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.

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Looking for Another Year of Lower Tax Increase in Tiverton

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For the third year, I’m working on a lower-tax-increase option for Tiverton’s budget for the next fiscal year.  In the past two years, budgets for a 0.0% increase and a 0.9% increase that I’ve submitted have won overwhelmingly.  This year, the goal is another 0.9%.

As is the case everywhere, most likely, the budget battles in town really do come down to two perspectives on local government.  The majority of those who pay very close attention to the activities of local government seem to see little distinction between the Town of Tiverton and the agencies that perform its government functions.  Sadly, evidence from the local to the national levels suggests that this is a natural human tendency.

The alternative perspective is that a town (or state or country) is not chiefly defined by its government, but by the people who live there.  Moreover, the priority is broader social and economic health, not the comfortable operation of the government.

I say this because the map at the above link shows Tiverton with by far the highest tax rate of surrounding cities and towns, with the exception of Warren, and the 3.5% increase in the tax levy that the town government wants would bring that gap down to $0.30.  At the same time, the town’s property values are barely growing, and revenue is dropping from all of those sources that indicate growth and improvement: licenses, permits, and inspections.

Meanwhile, if the town’s taxes had increased at a healthy 2.5% annual rate since the start of the century, rather than twice that, total taxes would be 30% lower.  Now, if the town government has its way, the total increase in property value that residents managed, last year, will be eaten up by this one tax increase in fewer than seven years.

That just isn’t sustainable.  A town government can’t build multiple buildings each decade (on debt), keep hiring new positions, despite little growth and declining activity, and habitually give out raises beyond the private sector’s capability without hurting the people who actually are the town.

In terms of a budget, that means starting with an assessment of what the people can afford, not what their neighbors would like government to take from them.

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RhodeWorks Roll-Out Gives Illustration of Redistribution

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Even as the conversation around repairing Rhode Island’s infrastructure shifts from fixing 152 bridges (and overpasses) around the state to re-imagining the 6/10 connector, it appears that the first toll gantry may be in the process of erection… down in the southern part of the state.  As previously noted, the Rhode Island Dept. of Transportation is in the process of moving the gantries that formerly cast their ominous shadow over the Sakonnet River Bridge to some stretch of RhodeWorks-tolled highway.

The most likely spot, according to a source, is the bridge near exit 4 on Rt. 95, which goes over the enticingly named Nooseneck Hill Road (Rt. 3) down in the Exeter-Richmond area.  That location was among those listed as probable targets during the legislative debate, with a projected toll of $3.  That would also help explain, for another thing, the appearance of this electrical box down there:

rhodeworks-rt4-electicbox-400px

We can speculate as to why the state would want to rush forward with a single toll gantry before a more-final tolling-and-borrowing plan has been solidified.  The most compelling suggestion I’ve heard has been that the Raimondo administration is already preparing plans for additional borrowing through a revenue bond, which would be premised on the toll revenue and would not, therefore, require voter approval.  The sooner any potential lawsuits can be provoked and resolved, the sooner the state can issue (arguably unconstitutional) debt without paying a premium to cover the risk associated with possible litigation.

Whatever the case, though, Rhode Islanders shouldn’t miss the opportunity for a lesson, here.  RhodeWorks came into being as a statewide solution.  It looks like the great majority of the money is earmarked for a very specific location with very limited, regional impact in the Providence area.  Meanwhile, the first revenue-grab will be in a more-rural area in the southern part of the state.

Isn’t that just the way it goes?  Click on the House and Senate tabs of the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s Freedom Index, and you’ll see maps of the districts.  South of the prospective toll location, one has large districts and a total of around six to ten elected representatives and senators.   Meanwhile, the Providence area is a dense cluster of small districts with a great deal of representation.

Not only is RhodeWorks an exercise in redistributing money from taxpayers and drivers to labor unions and Wall Street investors, but the program also redistributes from the less-well-represented suburbs to the heavily-represented urbans.

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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?

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The 6/10 Green Gateway: Yet Another Bait-And-Switch

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The Governor sold us a toll plan that was to repair Rhode Island’s decrepit bridges and roads. We were not sold a green vision, especially one that hands-out hundreds of millions of dollars to the special interests. The Green Gateway is yet another example of a big government boondoggle in the Ocean State. Taxpayers were purposely deceived via this bait-and-switch charade that was always about cronyism and advancing a federally-planned sustainablist vision, that will likely cost you far more than anticipated.

