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61

The Missing Piece in Marion’s Analysis

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For the most part, I agree with John Marion’s op-ed in the Providence Journal, today, so head on over there and read the whole thing if you haven’t already done so.  So as to advance the conversation, I’ll limit myself to an area of his and my disagreement.  He writes:

Power, as we know, is a zero sum concept. For the speaker to have more power, it means someone else must have less. The speaker’s power comes at the expense of the rank-and-file legislators who represent the 98 percent of Rhode Islanders who do not live in Mattiello’s district. This power is allocated to the speaker in three important ways: through our Constitution, our laws, and the rules of the House of Representatives.

Marion misses a very important fourth factor: politics — both Rhode Island’s the overwhelming partisanship and the General Assembly’s rarity of turnover.  The locked-in politics of the General Assembly have allowed its corrupt rules to harden into just The Way Things Work, Here.

This reality can be seen most starkly in the rules of the House.  You can search back through our archives here and on Anchor Rising for the analysis that Carroll Andrew Morse and I have performed to see that, in many cases, it isn’t so much the rules as they are written and approved by the members that are the problem, but the rules as they’re followed, which is not the same thing.  The first vulnerability for any legislator attempting to upset the status quo is that the rules require mystical interpretation by… the keepers of the status quo.

Where we come to my long-running disagreement with Marion is that part of the problem, in Rhode Island, is the degree to which the law regulates grassroots political activity.  Most notably, that manifests in campaign finance reform — with people having a justifiable sense that there’s a whole bunch of form filling and legal hurdle jumping that they’ll have to take on if they opt to challenge an incumbent politician.

If we want to unseat the power bases, in the Ocean State, and ensure that there’s balance and an ebb and flow, we have to make politics less regulated and less predictable.  Unfortunately, one area in which good-government groups tend to fall on the same side as the corrupt insiders is in fear of unregulated politics.

62

“Clarifications” About Infringements on Your Rights

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Conspicuously on the same day I highlighted his legislation seeking to regulate even small-scale grassroots political activity at the town level, state representative John “Jay” Edwards (D, Tiverton, Portsmouth) put out a press release on the subject, which is built around a… let’s say… highly spun premise. The five-paragraph release uses some variation of the word “clarify” in each of its first three paragraphs:

  • The bill will “increase accountability” by “clarifying language.”
  • It will “extend [government] power” by “clarifying which people and groups are obliged to submit campaign finance reports.”
  • It will “clarify the definition of the term ‘entity’.”

All this talk about “clarifying” seems designed to disguise just how radical and tyrannical a step Edwards wants to take. In a word, the clarification is that Edwards wants the term “entity” to apply to everybody. Any single person or any group organized in any way who spends $100 in the course of a year on a local matter would have to “file reports of contributions or expenditures every seven days.” That’s not clarification; it’s asphyxiation.

Two items that could use a little clarification, but about which Edwards doesn’t seem concerned, are whether there’s ever an end to the weekly reports or if they go on every week through the end of the year and how much overlap in reportage is necessary. If Uncle Joe gives $100 to Patricia and Jim down the street so the couple can print up some fliers about their shared opinion on whether the town should buy land for a community mini-golf course, do all of them have to start filing reports because Joe has an expense and Patricia and Jim have both a donation and an expense?

Note, too, that the bill does not apply this onerous “everybody” standard to the election of local or state politicians. This not only protects Edwards’s supporters and those of his friends, but it also creates incentive for the public to limit its political activity only to that which is filtered through insiders.

Forgive my repetition, but the purpose of Edwards’s bill isn’t to “clarify” anything. It’s to create even more disincentive to civic participation in the general population. It’s to give people the general sense that getting involved in politics — even at the town level — is something people should only do if they’re willing to start regularly filling out publicly accessible forms with their addresses and other information — not the least, a record of those with whom they associate in an exchange of money. It’s also to give Edwards’s political allies more insight into whom they should add to their target list for gossip, anonymous attacks on the Internet, and other forms of intimidation.

The only things Edwards clarifies with this legislation are that he has no respect for the rights of Americans and that neither he nor any representative of any party who supports his bill should not be trusted with public office.

