UPDATED: Raimondo Official Contest: Boys Need Not Apply

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Parents of young Rhode Island girls may have recently become aware of a contest hosted by Governor Gina Raimondo’s office, with a Friday deadline.  As the official press release from the governor’s office explains:

Governor Gina M. Raimondo announced today the “Governor for a Day” essay contest as a way to encourage young girls to become leaders in their communities. This Women’s History Month initiative is open to girls in 5th through 8th grade throughout the state. The winning essayist will be named “Governor for a Day”, and spend a day this spring meeting and speaking with other leaders across state government.

“Every day I talk with young girls and women – from my own daughter to successful Rhode Island businesswomen – and I am reminded how important it is to expose young girls to the significance of public service,” Governor Raimondo said. “Girls should know that with hard work and dedication, the opportunities available to them here in Rhode Island are endless. This essay contest is a chance to engage us all in that conversation.”

In addition to the press release’s going out through the governor’s office, the instructions call for essays to be sent to either an official government email address or the governor’s communication office.

This is a clear violation of the Rhode Island Constitution, Article I, Section 2, which states (in part):

No otherwise qualified person shall, solely by reason of race, gender or handicap be subject to discrimination by the state, its agents or any person or entity doing business with the state.

In directing this contest explicitly toward girls, the governor is obviously discriminating based on “gender.”  Of course, it’s unlikely that any young Rhode Island men would go to the lengths of filing lawsuits, but organizations that profess to support individual rights should be ashamed if they take a pass on this one.

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Minimum Wage and Raimondo’s Plan to Risk Jobs for Politics

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When looked at more closely, even the data promoted by minimum-wage-increase supporters suggests that it would kill jobs.

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Friday Fun: “RI’s Economic Development Shuffle”

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So, it’s the beginning of another budget season, and with a new governor to boot — Gina Raimondo, of pension reform fame.  That must mean that it’s political season to make positive noises about economic development.

Of course, when it comes to Gina (or “gina,” as her campaign signage put it), we’re looking at an additional dimension of credulity.  Some among “the business community” assume she’s not just the typical tax-and-spend (on-somebody-other-than-the-business-community) progressive Democrat.  We’ll see.

But the flurry of media hits about whether the new governor can come up with a scheme to outshine all the schemes before suggests another offering from Justin Katz and His Out-of-Tune Piano.

RI’s Economic Development Shuffle

Well, Gina, she called me, just the other day
She’s our new Wall Street gov’nor, so I heard what she had to say
She said, “I need you to set Rhode Island right.”
So we made a few plans,
And shook a whole bunch of hands,
And the hors d’oevres were dynomite.

We’re good, y’see,
My friends and me,
We’ll develop the economy.

We all know Rhode Island should grow at a faster pace,
But we paid our dues, man, and we don’t want to have to race.
The good news is, there’s a central planning bus.
So we’ll call all our old schemes new,
And tilt the board more for just us few,
And pray the state will outlive us.

Don’t need everybody.
My friends and me,
We’ll develop the economy.

Each gear has to fit:
Government, business, welfare advocate.
It’s a fine machine; don’t mess with it.

Not just talking pride.
We’re all safe inside.
If we go opening doors, where will we hide?

They say that a mind’s a terrible thing to waste
I’m not one to argue, long as they’re molded to my taste.
My business model, see, it’s got specific needs.
Don’t care if they’re white or brown,
Long as they keep my expenses down,
And the K-12 grows them up like weeds.

When wages freeze,
My friends and me,
We’ll develop the economy.

We’re the leaders who lead,
My friends and me,
We’re developing the economy.

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Possible Budgeting Illusions from Raimondo

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Shortly after Governor Gina Raimondo gave her presentation on Rhode Island’s economy and its budget implications, somebody asked me what I expected in her budget.  Here’s a succinct summary of the presentation from the Cranston Herald editorial board:

Neither cuts nor tax increases, the presentation asserts, will solve the problem. The sales tax would need to be raised from its current 7 percent to 8.8 percent in fiscal 2017 to close the projected budget gap. Meanwhile, the $255.6 million shortfall foreseen for that year significantly exceeds the total budgets of 21 combined state agencies.