Once again the state government rammed through their agenda, without due process and without considering credible alternatives. Where was the public discussion of the massive tunnel, the green-space theme, and the ‘bus-lane-to-nowhere’ components of the DOT plan during the toll debate? Each of these formerly hidden components would result in massive construction and union related spending that would detract from spending on other unsafe bridges and roads.

Like the toll bill itself, the Green Gateway is an obvious hand out to special interests, and fails to consider alternatives. In the past year, the Center, along with other groups, have proposed various viable alternatives to the Governor’s proposal, including P3 partnerships and pay as you go funding, all of which have been summarily rejected. Now, likely the 6-10 “boulevard” concept as well as other calls to simply repair the existing 6-10 infrastructure will be rejected by the insiders. Your family deserves better than the closed public policy culture in Rhode Island.

Lawmakers should be furious that they voted to fix Rhode Island’s infrastructure, and now the focus is on such a small percentage of the deficient bridges. The tolls revenue should not be used to advance a radical federal sustainable development agenda. We cannot ignore the issues with this plan. Do we really trust the RI DOT to come in on time and on budget with this project? It is time for the status quo thinking on Smith Hill to change; we cannot afford to continue to lock the people out of the process though the elite’s schemes.

[Mike Stenhouse is CEO of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity.]

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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.

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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.

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Two Quick Hits on RI Policy: RhodeWorks and Municipal Debt

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I see everybody’s wondering how the we-must-borrow-money-and-impose-tolls-because-bridges-all-over-the-state-are-about-to-fall-down RhodeWorks program became a let’s-spend-a-lot-of-money-to-put-a-tunnel-under-nothing-on-the-6/10-connector bait and switch.

While having these discussions, I encourage everybody not to forget the map that Governor Gina Raimondo and the Dept. of Transportation produced showing all of the bridges around the state that would be repaired with the new program if legislators would just pass the bill.  Take careful notice of the legend.  It shows 224 structurally deficient bridges, with 152 marked as “RhodeWorks Bridges,” meaning they’d be fixed, and 7 marked as 6/10 Interchange Bridges.  This shows both that RIDOT sold RhodeWorks as a statewide program and that the agency was likely preparing for a pivot to just the 6/10 already last June.

While I’m writing about being wary of legislation, I thought I’d mention H7551, which is scheduled for a vote in the Rhode Island House, this afternoon.  Basically, it would give every school department in the state a window for the rest of the fiscal year (i.e., before July 1) during which to borrow as much money as they want in order to capture state building grants… without voter approval, naturally.

How easily promises are broken and protections against government excess are swept away.

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Government in the Form of “Let Me Tell You Something, Pal”

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In late 2012, I watched former Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) Director Michael Lewis stand before a packed auditorium to answer questions and absorb ire over the prospect of tolls on the Sakonnet River Bridge.  As I recall, it was one of several such heated meetings in Tiverton and Portsmouth around that time.

The DOT has long drawn public cynicism, rightly, but credit cannot be denied to Lewis for being respectful and remaining professional in the face of an angry crowd as the representative of an agency, a gubernatorial administration, and a broader government that were making unpopular decisions.  Although just about nobody, I’m sure, left the meetings convinced or even soothed about the looming tolls, Lewis did accomplish a central purpose of government agents at public hearings: He left the people feeling like there could be some redress of grievances with government and that, at the very least, elected and appointed officials understood themselves to be making the best of a bunch of bad decisions and didn’t hold the public in contempt for disagreeing with their conclusions.

Fast forward to Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo and the new DOT director, Peter Alviti, whom she plucked from the ranks of a local labor union:

About one minute into Brian Crandall’s WJAR NBC 10 story, Alviti steps aggressively toward an elderly man seated in the audience and jabs his finger toward him, saying, “Let me tell you something, pal.”  After Alviti’s inappropriate behavior in front of the House Finance Committee, a pattern is clear.

Of course, the attitude of superiority to the general public and outright contempt for people who disagree is quickly becoming a hallmark not only of Alviti, but of the entire Raimondo administration, with the new standard being picked up in the General Assembly under Democrat Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello (Cranston).