64

Another Lesson We Seem Never to Learn

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After Kenneth Colston’s inclusion of The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni, during his talk at the 2015 Portsmouth Institute conference, I put the book on my reading list.  The relevance to the conference was Pope Francis’s saying in an interview that he had read the book three times and was preparing for a fourth reading.  “Manzoni gave me so much,” he said.

One chapter in, the novel has given me some hope that Manzoni placed a light bulb in the pope’s mind on a topic for which it may prove very important to have light in the coming years.  With the narrative set in northern Italy, just under the Alps, at around the time that the Pilgrims were settling in to their new home across the Atlantic Ocean, the civic culture that Manzoni describes gives the impression of a fully formed variation of a type of tyranny that is hardening anew in our own age:

… We do not mean that there was any lack of laws with penalties directed against private acts of violence.  There was a glut of such laws in point of fact.  The various crimes were listed and described and detailed in the most minute and long-winded manner. The penalties were of insane severity, and as if that were not enough, they were almost invariably subject to augmentation at the whim of the magistrate himself, or of any one of a hundred subordinate officials. …

… If [the proclamations] had any immediate effect, it lay principally in the addition of many new harassments to those which the pacific and the weak already suffered from their tormentors, and an increase in the violence and the cunning shown by the guilty; for their impunity was an organized institution, and had roots which the proclamations did not touch, or at least could not shift.  There were places of asylum; there were privileges attached to certain social classes, which were sometimes recognized by the forces of the law, sometimes tolerated in indignant silence, and sometimes disputed with empty words of protest. …

… With the appearance of each proclamation designed to repress men of violence, those concerned searched among their practical resources for the most suitable fresh methods of continuing to do what the edicts prohibited.

What the proclamations could do was to put stumbling-blocks in the way of simple folk, who had no special power of their own nor protection from others, and harass them at ever step they took.  For the proclamations were framed with the object of keeping everybody under control, in order to prevent or punish every sort of crime; and so they subjected every action of the private citizen to the arbitrary will of all kinds of officials.

This perspicuous observation applies to any number of issues, particularly those near and dear to the hearts of progressives, including among others campaign finance, environmental regulation, and general economic/business policy.

65

Government Resources to Promote Politicians (Who Work to Limit Opponents)

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I’m mentioned in today’s Providence Journal Political Scene as the right-wing branch of a broad consensus that Governor Gina Raimondo is inappropriately using public funds to promote herself as a politician:

“So … Raimondo used taxpayer funds for what smells an awful lot like a campaign ad. Like what Chris Christie did,” tweeted Sam Bell, state coordinator for the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats of America. (“Agree 100% with Sam. Both the video and its prominent placement on the public Web site are inappropriate,” said Ocean State Current blogger Justin Katz.)

Raimondo Communications Director Joy Fox declares this a new media thing, but it’s not.  New media is just the pretense to completely eviscerate the etiquette that politicians should at least look for some pretense to promote themselves — as with former Providence Mayor Angel Taveras putting his face on a Rt. 95 bulletin board to welcome a new musical to the city or the Taveras–David Cicilline practice of putting their names on Graffiti Task Force vans that drive around the city.

Such affronts are rarely mentioned, naturally, when politicians like, umm, David Cicilline work to limit the amount of money that their opponents can bring to bear in political races (generally known as “campaign finance reform”).  When you’ve got the advantage that other people, including taxpayers, pay to have your face and name plastered everywhere in which your voters can be found, it’s surely desirable to impede your opposition’s ability to collect enough money to compete.

66

Lobbying Laws Keep Politics an Inside Game

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Lobbying laws should be found unconstitutional and abhorrent to a free people.  Consider these letters Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea sent out to parties on both sides of the Pawtucket Red Sox stadium issue, in GoLocalProv:

A letter sent to Pawtucket Red Sox Chief Executive Officer Michael Tamburro, outlining the state’s lobbying statute, began with, “Congratulations on the exciting new developments at the Pawtucket Red Sox, a venerable Rhode Island Institution.”

In contrast, a Pawtucket citizen’s letter started with, “It has come to my attention through media reports and the Organizing Pawtucket website that you are the head of Organizing for Pawtucket, and that you may be engaging in conversation with Rhode Island state government officials on behalf of that entity.”