The governor’s presentation proposes instead a shifting of resources to focus on job growth, creating a “virtuous cycle” in which those investments in education, infrastructure and property tax relief expand employment opportunities and thus grow the state’s revenue base.

My expectation is that Raimondo will follow the playbook from pension reform, with these steps:

  1. Declare a dire problem, consisting of a short-term emergency and long-term doom.
  2. Propose some technocratic solution that will supposedly fix the long-term problem once and for all.
  3. Make sure that there are enough gimmicks in the solution to defuse the short-term emergency and expect attention to have drifted by the time it falls apart.

The short-term emergency, in this case, is a balanced budget for the  next fiscal year, starting this July, and the long-term doom is the unyielding projected deficits resulting, in large part, from Rhode Island’s continuing economic decline.  The expectation, then, is that Raimondo’s budget will include some sort of new revenue stream, perhaps justified by its use toward some economic development scheme, mixed with budget reductions of the “waste and fraud” variety.  Whether the elusive waste-and-fraud savings could be realized is actually immaterial, inasmuch as the budget would be balanced on paper, and adjustments could be made when the budget is reviewed in November and fixed sometime during the fiscal year, when the eyes of those few who pay attention are mainly focused on the next year’s budget.

That’s what I told the person who asked me.  It was notable, therefore, to see this in yesterday’s Providence Journal:

House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello on Tuesday disclosed that Gov. Gina Raimondo had asked him if she could include “$40 million to $50 million’’ in Medicaid cuts, as a “placeholder” in her first budget proposal, without spelling out how and where she intended to reduce spending in the $2.7 billion government subsidized health-care program.

Mattiello said the governor told him, “in very general terms that there would be some kind of a placeholder and a request for a task force to figure out the cuts.’’

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A Novel Idea on Transportation Budgeting

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This is the eye-catching line from Jenifer McDermott’s Providence Journal story on transportation funding:

“We need to take a comprehensive look at solutions, everything from public-private partnerships to tolling,” she said. “We also need to ensure that we are delivering highway and transit projects quickly and cost-effectively, so that we get the maximum benefit from the federal funding provided.

Here’s a simple idea that one never hears the politicians suggest or the news reporters ask about:  Put all expenditures on a prioritized list, start funding everything at the top of the list, and stop when the money runs out.

That sort of approach is off the table, though, because the list that the public would want to see wouldn’t at all resemble the list that politicians want to be reality.  The former would start out something like this:

  1. Safety
  2. Law enforcement
  3. Transportation

And the latter would look more like this:

  1. Handouts to political friends
  2. Vote-buying schemes
  3. Personal pet projects
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New Governor and Restricting Transparency

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It’s been a repeated complaint of mine that legislation sold as increasing transparency, a few years ago, was actually a restriction of it.  It may have become a little easier for novices to get some standard data, but for anybody actually digging into state and local government, things became more difficult.  Suddenly, going to the subject-matter experts in government was no longer possible without being routed through political officials or (worse) department lawyers practiced in routing people in circles.

With the election of Democrat Gina Raimondo as governor, the process appears to have notched to the next level, as folks who follow local journalists on Twitter may have heard.  In his latest “YouGottaBeKiddingMe” blurb, Edward Fitzpatrick writes:

When PolitiFact R.I. fact-checked a statement that the House speaker made about taxes, Governor Raimondo’s office refused to make state tax expert Paul Dion available. When a second case of meningococcal meningitis arose at Providence College, the state Health Department referred questions to the governor’s office, prompting Journal reporter Paul Grimaldi to tweet: “Why does @GinaRaimondo have a ‘gag’ order on a potential contagion outbreak?” And on Thursday, Journal State House bureau chief Katherine Gregg tweeted: “One after another, knowledgeable/respected people in govt. are telling me they have been ordered to direct all Q to gov’s office #muzzled.”

