Some 2015 Predictions (HealthSource and RhodeMap)

Filling in for Matt Allen on WPRO, last night, Jay Martins asked me to call in with predictions (and warnings, really) about HealthSource RI and RhodeMap RI.  Here are my notes for the call:

HealthSource

When commentator Avik Roy was looking for the perfect quotation to summarize Vermont’s aborted flirtation with single-payer healthcare in Forbes magazine, he picked Raimondo’s choice to lead HealthSource RI, Anya Rader Wallack. What she said was: “We can move full speed ahead…without knowing where the money’s coming from.”

That pretty much sums up the strategy with HealthSource RI, too. They leapt into this thing expecting the money just to materialize, and it didn’t.

The ironic problem is that Wallack’s primary job this year will be figuring out where the money’s coming from.

Prediction:  There will be some dramatic hearings and political battling with House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello (D, Cranston), but ultimately, the government insiders like HealthSource enough — mostly as a stepping stone to our own attempt at giving government all control over healthcare — that they’ll give him something substantial that he wants as a trade. What that’ll be may be the most important answer we’ll get in the next six months.

 

RhodeMap

We can only hope that this will be a big story.  RhodeMap’s going to be more interesting than HealthSource in its way. What we’re going to see are:

  • Local pro-RhodeMap/Smart Growth activists trying to get on local planning boards
  • Stealth legislation and ordinances to give planning boards more authority
  • Other stealth legislation and ordinances to push forward RhodeMap principles, which have a lot of money and insider and activist support behind them.

The big questions are:

  • How strongly cities and towns will push back
  • How insiders in the state and federal government will ultimately thwart those towns and anti-RhodeMap activists that manage to gain local traction — whether regulation, legislation, judicial hearings, or politically undermining them
  • Whether the general public’s interest (and outrage) can be maintained

Eminent domain is definitely a flash point that will grab the public’s attention, and despite assurances, RhodeMap does open the door for it, but there are many lower-grade tools in the central planners’ toolbox.  First, they’ll work on pressuring property owners through taxes, zoning, regulation, and general government harassment, all of which will offer property owners the escape hatch of devices like transfer of development rights.  (That’s when a property owner sells somebody, possibly the government, the rights to develop his or her land, which he or she technically continues to own and the buyer transfers that right in order to develop land somewhere else.)

Only if none of that works will they move forward with property takings, which isn’t likely to happen in 2015.  The targeted property owners will be outraged, but mainstream journalists don’t tend to care about individual property owners when it’s the government that’s harassing them, so the question is whether those with eyes to see will manage to weave together the bigger story and get the public to pay attention to it.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in The Ocean State Current, including text, graphics, images, and information are solely those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the views and opinions of The Current, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, or its members or staff. The Current cannot be held responsible for information posted or provided by third-party sources. Readers are encouraged to fact check any information on this web site with other sources.

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