Video of RISC’s 2012 Winter Meeting, featuring Central Falls Receiver Robert Flanders, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, Woonsocket Mayor Loe Fontaine, Providence advisor Gary Sasse, and Rep. Larry Ehrhardt.
Justin writes live from the RISC Winter Meeting at the Radisson Hotel.
The insider take is that the General Assembly wants to avoid controversy, after pension reform, but last night’s House Labor hearing gave the impression of a different kind of show.
Justin writes live from the RI House Labor Committee Hearing, dealing mainly with binding arbitration and perpetual contracts.
A labor-friendly senator proposing reform-minded legislation indicates the need for the careful consideration of unintended consequences as Rhode Island shifts the way it does business.
“Fairness” is an ideal term of a sort beloved by politicians: descriptors that sound inherently positive and desirable, but that are completely subjective and can be flipped around every which way to serve any political need, as Gov. Chafee illustrates by seeking parity in raises for highly paid directors.
When it comes to the average annual pension payment given to its retirees in the state Employees’ Retirement System (ERSRI), Cranston pays only a few percentage points more than the average for all cities and towns; its local fire and police retirement plans, however, are dramatically more generous.
Ash Wednesday seems an appropriate day to consider ruminations on economic inequality, from James Nuechterlein’s “Public Square” column in last April’s First Things (subscription required): … the connection between inequality and hard times is so prevalent in folk wisdom that expressions of alarm over the nation’s distribution of income followed in the wake of the […]
On Tuesday, February 14, the department heads in Tiverton’s municipal government went before the Rhode Island State Labor Relations Board (RISLRB) as a step toward unionizing. No judgment has been announced, but the issue bears close watching. These are positions that elected officials and voters ought to have maximum flexibility to change.
As important as Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs’ conclusion, in a Heritage Foundation study, that public-school teachers are overpaid is the way in which Bureau of Labor Statistics data is biased to promote the opposite conclusion.