When Independent Lincoln Chafee was first elected to the governor’s office — ideologue that he was — he barred his administration from appearing on WPRO.  This strikes me as significantly worse.

Government already has too many advantages shaping its message for public consumption, to the point of giving voters a distorted view of what they’re voting on.

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Travel Bans and Taking Credit When the Dog Sits Anyway

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My uncle once joked that he could prove that he’d taught his dog to sit.  We just had to wait until the animal looked ready to take the order.

I’ve seen several tweets this morning exclaiming the wonder of Governor Gina Raimondo’s travel ban, like this one from the Providence Journal’s Amanda Milkovits:

Wow: No accidents reported ANYWHERE in Rhode Island after midnight’s driving ban. No arrests for violating ban either

What’s the point of amazement, here?  That we’ve reached some new milestone of compliance to the governor’s authority?

I can’t help but wonder how many people — after a day or more of wall-to-wall breathless blizzard coverage and widespread cancellations of school and work — would have been out and about in a blizzard, after midnight, on a Monday night, when the storm didn’t kick in until well after normal business hours no matter what the governor had said.

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Raimondo and the I-195 Land, Farther Into the Hole

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In his Sunday column in the Providence Journal, John Kostrzewa gave voice to this local bit of common wisdom cum mythology about Gina Raimondo that probably isn’t going to die any time soon:

They are right-of-center Democrats with conservative leanings in their philosophy of government who understand that business, and private investment, drive the economy.

The other half of the “they” is RI House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello (D, Cranston).  While the jury’s still out on his political philosophy, only a mainstream journalist could think that sentence can be written about Raimondo as if it needs no evidentiary support.  She let us know it wasn’t true when she accepted an award for pension reform from the Manhattan Institute and told an anecdote about a fellow church-goer thanking her for bolstering Rhode Island’s faith in… government.  And she let it be known when she launched her campaign proclaiming the need for “a bold progressive agenda designed to jump start Rhode Island’s economy.”  And she’s letting it be known in some of her early actions as governor, for instance:

Raimondo wants government leaders to decide how the land should best be used. She calls it a “game-changer opportunity,” in agreement with past city and state leaders who have said the land is one of the state’s best assets for improving its stalled economy. She has said she doesn’t want to rely on the current approach to let the free market decide what gets built on 19 developable acres. …

She said she’d consider giving away the land, which the commission is now charged with selling.

Only a progressive could believe that organizations (like Stanford University, which she’s apparently already contacted) that are able, but not willing, to purchase land would make the most productive use of it.

Believe whatever you want about progressivism, but by definition it isn’t a “philosophy of government” that indicates “conservative leanings.”  It’s indicative of Rhode Island’s deep, deep problems that a prominent business writer would either ignore all evidence (and Raimondo’s own statements about herself) in order to maintain his own premature judgment of her nature or, worse, actually believe that anybody who concludes that government can’t always pile more money into its problems without changing direction must be “right-of-center.”

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HUD-In-The-News Confirms Critics of Both RhodeMap RI and Today’s PolitiFact RI Rating

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… the subject of a column that I just posted to R.I. Taxpayer’s website. Here are the first couple of paragraphs.

A browse through HUD-in-the-news items turns up some interesting and instructive items. First of all, there are several instances of HUD cracking down on municipalities or other public authorities who have taken HUD money but failed to comply with the requirements that accompanied it. Certainly, on the one hand, this is as it should be. Government dollars must be spent as stipulated. On the other, it belies the assurances of advocates of RhodeMap RI that there is nothing to fear about the plan. Significant portions of it would almost certainly have to be implemented with HUD money, at which point, HUD would suddenly have a great deal of power and authority over local land use laws and property rights. Let these HUD crack downs elsewhere be an object lesson, accordingly, to both cities and towns in Rhode Island and to state and local officials who would consider accepting HUD monies, whether under the rubric of RhodeMap RI or not. Be prepared to comply with HUD’s requirements or don’t take the money.