It seems as if the folks in government have had enough of us.  They’re willing to go through some of the motions of public hearings and such, but when it comes down to it, they think they know better, and they have little patience for the stubborn people they ostensibly represent.

P.S. — To add on to Monique’s question, earlier today, when guessing whether a 6/10 tunnel would cost more to maintain than  rebuilt overpasses, we can’t forget that whatever goes on top of the tunnel will also have to be maintained, whether roads, bridges, parks, or whatever.

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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?

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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?

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What’s Really In Your Best Interest? James Kennedy Moving Together 6/10 Boulevard

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This week on “What’s Really In Your Best Interest?” I sit down with James Kennedy of Transport Providence and a member of Moving Together Providence to discuss the 6/10 Boulevard concept for Rhode Island. Kennedy weighs in on the numerous benefits of the boulevard concept including reconnecting the traditional city grid and savings for taxpayers. I raised concerns about the need for dedicated bus lanes. But, we both agree that there is a better option than the Green Gateway being proposed by the RI DOT. Has RhodeWorks become a bait-and-switch for the Ocean State?

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Why Subsidize Challenged Populations?

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I don’t have the time, right now, to dig into it, but something’s been nagging at me concerning the HousingWorks RI study claiming that Rhode Island is going to lack affordable housing options in light of demographic projections.  According to a table on the first page of text in the report, HousingWorks projects an 11.5% loss of population in the mid-to-late-career, higher-earning range of the population (45-64) by 2025, which will combine with an 8.1% increase of those aged 20-44 and a 39.6% increase of those aged over 65.

The insinuated need is for the state to, one way or another, subsidize housing for those groups, but perhaps we should be asking different questions.

Let’s start with public policy of the last decade as a sort of baseline, meaning that we accept the policies that brought us recent shifts as the status quo and are considering policy changes moving forward.  And let’s accept the premise that housing is going to be a problem for early-career families and retired households.

How much sense does it make to push policies like tax exemption of retirement income and tax-based loan forgiveness programs for recent college graduates?  Putting these approaches together increases the tax burden on the segment of the population that’s disappearing from the state (and which we’re assuming can better afford the housing that we actually have) while subsidizing the segments that are already projected to increase (and which we’re assuming are going to have difficulty making ends meet).  Add to that the increased tax and cost-of-living burden that the government may impose in order to address the housing projections.

To some extent, this is the dilemma of helping people while not encouraging choices that increase our social and economic challenges, and a fully considered policy would require some balancing of benefits versus costs.  But even if one concedes that smart policy makers could make the right call, given the chance, which is a point that I absolutely do not concede, our local conversation is nowhere near considering both sides.

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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?

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Housing Should Be a Lagging Issue

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Issue advocates will always see their issues as critical and leading, but the reality is that housing is and should be a secondary issue at the statewide scale.  (Obviously, it’s a basic necessity and high priority from the perspective of the individual family.)  It’s plainly obvious that people don’t need housing in places they’ve got no reason to live, and it should be just as obvious that the public doesn’t have an obligation to subsidize housing to satisfy every reason that a person might want to live in a particular place.

As presented in a Ted Nesi article, today, housing advocates in Rhode Island attempt to get around these obvious points by presenting housing as if it’s a leading problem or driver of business:

“We are simply not building enough housing, which is continuing to drive up the cost, because the supply is not there,” Barbara Fields, executive director of Rhode Island Housing, told reporters during a briefing on the report’s findings. “The fact is, incomes in Rhode Island have not kept pace with housing costs,” she said.

Added Nicholas Retsinas, chairman of Rhode Island Housing’s board of commissioners: “We’re not going to be able to attract and retain a labor force that’s necessary to attract businesses.”

In short, Retsinas is proffering housing as a business subsidy.  Pairing that pitch with Fields’s view that family incomes are falling behind the cost of housing shows just how much those who work in public policy in Rhode Island have to untangle this issue, because the advocates have no coherent narrative.  Why are those people in Rhode Island, working jobs that can’t support life here?  Why are the businesses here if they can’t pay their employees enough to live?

Underlying this puzzle is Rhode Island’s habit of subsidizing insiders and favored businesses and industries.  If that’s the structure of our local economy, the market can’t differentiate between businesses that can’t survive without subsidies because they’re badly run, bad ideas, or antiquated and those that can’t survive just because Rhode Island government makes it difficult for them to get by.  Most likely, Rhode Island’s approach has a detrimental effect, inasmuch as companies that could succeed without Rhode Island government’s imposed burdens can simply move while those that require subsidies because they aren’t good companies couldn’t survive anywhere else, either.