Does anybody really believe that a government so steeped in inside dealing as Rhode Island’s pursues lobbying and campaign finance laws as a matter of transparency?  That’s the spin, of course, but the end effect is to ensure that politics remains an insider game.  Special interests are drawn into the official network, sort of like outside vendors, and grassroots activists are intimidated.

It’s impossible to know how many people on the periphery of politics never take the next step to involvement because they have a sense that there’s some complex network of laws that they lack the bandwidth to investigate, but I’d wager it’s not a negligible number.  The professionalization and regulation of politics creates incentive for reluctance across the spectrum of involvement, except for those who are actively seeking to buy advantage through government.

Look at the example being made of Dinesh D’Souza.  Run afoul of the government’s regulations for trying to change the government, and you put your life under the thumb of people like U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, who dismissed the assessments of two licensed psychiatric professionals in order to issue this judgment, which would be right at home in a Soviet dissident novel:

“I only insisted on psychological counseling as part of Mr. D’Souza’s sentence because I wanted to be helpful,” the judge explained. “I am requiring Mr. D’Souza to see a new psychological counselor and to continue the weekly psychological consultation not as part of his punishment or to be retributive….

WND reported that at the Sept. 23, 2014, sentencing hearing, Berman said he could not understand how someone of D’Souza’s intelligence, with credentials that include college president, could do something so stupid as to violate federal campaign contribution laws. D’Souza was at the pinnacle of his career, writing bestselling non-fiction books and producing popular feature films….

“You have to understand, I have a background in social work with a psychology major,” Berman explained. “I’m sensitive to mental health issues in the criminal cases I hear, and I do not want to end psychological counseling at this time in Mr. D’Souza’s case.

For those who do not want to make politics and government a central part of their lives, the message is clear: Life is much safer if you just keep your head down and don’t get involved.

67

Follow-Up on Childcare Subsidy Increase

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Last week, Rhode Islanders learned of a $2.15 million increase in state childcare subsidy rates for providers.  Although details of the first-ever agreement with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which now represents the private, independent providers, have still not been released, the House Speaker’s office has provided The Current a few additional budgetary numbers.

The $2.15 million is being added to base spending of $58.9 million, or a 3.65% increase, overall, bringing the total to $61.1 million.  If these provisions of the budget pass as currently written, it will represent a $7.45 million bump in spending for these payments over the current fiscal year, or a 13.90% increase.

Despite requests to multiple government agencies, the state has still not released any details of the agreement, including dues.  Child Care Union Info, with which the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has worked in the past, reports a wide variety of dues from other states, although some of the contracts have been terminated.  At the higher end are states in which the union’s dues are calculated as a percentage of subsidies, sometimes with a maximum.

In Michigan and Massachusetts (which is SEIU), the rate is 1.5%.  In Washington (also SEIU), it’s 2%.  Either rate would put the SEIU’s take in Rhode Island around $1 million, or about half of the total raise that the budget would grant.  (Given Rhode Island’s small size, the union would be likely to seek dues at the higher end.)

As I stated in a release just put out by the Center, the governor and General Assembly could have increased payment rates without the involvement of a union, if needy families are having difficult finding childcare providers.  As yet, there has been no claim of such difficulty.  In 2013, the law was changed (in a way that is likely unconstitutional) to give independent childcare providers more leverage, and now the Speaker of the House tells Providence Journal reporter Katherine Gregg that he believes they “deserve to be paid a fair and equitable wage.”

Clearly, these providers have advocates at the State House, and those advocates could have provided the same raises at a lower cost to taxpayers by cutting out the SEIU.  However, between 2004 and 2014, the SEIU gave $30,333 to Rhode Island politicians, according to the Board of Election’s campaign finance Web site.  This makes the interaction win-win-win for everybody except those who have to pay the bills.

UPDATE (2:57 p.m., 6/17/15):

See here for updated numbers.

68

Coming up in Committee: Thirty-One Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, June 1 (Today) – June 4

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1. S0876/H6181: Legislative implementation of the pension “settlement” created outside of the legislature. (S Finance; Mon, Jun 1 & H Finance; Wed, Jun 3)

2. Late-entry budget article: Tolling of mid and large size commercial vehicle on Rhode Island highways budget article. (H Finance; Tue, Jun 2)

3. S0952: Sets a 20-year schedule of property tax exemptions in the I195 redevelopment district. (S Finance; Thu, Jun 4)

4. S0384: Bans “any candidate for state or local office who has outstanding campaign finance reports or fines due the board of elections” from running for office “until all such reports are filed and/or all fines are paid”. (S Judiciary; Tue, Jun 2) Likely unconstitutional, on the grounds that qualifications for office are established at the constitutional level and cannot be altered by statute.