And the latter is exactly what officials in the coincidentally named city of Hudson, OH, did less than two weeks ago, in our next interesting HUD-in-the-news item.

By the way, did anyone else notice that HUD’s letter to Westchester County contains the word “roadmap”??? Towards the bottom of the first page.

… HUD provided the county with a roadmap to coming into compliance …

A HUD “Roadmap”. “RhodeMap RI”. Isn’t that a little too similar to be a coincidence? Or do I need to be talked off the conspiracy ledge?

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CORRECTED: Raimondo’s Doomed-to-Fail Progressive Method of Economic Planning

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Yesterday, the takeaway about Governor-elect Gina Raimondo’s plan for an economic summit was that most of it would be closed to the news media.  Today, it’s that she has relented and decided to open the doors to the whole thing.  That’s for journalists.  It’s still a closed event in the sense that only invited guests can participate in the sessions, and that’s a problem indicative of the entire strategy of Rhode Island’s ruling class for our shared economy.

The purpose of this summit, per Raimondo’s spokesman, appears to be not to better understand what Rhode Islanders need, but to get some expert feedback on how to supply the things that Raimondo already presumes to know that Rhode Islanders need:

He said the media is invited to the beginning of the meeting because Raimondo wants reporters to hear the “assignment that she’s laying out for the evening.”

Because people have asked, I’ll say that I’m not aware of anybody I know who was invited to participate.  We’re not, apparently, among Raimondo’s understanding of the top 80 “thought leaders” in the state.  (How many articles and TV news segments have to appear about one’s ideas to count as qualification for being a “thought leader” has not been explained.)

As I’ve been saying for years, now, Raimondo is a progressive.  In terms of organizing society, that means that she likely sees society in terms of groups of people, and progressives tend to organize by finding (or appointing) people who are treated as representative of their groups.

The theory is that those representatives bring the concerns of their peers back to the central planner, who weighs all of the feedback according to his or her sense of balance and makes decisions for the good of the whole society.  Two problems with this approach are obvious (at least to anybody who’s watched Rhode Island operate for any length of time:

  1. The individuals selected as the representatives are not perfectly representative of everybody in their group (often barely so), and they have their own interests.  Whether their motivation derives from their particular companies or from their particular factions within their social groups, they are likely to use their platform to shape society’s rules to their advantage.  A businessperson will see things that serve his or her own business model and increase its competitiveness as being critical for that industry as a whole.  A member of a demographic group will tend to use his or her representation of the whole as a way to win internal disagreements.
  2. When the central entity is as domineeringly powerful as the government in Rhode Island, the select few will stop representing their groups to the government, and instead begin representing the government’s insider system to their groups.

In short, it appears that Raimondo intends to formalize as official policy the approach that is destroying her state.  Of course, that assumes that this isn’t all just window dressing around her plans to do whatever she wants to do for political reasons.

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Death by “Let Them Eat Cake”

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I bought a basic cell phone for my grandmother, last night.  As the clerk in the Massachusetts store was adding the phone to my family plan, he remarked, “Wow, you pay a lot of taxes!  Oh, you’re in Rhode Island.”

With that anecdote in mind, this morning, I’d suggest that Rhode Islanders should be wary of advice from an economist who admits that (according to Kate Bramson of the Providence Journal) she’s “puzzled” that Rhode Island’s largest sector, education and healthcare, “is failing to enjoy the growth it’s seeing in the region and the country”:

“…  it seems like there’s this party going on in education and health services,” she continued. “And Rhode Island is not at that party, so I’m not sure why that’s not happening in this state.”