The economy ought to go the other way:  The state shouldn’t be the driver of economic activity; rather, economic activity ought to benefit the state.  If state and local governments would stop erecting barriers, then we’d develop industries that are valuable in their own right, without selecting for those that are able to survive in our hostile environment, and those industries would drive incomes sufficient to afford housing.

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Nice – R.I. Trucking Assoc Moves to Invoke Fed Regs Against Toll-Funded RhodeWorks

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The Providence Business News reports that the R.I. Trucking Association is attempting to bring to bear arguably the heaviest, most terrible artillery of all against Governor Raimondo’s toll-funded “bridge” repair program: federal regulations.

In a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation sent March 18, trucking association President and CEO Christopher J. Maxwell said the proposed bridge and overpass rebuilding program should require a National Environmental Policy Act review because it will use federal funds.

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Who Should Decide on the 6/10 Connector?

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As with legalizing marijuana, what to do with the 6/10 connector is a state-level policy debate on which I’m more ambivalent than on matters that consume most of my attention.  In large part, my ambivalence arises from my general feeling that I don’t have enough personal investment in the infrastructure on that side of Providence or, alternately, enough expertise about the relevant questions to make my opinion of much value.  Ultimately, all I could do is offer a statement of principle, and that’s not generally very helpful, irking those whose view clashes with the principle and disappointing those whose view accords with it.

With that lengthy (boulevard-esque) opening disclaimer complete, I will say that my principles harmonize more with those who favor replacing the 6/10 connector highway with an urban boulevard for the reason that transportation engineer Ian Lockwood expresses in Kevin Proft’s recent ecoRI article on the question:

“There comes a point, from a policy perspective, where it makes sense for the community to have regional commuters driving on (the community’s) terms, and not on some kind of long-distance commute terms,” he said.

Nobody’s more invested in that spot on the planet than the people who live and work there and/or own property in the immediate area.  The fact that some suburban commuter’s habits were developed on the assumption that the people in those neighborhoods of Providence had accepted a highway next door once upon a time doesn’t give that commuter a lifetime claim to infrastructure saving him or her 20 minutes (or whatever) per workday.

Look at a map and/or take a drive.  295 isn’t exactly a terrible inconvenience for points north.  Likewise, if the highway-only option for points between the northern and southern tips of 295 is to take 6 to 10 south to Cranston and then head north, that wouldn’t be the end of the world.  People could adjust, particularly over time, as home buyers planning to commute change their habits.

Other than that, though, the whole thing is beyond my expertise.  Whether the people vested in the area around 6/10 connector should expect a boulevard to be non-stop traffic while habits adjust is a question for them to answer, for example.  Who knows but that somebody will have a moment of inspiration for another path that a cut-through highway could traverse.

In a part of the country that expanded ad hoc as the world evolved from foot paths to highways, we can’t mistake the existence of a highway as the necessity for a highway.

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Vitally Important that the R.I. Supreme Court Weigh in Now on Truck-Only Tolls

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Rep Patricia Morgan is absolutely correct. Governor Raimondo needs to ask the R.I. Supreme Court now, not after she has committed taxpayers to hundreds of millions of dollars in borrowing, whether tolls on trucks only is constitutional. If the governor refuses to do so, it is confirmation that she fully intends for tolls to go on cars under the political cover of a court ruling — but one that would come years down the road, after taxpayers are on the hook to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Wall Street and to her pet political friends.

Republican state Rep. Patricia Morgan has introduced a resolution urging Governor Raimondo to seek a Rhode Island Supreme Court opinion on the constitutionality of her Assembly-passed plan to toll tractor-trailer trucks before the tolling gantries go up at multiple locations on six Rhode Island highways.

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Stronger Leverage for Failure to Pay Tolls Would Only Applies to Newport Bridge … Yeah, That’s the Ticket

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Huh, this must be a huge coincidence, following as it does closely on the heels of the passage of the governor’s horrendous toll plan: bills have popped up that would give the RI Turnpike and Bridge Authority greater leverage to punish people and collect from those who fail to pay tolls when crossing the Newport Pell Bridge.