5. S0458: Removes a fiscal stability act budget commission’s authority over a school superintendent and over basic educational matters . (S Education; Tue, Jun 2) According to knowledgeable sources, likely related to protecting a school superintendent favored by the Mayor of Woonsocket but not in favor with the city’s budget commission.

69

A Fishy, Misnamed State Bank

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The more I read about this “Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank” being proposed by Governor Gina Raimondo and General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, the worse the idea sounds:

As they envision it, $22 million or so in state tax dollars, left-over federal stimulus dollars and bond proceeds would be funneled to the cities and towns for energy-cutting projects, such as these, through the renamed Rhode Island Clean Water Finance Agency, created in 1990 to provide loans for improvements to sewage and drinking water systems.

So, this will be new municipal debt without, it seems, voter approval.

… the legislation would also salt away an unspecified amount of state money away in “one or more” loan-loss reserve funds to encourage private banks to lend money to private homeowners and businesses for similar kinds of energy-saving building upgrades. The legislation does not say how much.

So, the public would absorb the risk for projects financed by private companies for private entities and individuals.

When asked why National Grid was among those backing legislation that could cut into its revenues by reducing energy use, company vice president Michael Ryan said the answer lies in an earlier “decoupling” law guaranteeing National Grid a “bump” in its rates if usage drops, as a result of energy-efficiency efforts.

So, it won’t actually save Rhode Island money on energy; it’ll simply shift the burden from government agencies and private entities that are able to get the loans onto those who are not.

The answer from treasury staff to many of those questions [about limits to the funds and processes for claiming losses] was this: the “operational details” are not spelled out in the latest, 80-page version of the bill. According to Rogers, details such as these — along with the mechanism for repayment of the loans — would be spelled out, at a future date in “rules and regulations.”

So, the make-or-break details will be out of legislators’ hands.

Robert Boisselle, the lobbyist for the Associated Builders and Contractors of Rhode Island, was among those raising red flags about references in the legislation to “Project Labor Agreements.” Boisselle said such agreements (“illegal in 22 states”) effectively bar non-union shops — with 80 percent of the state’s laborers — from bidding.

So, the prices will be driven up in order to make sure that the money goes directly to union members (and thus filtered back into advocacy and donations for Democrats).

If the whole thing seems risky and even fishy, keep looking, a reader tells me via email.  In an op-ed supporting the bank, Magaziner cites the Connecticut Green Bank as a model.  Look into the Connecticut Green Bank, and you find this:

[Coalition for Green Capital (CGC)] leaders Reed Hundt, and Ken Berlin were involved with the establishment of Connecticut’s green bank from start to finish and remain closely involved with the banks operations.

Internet searches for former FCC Chairman Hundt, now an investment advisor, turn up a lot of overlap with Magaziner’s father, Ira.  More notably, his name turns up in campaign finance reports, with $2,000 in donations to the RI Democratic State Committee in October and $1,000 to Gina Raimondo, last June.

On the other hand, some of us might not need to do that level of digging.  It’s enough to know that we have the worst roads and bridges in the country and the people in charge of the state government want a state “infrastructure” bank that helps governments pay to replace their windows.

71

Coming up in Committee: Seventeen Sets of Bills Being Heard by the RI General Assembly, February 10 – February 12

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1. H5258/S0150: House and Senate Rules for 2015-2016 sessions, which will determine how business is conducted for the rest of the session. (H Rules; Tue Feb 10 & S Rules; Tue, Feb 10)

2. H5160: Requires that the town/city council and school committee of every municipality to be served by a proposed mayoral academy give explicit approval, before an academy can be opened. (H Health Education and Welfare; Wed, Feb 11)

3A. H5221: Limits electric rate increases to “two and one-half percent within any consecutive twenty-four month period”. (H Corporations; Tue, Feb 10)