Could it have anything to do with Rhode Island’s heavy regulations and taxes, maybe?  Could it have anything to do with the fact that Rhode Island leads the country in health insurance mandates?  Could it have anything to do with Rhode Island’s teachers’ unions being toward the front of the national pack in their power, especially in political activity and the resources going to the union and union members?

Also on the front page of today’s Providence Journal is a Jennifer Bogdan article about Governor-elect Gina Raimondo’s visit to the White House.  Although the visit, alongside other governors, was mainly a photo-op and meet-and-greet, Bogdan writes, “There were also a few moments for cake.”

Raimondo brought the president a slice of Death by Chocolate Cake from Gregg’s restaurant.  Isn’t that just perfect?

While Rhode Island is failing to join the economic party, the woman who will soon be governor is bringing cake to the president and kicking off her big economic strategy:

“My focus all day … my constant question was, ‘What can you do to help get Rhode Island back to work?’ ” Raimondo said. “I’m going to be very aggressive about knocking on doors.”

In other words, her economic strategy is to be a salesperson, not to change the underlying problems.  That won’t work.  The problem isn’t that business people around the country don’t know Rhode Island is here. It’s that they know what Rhode Island is all about.  It’s all about cake for insiders and shackles for people who want to bring their own little circles of the economy in a personalized direction.

Decreasing taxes, regulations, and mandates and allowing broad school choice would bring the economic party to Rhode Island, but anybody hoping that Raimondo is going to go in the direction of freedom over insiderdom is probably going to be disappointed.

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RhodeMap RI: Bipartisan Group of Legislators Calls for Delay; Cite Its “near-total lack of an economic development focus”

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The following statement was received via e-mail this afternoon. Attached was a letter addressed to Kevin Flynn, Associate Director of the R.I. Division of Planning.

State Planning Division Faulted For Pursuing “Predetermined Result” With Little Economic Development Focus

Senators, Representatives To File Legislation To Correct Imbalance

State House, Nov 18 – A group of five Republican, Democrat and Independent legislators today called for a delay in approval of the hotly-criticized RhodeMap RI.

The legislators want to correct an imbalance that seems to exclude meaningful action to improve Rhode Island’s poor economic performance, something the State Planning Division has continually tried to characterize as the goal of the effort.

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Gary Morse: RhodeMap RI Is a Road Map to Disaster

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Evidence of the consequences of adopting the RhodeMap RI plan (spurred by the federal Dept. of Housing and Urban Development) is easy to find, and Rhode Islanders should make up for Governor Chafee’s failure to look.

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Prepare for Four Years of #HealeyDidThat

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The last-minute candidacy of Moderate Moose Bob Healey gave Rhode Islanders an excuse not to take their gubernatorial votes seriously.

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Do We Need Runoff Elections?

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Some are upset about the fact that Chafee and Raimondo won their election to Governor by receiving fewer than 50% of the votes cast. Is this a problem? Does it need to be fixed? I say no.

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Latest on the Central Coventry Fire District Includes Threat by Governor’s Lawyers to Personally Sue Fire Board For Standing Up For Democracy

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At the height of election fever, let’s not lose track of the latest developments in the disturbing situation involving the Central Coventry Fire District.

The following report, on “Central Coventry Citizens Taskforce for Fire Protection” letterhead and inclusive of two contact names and phone numbers, was sent out via e-mail this afternoon. It appears that at the Monday meeting and in other venues, Governor Chafee has had no compunction in carrying out the almost certainly unconstitutional order of the General Assembly to the taxpayers of the Central Coventry Fire District: – an order that could well come to every fire district in the state: No voting; just shut up and pay.

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Final Word (Maybe) on the Bob Healey Thing

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Wrapping up some threads from my Matt Allen appearance concerning Bob Healey’s surprise run for governor.

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Clay Pell and the Coast Guard Reserves

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Is it OK to have a Governor that needs to be away from his duties to fulfill his required US Coast Guard Reservist obligations?