A series of bills filed in the General Assembly on behalf of the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority would allow the agency to report toll violators to the Division of Motor Vehicles, which would place a hold on license and registration renewals.

Technically, the new statewide tolls – collections and presumably punishments – will be administered by RIDOT. [Correction.] In fact, statewide tolls will be administered by the R.I. Turnpike and Bridge Authority. But So is there any doubt that, if these bills pass, this punishment and leverage would quickly be extended to toll violators around the state, not just those crossing the Newport Bridge?

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RIDOT’s $231 and Nose-Thumbing at Rep. Patricia Morgan

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At this point, the attempt of the RI Dept. of Transportation (RIDOT) to charge Republican State Representative Patricia Morgan (Coventry, Warwick, West Warwick) $231 for the fulfillment of an information request is part of a clear pattern of unprofessional behavior toward this particular elected official.  However, two points of broad interest arise from the controversy.

The first is the legalism that our current approach to the law enables:

“The law provides no exemption for state legislators, however it does provide for a waiver if requested,” [DOT spokesman Charles St. Martin] said. “Representative Morgan has requested a waiver and RIDOT will be granting that waiver and will not require payment.”

I’ve long complained that our good-government laws have had the effect of giving government officials an excuse to pretend as if writing down minimal requirements for transparency (or ethics, for that matter) means that all prior expectations for more than the minimum are suddenly wiped away, if not made illegal.  Must it really be written down in the law that the people’s representatives should have access to information as part of the basic operation of government?

The second important observation is that RIDOT is claiming that it took 16 hours for state employees to compile a list of six months’ worth of change orders.  Even if Morgan’s request was more detailed than the article makes it sound, how is that possible?

During the public battle over the toll-and-borrow RhodeWorks program, the public was assured repeatedly that RIDOT is running so much better now that it has a former labor union guy in charge that it’s barely fair to look at the agency’s long history of ineptitude.  Shouldn’t such a well-redesigned machine have a running list of change orders, at a very minimum?

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It Begins: National Trucking Association Moves Upcoming Meeting out of RI Due to Tolls

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So this is not good. Toll gantries are three years away (by the way, what was the peddle-to-the-metal urgency to get tolls passed seeing it’s going to take so long to implement them?) and they’re already chasing business away.

A trucking group has changed its plan to hold a national meeting in Newport in the summer of 2018, in protest of the recently approved RhodeWorks program.

RhodeWorks imposes tolls on some trucks to pay for repairs to the state’s aging bridges. “It’s not that we don’t want to be in Newport, it’s that we can’t support a state where the administration seems to be anti-truck,” said Brian Parke, Northeast chairman of the Trucking Association Executives Council.

Worse, the governor responds with an I-got-mine shrug.

In a statement, Governor Raimondo spokeswoman Marie Aberger wrote, “We’re pleased Rhode Island will now have the money we need to rebuild our roads, as well as putting people to work.

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Tolls For Thee But Tax Amnesty for Me?

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Nice work by WPRI’s Dan McGowan ascertaining that Rep. Thomas Palangio (D, Providence) might well have benefited from a bill he was co-sponsoring.

A Rhode Island state representative has pulled his name from legislation that would put a 10-year statute of limitations on the collection of state taxes after acknowledging that he may owe the state more than $120,000 in back taxes.

The hypocrisy here is palpable. Rep. Palangio voted to legalize a whole new, highly destructive revenue stream (tolls) … but appears to have been caught trying to relieve himself of his obligation to pay an existing one.

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Fine & Fee Chase Ends Up Being Showcase of a State Gross Incompetency Scandal

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It seems the State of Rhode Island is feeling poor, despite a new ranking, compiled by the Tax Foundation, which places RI state and local taxes once again mostly in the top quintile or higher. So state officials recently decided to go after unpaid fines and fees, some of them going back decades. The Providence Journal reports on its front page today, however, that the state is being pretty indiscriminate about who it is dunning — like even people who … well, don’t owe.

[Jennifer Nientimp] mailed the collection agency a response with an explanatory note and a copy of the written AAC dismissal of the ticket. That was the last she heard of that. But now Nientimp has been snagged in another net. Last week, she received one of the 276,000 letters sent out by the state court system demanding that people pay delinquent court fines and fees. The state still insists that she owes $82 for that unpaid ticket.