3B. H5218 prohibits electric rates from being raised “in excess of five percent in any three year period without general assembly approval”. H5291 prohibits electric rates from being raised more than “five percent per year, unless the increase shall have been previously approved by affirmative action of the general assembly”. (H Corporations; Tue, Feb 10)

4. H5031: Proposed Constitutional Amendment (requiring voter ratification) extending the terms of State Representatives and Senators to four years, with a limit of “three full terms”. (H Judiciary; Tue, Feb 10)

5. H5124: “Any candidate for state or local office who has outstanding campaign finance reports or fines due the board of elections shall be ineligible to qualify for election to any state or local public office until all such reports are filed and/or all fines are paid. (H Judiciary; Tue, Feb 10)

72

Gee. Wonder Why Some Politicians Support Illegal Immigration and Lax Voting Rules

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I had to chuckle at the Powerline headline, “How Many Elections Will Democrats Steal Next Week?“:

How extensive is voter-fraud, especially among non-citizens? Just bring up the question, or suggest we need to have voter-ID at the polls like every other advanced democracy, and the answer will be instantly supplied: You’re a racist. But as Dan McLaughlin points out over at The Federalist, Democrats seem to win a suspiciously high number of close elections, well beyond what a random statistical trial would suggest.

At the internal link, in that quotation, we learn that Democrats have an uncanny ability to win close races.  The Powerline article goes on:

The authors [of an academic study] think that non-citizen votes not only tipped the 2008 Minnesota senate race to Al Franken, but also tipped North Carolina’s presidential vote that year.

The reason I chuckled is that, even as busy and disconnected from some of the election news as I am, I’ve gotten the impression that the Providence mayoral race has picked up an aspect of competing vote fraud schemes.  When a place is as institutionally corrupt as Rhode Island, one gets to ask questions like:  Is it really fraud if stealing more votes is simply another part of the competition?

To be frank, overt fraud is merely one of the ways in which political insiders have arguably made our electoral system invalid in Rhode Island and (to various degrees) across the nation, given the Constitutional guarantee of a “republican form of government,” which above all requires the consent of the governed.  Having just filled out some campaign finance reports in order to put out some signs and print post cards supporting some of my Tiverton neighbors, it’s especially clear to me right now the many ways in which our government discourages participation and limits competition.

That’s the larger, more-fundamental challenge to our democracy, which makes the overt fraud seem like a subset — the last, insurmountable straw for people who might otherwise become politically engaged.

74

The Expanding Nature of Government “Investments”

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Here’s the latest word on the major public works program related to the land in Providence formerly occupied by Route 195:

It’s the kind of project the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission and state economic leaders have long said they hope to foster on nearly 20 acres of prime real estate. In the spring, [Lawyer Timothy H.] Ehrlich’s team submitted a bid to the commission to create [a biotechnology] incubator.

But after working all summer, Ehrlich is convinced the project needs financial help from the state, and that the help must be more than the life-sciences tax credits outlined in the state law that created the commission.

No doubt a variety of people would jump at the chance to tell me I just don’t understand how these things work.  Government must invest in economic development.  Biotech is a growth sector, and an incubator will attract all those “well-paying jobs” that we hear about.  Every other state is subsidizing this industry.  And yet, somehow Rhode Island will become a hub, even though small and late to the game.  Yadda yadda yadda.

Indeed, the article has Marcel Valois, the executive director of the Commerce Corporation (which was formerly the Economic Development Corporation that invested in 38 Studios), insisting that “the project would ‘absolutely’ help the economy.”

Still, I just can’t get past the plain-language description of this whole process.  The government invested in a project to move a highway because it would free up all sorts of “prime real estate” that could be sold to raise money and make economically productive use of the land.  Now we’re “investing” in the process of luring organizations to the property.  Next, those organizations will need massive subsidies to get off the ground.  And then the start-up companies that this particular project attracts as clients will need additional subsidies to afford its services.

I ain’t a biotech-investment guru by a long shot, but this has all of the common-sense markers of a bad way to go about economic development and all of the common-sense markers of a scheme for empowering government agents and enriching connected individuals.

Timothy H. Ehrlich is, according to Kate Bramson’s Providence Journal article, “very encouraged by gubernatorial candidate Gina Raimondo’s knowledge and background as a venture-capital investor.”  He’s so encouraged, it appears that he’s given Raimondo’s campaign $1,500 since May 2013, although the campaign refunded $250 of that two weeks ago.