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Illegal Alien Juveniles: And Rhode Island’s Total Rises to 148

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Breitbart’s Tony Lee has obtained updated numbers from the United States’ Office of Refugee Resettlement as to the number of illegal alien juveniles released by the federal government for the period of July 7 to July 31 – July 7 being the last date for which we had those figures. The state by state breakdown indicates that Rhode Island’s total has risen from 129 to 148.

Our elected officials – those who support illegal immigration – have been acting as though this has been a completely unforeseen, one time wave of children, such as might be due to an earthquake, flood or other natural disaster.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

These children are being drawn here – are being sent here, more accurately – by the willful actions and inaction of our national leaders: 1.) more generally, the United States has substantially reduced its enforcement of the immigration laws currently on the books and 2.) more specifically, the action of the President of the United States, who has effectively turned on a beacon by making it clear that his administration is extremely reluctant to deport any illegal children who come here. (You don’t suppose word will get out about the data that backs this up, do you? Naw!)

It probably doesn’t hurt that the federal government has rolled out the red carpet for at least some of the illegal alien juveniles.

Accordingly, as things stand, there is no reason for this stream of illegal arrivals, nor the strain on public budgets nor the erosion of our sovereignty, to end.

The question now, closer to home, is, what is Governor Chafee doing to stem the tide of illegal aliens into Rhode Island and the corresponding stream of money out of state and local tax coffers? Has he offered objection to the federal government to the arrival in Rhode Island of these and any additional illegal alien juveniles, an action that would also help to address the larger problem by discouraging illegal immigration? If not, has Governor Chafee identified what he would like to see cut from budgets, both local and state, none of which have much leeway in the expenditure column, to pay for the expenses – minimally, education and Medicaid – associated with these arrivals?

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Tobacco and the Problem with Letting RI Government Do Anything

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Progressives and Democrats, including in their roles as members of the local news media, like to beat up on former governor Don Carcieri for things that he didn’t stop the General Assembly from doing, and sometimes that he helped legislators do.  Some of things, conservatives will agree were lapses in an otherwise good eight years.

Two obvious items on that list are 38 Studios and Deepwater Wind, one that we often neglect to include is using settlement money from a tobacco lawsuit to plug budget gaps.  That move was bad on principle and has thus far stood mainly as evidence that the people who govern Rhode Island aren’t serious about repairing its problems.  However, Kate Nagle reports on GoLocalProv, today, that the move is coming back to haunt the state in new ways that it can ill afford:

In a report issued by ProPublica — “How Wall Street Tobacco Deals Left States With Billions in Toxic Debt” — Rhode Island is now facing $2.8 billion in debt on capital appreciation tobacco bonds due in 2052, a revelation that comes nearly sixteen years following the landmark United States tobacco settlement intended to combat the adverse impacts of smoking.

There’s another a list that Rhode Islanders might keep if it didn’t make them shudder to do so: deals and decisions that are on a path to sour our future.  Think pensions and other post-employment benefits, gambling, years of transportation bonds, renewable energy mandates, and on, and on.

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The Education Legacy of the Chafee Era

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NAEP scores and comparisons of trends across the country suggest that the stall of education reform during the Chafee era has not been good for Rhode Island’s children.

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Illegal Alien Children: Governor Chafee’s Strangely Narrow Statement

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The latest regional development in the disbursement of illegal alien children from the southern border, drawn to the United States in part due to a dramatic drop in deportation of other such children over the last five+ years, is that the state of Connecticut has declined a request by the federal government to house children in the Southbury Training School.

This morning, I called Governor Chafee’s office and urged him, via a staff member, not to accept illegal alien children into the state. I was given a response that it turns out had also been given to WPRO and which Bill Haberman and John Depetro had read on the air. It was, simply,

No federal entity has reached out to the State of Rhode Island requesting assistance with housing undocumented immigrants.

My follow up question for the gentleman on Governor Chafee’s staff whom I spoke to, to preclude confusion over terms, was “or refugees” and he agreed that the statement also applied to “refugees”.