How did this happen?

Many appear to be left over, [court spokesman Craig N.] Berke acknowledged, from the days of the Administrative Adjudication Court, which The Providence Journal chronicled in a series of news articles in 1998. The newspaper detailed three-day work weeks for highly paid traffic judges, mismanagement, huge work backlogs, alleged violations of citizens’ rights and uncollected fines estimated in 1999 to be as high as $39 million.

Many of which were deemed to be uncollectible. Ouch. Undoubtedly the state would far prefer not to have had a reminder of that massive DMV scandal because of the questions that naturally come to mind, such as: you don’t suppose such gross incompetency will be repeated in other state operations, like RIDOT’s upcoming bridge repair surge, do you?

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Was Final RhodeWorks Vote Scheduled Before the Bill Was Submitted?

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Correspondence related to the removal of the toll gantries on the Sakonnet River Bridge on Super Bowl Sunday suggests that the date was no surprise, that the state paid a premium for the timing, and that government officials had the schedule for RhodeWorks legislation planned out well in advance.

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Theodore Vecchio: Representing Rhode Islanders Now the Road Less Traveled

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Theodore Vecchio sees Rhode Island government as representing people other than Rhode Islanders and bullying the latter into submission.

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UPDATED: Former RIICA Director: State House Pressure on Lobbyists, Members Led to Lost Job

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As the latest incident showing a toxic culture in the State House, the former executive director of Rhode Island Independent Contractors and Associates (RIICA) says he was forced out after officials put pressure on the group’s lobbyists and members began to fear retaliation.

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Talking Political and Economic Philosophy on Common Sense RI

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As the four main segments of the latest edition of Common Sense RI, Representative Patricia Morgan and I discuss various topics related to how our government operates… and how it ought to operate.

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Toward Defining Our Society’s Fundamental Problem

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Maybe our problem is that people are conditioned to be comfortable with the fact that our machines operate in a way we don’t understand based on an infrastructure we never see.

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More Clarity About How Rhode Island Works

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Some folks on social media have noted an op-ed by Mark Ryan in today’s Providence Journal encouraging Rhode Islanders to stop “drowning in negativity” and instead “applaud Gov. Gina Raimondo, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed” and “encourage them to further achievement.” Ryan proceeds to offer a boosterish list of the trio’s achievements, which looks a lot like what one might expect if he’d asked the politicians’ spokespeople for a short list of what good things they think they’ve done over the past year.

Readers should note that Mr. Ryan has handed out over $10,000 to Rhode Island politicians since spring 2014. $2,000 of that went to Governor Gina Raimondo, half just a month before her election and half the following January. Another $2,000 went to General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, half a week before the election and half this past November. These donations are notable, in part, because as Ted Nesi summarized last September in a post on some of the depositions in the 38 Studios trial, Ryan’s law firm, Moses Afonso Ryan, is “a prominent local law firm that often works on government bond offerings.”

For example, however much the firm received for its work on the bonds related to 38 Studios, it agreed to pay the government $4.4 million. The public could be forgiven for thinking that, for such people, campaign donations aren’t so much expressions of support as investments. The other partners in the firm give generously to select politicians, and they also give to the firm’s associated political action committee (PAC), which then gives more to politicians.

And it’s an intricate scheme, too. Ryan gave former Providence Mayor Angel Taveras over $4,000, and as his official bio states:

He was recommended by Mayor Taveras and appointed by Governor Chafee as a commissioner on the I-195 Commission, Chair of the Search Committee for an Economic Development Director for the City of Providence and Co-Chair of the City of Providence Mayor Angel Taveras’ Transition Team.

In short, it’s about as surprising that Mr. Ryan would be a supporter of the politics and brand of economic development of Raimondo & Co. as it is that the Laborer’s union likes the idea of pouring hundreds of millions of dollars immediately into construction projects. The fact that Ryan is former executive vice president and general manager of The Providence Journal only completes the picture of how Rhode Island operates and why it’s in the condition that it’s in.

Insiders profit. You pay. In the absence of a functioning, truly representative democracy, the process is little more than legalized theft.

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Theodore Vecchio: Finding a Definition for Rhode Island Governance

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Whether RhodeWorks or anything else, this resident of Rhode Island finds that the government process in his state doesn’t operate quite as he thought it was supposed to operate.

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