as manager of the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Block, Britt had previously worked for Democrat Speaker Gordon Fox. (Britt split from Fox over the former Speaker’s handling of 38 Studios.) So strictly in terms of party flavor, this is not altogether an incongruous choice.

It is, nevertheless, unusual for a Democrat Speaker to turn to a non-purely Democrat election consultant for his leadership fund – and to the tune of $25,000, no less.

Kathy Gregg once again on Twitter.

Mattiello on hiring Britt as $25k consultant: : “He will provide strategy&assist me in promoting issues to best serve the citizens of RI.”

Could this be a sign that Speaker Mattiello is worried about the re-election chances of House legislators or even of himself? Is he concerned that the electability of House Democrats has been damaged by their facilitating his heavy-handed ramming through of Governor Raimondo’s onerous, highly unpopular toll program?

Number of State Workers Making Over $100,000 More Than Doubled since 2007

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More excellent and infuriating journalism by Kathy Gregg in today’s Providence Journal. Note that this is base salary only and does not include overtime pay (or benefits, of course).

So why do so many state workers make over $100,000?

There is no one reason the state’s online database now lists 1,378 state workers with salaries that top $100,000 beyond the obvious: year-after-year raises that over time have helped nudge the state payroll from $856.7 million in 2010 to a projected $1.01 billion this year; the push by every new governor to attract — and keep — the best and the brightest; sporadic efforts to “modernize” the salaries of select employees within Rhode Island’s “archaic” personnel system.

Really? These high and rising salaries are necessary to attract the best and brightest? Let’s try an experiment. Post every job on the state payroll with the salary reduced by 25%. See if you lack for genuinely best and brightest applicants. (Hint: better put some serious crowd control in place.)

Larry Girouard: “Where’s the Beef” Behind Any Promotional Campaign of RI?

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In today’s GoLocalProv, Larry Girouard, former president of R.I. Taxpayers, correctly questions the effectiveness of any tourism/branding campaign for Rhode Island in the absence of improvements to the state’s political culture and business climate.

Without leadership demonstrating their resolve to rejuvenate our state’s business culture by passing some laws like the line item veto, ethics and others, no one will take Rhode Island seriously. When leadership wastes their valuable, and very limited time, on pinecone drippings, requiring business owners to give 2 week notification to change work schedules, ramrodding through the anti-business toll bill, etc, you get the picture that business friendly change will be painfully slow to the peril of our state.

New RIPEC Study Confirms More Money Does Not Equal Student Achievement

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More to come from RIPEC on this subject. But with regard to dollars spent, the numbers do not lie. From today’s ProJo.

Although Rhode Island and Massachusetts spend about the same on public education per student, Bay State students continue to outperform those here, despite recent reforms in Rhode Island.

By one measure, Rhode Island teachers have the highest salaries in the country. But student achievement here is at best average.

It is now clear that while throwing money at education budgets may have helped lots of local officials around the state get in good with teachers unions (and contributed significantly to higher property taxes), it has not boosted student achievement.

Riley Urges SEC to Return to Rhode Island

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If the state’s 38 Studios bonds were fraudulent in the SEC’s eyes because important information was omitted from the bond tender, what about Providence’s municipal bonds? This is Michael Riley’s interesting point in today’s GoLocalProv.

Last year, Segal Consultants confirmed the Providence Pension Plan had been overstating the assets in the Pension Plan for years. Segal itself warned 18 months prior of the unusual accounting that “overstated” pension assets and the pension funding ratio. …

I am asking the SEC to clarify the “Assets” in the Providence Pension plan. Since I do believe that Providence has been illegally borrowing from the pension plan, and that the assets labeled “other” are essentially an IOU, I am also asking about the timing and approval of these “loans” and whether the City of Providence owes interest on “loans” going back at least 12 years.

Rhode Island’s Property Taxes are Much Too High But It is Avoidable

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GoLocalProv’s Russell Moore had an article yesterday comparing property taxes around Rhode Island. One more data point is needed: how Rhode Island’s property taxes rank nationally. They are tenth highest.

In the article, the R.I. Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s Justin Katz identifies a major factor contributing to our too high property taxes.

One aspect that is central to the property tax question has to do with labor union influence and various regulations and mandates that drive up the cost of labor. We’ll be taking a specific, close look at those numbers within the next year, but we can already say that Rhode Island forces itself to pay a premium for insider, special-interest work.

One other, important related matter. If our officials could lower property taxes, would that decrease the need for affordable housing, which further exacerbates property tax rates? H’mmm …

625 State Workers Promoted & Six-Figure Salaries Rise Under Raimondo Administration

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Excellent if infuriating reporting in today’s (always) must-read Political Scene in the Providence Journal. Governor Gina Raimondo and her administration have been working overtime to give raises and promotions – which is clearly just another way to slide a raise in place – to state workers.

and more than 625 promotions to what, in most cases, are higher-paying jobs. More than 130 of these new and higher-paying jobs now pay more than $100,000 …

Of course, as a report by the R.I. Center for Freedom and Prosperity from late 2012 shows,

State and local government workers enjoy significantly higher compensation levels than their private sector counterparts, according to data compiled for Rhode Island …

it isn’t the public sector that needs raises and promotions, it is the private sector. The actions by Governor Raimondo in inexplicably and energetically boosting public sector pay can only be exacerbating Rhode Island’s public/private pay inequity when our elected official should be working to do just the opposite.

Increase the Earned Income Tax Credit Rather than the Minimum Wage?

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Interesting. The R.I. Center for Freedom and Prosperity (disclosure: for whom I act as Communications Manager) came out late last week against an increase in the minimum wage and instead, makes the case for an expansion of Rhode Island’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). What do you think? “Hiking the minimum wage will cost jobs […]

Very Troubling Revelations About State’s Administration of Child Foster Care as It Transitions to Adult Foster Care

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In the wake of the terrible deaths of three children in or related to Rhode Island foster care, we learn from a report by outgoing state Child Advocate Regina M. Costa that

The state Department of Children, Youth and Families is allowing children in its care to live in more than 320 unlicensed foster homes. In more than 100 cases, those homes have been unlicensed for more than six months in violation of state law.

This is only the latest troubling revelation about DCYF. An audit last year revealed that the agency had squandered millions of tax dollars due to very poor oversight and accounting practices.

We await answers, accountability and solutions to both these completely unacceptable financial irregularities and, much more importantly, the issue of the safety of children placed in foster care by the State of Rhode Island. It is all the more important that the state get this right in light of the fact that it is in the process of transitioning the care of developmentally disabled adults from group homes to adult foster homes. To state the obvious, we CANNOT see the terrible events involving DCYF repeated down the road with adult foster homes.

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