But the Governor’s statement, specific and brief as it is, leaves a couple of large loopholes. No “federal” entity has reached out to the state. Have any other entities or individuals done so? If not to request assistance with “housing” undocumented immigrants, how about “temporarily sheltering” them?

It is not pleasant to have to parse the words of one of our elected officials this way but the narrowness of the statement compels us to do so.

Much as we sympathize deeply with the plight of these children, there are huge ramifications, budgetarily and public health-wise, to any state accepting dozens or hundreds, much less thousands, of illegal alien children, even if – especially if! – it is framed as a temporary situation. It is to be hoped that Governor Chafee will act accordingly and not out of a completely misguided sense of compassion.

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Open Thread: Buddy’s Back

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Just an open thread for the commenters. Buddy’s back and there are about a dozen declared candidates for Governor, including one from the Moderate Party (not Ken Block) and one from the Compassion Party. Have at it.

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Budget Growth and Household Income

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Working with the federal government, the state government of Rhode Island has managed to keep its budget growing more quickly than inflation. The people of Rhode Island, however, have not been so lucky.

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Let’s Remember That Governor Chafee’s Administration Agreed to Change 38 Studios’ Monitoring Reports From Written to Verbal

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A report commissioned by Governor Chafee and released on Friday bolsters – surprise! – the governor’s desire for Rhode Island taxpayers to repay the 38 Studios bonds. It concludes that Rhode Island’s (borrowing) world would end and our bonds would likely go to junk status if we defaulted on the 38 Studios bond payments.

Andrew and Justin have done an excellent job demonstrating the bogosity of the report’s arguments; Andrew thoroughly rebutting John Simmons’ testimony to the Oversight Committee last week which previewed the findings of the report.

Now the question is, why would Governor Chafee, who vociferously opposed, as a candidate, giving a loan guarantee to 38 Studios, now be so in favor of repaying the moral obligation debt?

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$5,000 – or .000022 – Worth of Sunday Morning Grins & Giggles Courtesy PolitiFact RI

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On a personal note, I’d like to sincerely thank PolitiFact RI for starting my day with a big smile this morning, though perhaps they would not be altogether pleased at the reason.

In today’s Providence Journal, they’ve rated a statement by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity (hereinafter “the Center”) pertaining to the $224.5 million in wasteful spending identified by the Center in the governor’s proposed 2015 budget. PolitiFact is not questioning that the state gave away the $5,000 example offered by the Center of an expenditure item in the Governor’s Workforce Board from a prior year. PolitiFact is only saying that the Center did not fully explain what the $5,000 in hard earned taxpayer dollars was spent on.

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GOP Gubernatorial Candidates on Newsmakers

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Both GOP candidates, Ken Block and Allan Fung have appeared on WPRI’s Newsmakers. Here’s both videos. Enjoy!

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10 News Conference Wingmen, Episode 25 (Spotlight on Spending)

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Friday’s discussion on Wingmen was about the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s Spotlight on Spending report.

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“Spotlight on Spending” Report: Where Have You Been All of My (Political, Taxpaying) Life?

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Fine, tell me I need to get a life. But it is not an exaggeration to say that the “Spotlight On Spending” report compiled by the R.I. Center for Freedom & Prosperity and released Tuesday made my year.

Rhode Island currently has the eight highest local and state tax burden. While this is up from sixth highest, it is clear that we continue to spend beyond our means and our ability. Yet we’ve been told repeatedly – sometimes explicitly (thank you, Rep Tanzi); usually more subtly by the substance of the budget itself that emerges from the end of the legislative session – that there is nothing left in the state budget to cut. The “Spotlight On Spending” report resoundingly contradicts this.

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HealthSource RI Numbers in Perspective

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Coverage of HealthSource RI results is setting Rhode Islanders up to be blindsided by budgetary reality, as a massive fraud and failure is presented as a success.

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