The name on the campaign reports is “Tim Ehrlich,” but the address given belongs to this $1.4 million property in Concord, Massachusetts, which is owned by “Timothy H. Ehrlich,” matching the article.  The article also calls Ehrlich a “lawyer,” and the campaign finance reports list the donor as employed by Boston law firm Gunderson Dettmer, where partner Timothy H. Ehrlich “focuses on the representation of start-up, emerging growth and public companies in the information technology, biotech and medical device industries.”

75

Democratic Elections Without Roots

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Campaign finance filings may provide a clue showing that different candidates (often from different parties) operate in ways that might reflect where they’ve been and what they’ll do.

76

Fung’s Pro-Life Endorsement

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Being a conservative or traditionalist in New England means being attacked for zealotry if you’re uncompromising and attacked for hypocrisy (or something) when you think strategically.  Such is the case with GoLocalProv’s page-leading primary-day swipe at Rhode Island Right to Life.  (If nothing else, the article illustrates why campaign finance laws should make no distinction between official media and mere pamphleteers when it comes to unconstitutional restrictions of free speech during election time.)

Critics are questioning why a Rhode Island pro-life group is endorsing candidates who a pro-choice — including Republican gubernatorial candidate Allan Fung.

Fung, who has been on the record saying he is an abortion-rights advocate, was endorsed by the group Rhode Island Right to Life, who also endorsed 13 other candidates for statewide and General Assembly seats

The evidence of Fung as an “advocate” is apparently his statement that he’s pro-choice during a recent debate.  Right to Life’s explanation for its endorsement suggests the term might be a bit strong when applied to Fung:

The mailer, which calls Fung the “Pro-Life Choice,” says that Fung “opposes using your taxpayer dollars to pay for abortion-on-demand, opposes late-term abortion, and supports our efforts to make pro-life options available through HealthSource RI.”

I have no insights into the endorsement or Fung’s positions beyond what’s reported, but having gone through the exercise of endorsing candidates in the past, I know it can be a difficult call. In this case, I wouldn’t even call it difficult.

Imagine you’re involved with a single-issue group, and you’re faced with a field of six candidates.  One of them supports every near-term, plausible legislative goal that you have but says that he would be on the other side if your state somehow became the unlikely battleground of a rebellion against an opposing and activist federal government.  All of the other candidates would range from passive support of your opposition in every particular to active advocacy of the opposition’s most extreme positions.

Should it be a scandal if you endorse the first candidate?

77

Using Transparency Tools

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Part of the mission for the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s joint online transparency app with the Tiverton Taxpayers Association — beyond the first-order goal of increased transparency — is to help people to learn how to use the tools that are already available to them.

To that end, in my role as the editor of TivertonFactCheck.org (on my volunteer time with the Association) I’ll be offering brief tips and tutorials.  My first one is on the use of payroll data in conjunction with the state campaign finance search:

Selecting Tiverton 1st and then viewing its “Amendment of Organization” shows who was in charge of the group at the time it was filed and also which candidates the group worked to elect.  Notably most of the people on the Tiverton 1st list are on the Town Council, and all three of the endorsed school committee candidates won, which is a majority on that committee. …

In this case, two of the three people listed as “Co-coordinator/chair” show up as employees of the school department.  Gloria Crist was already receiving a little over $1,813 per year as a drama coach.  More significantly, soon after her endorsed candidates won a majority of the school committee, Linda Larsen was appointed by the school department as the School to Career Coordinator, which paid her $18,988 in fiscal year 2014.

The lessons aren’t all local, of course.  Government is interconnected and incestuous from one tier to the next, so it makes sense that political opportunism would cross the breach, too.  I also look at the Tiverton Political Action Committee for Education, which is just the local PAC for the teachers’ union:

In fiscal year 2012, Mr. Marx was the second-highest-paid teacher in Tiverton, making $91,394.  That might help explain why he became the treasurer of a group that works to elect specific candidates to government offices. The new treasurer was Amy Mullen.  Mullen isn’t making Marx money (yet), but $73,521 in fiscal year 2014 is quite a bit of incentive.

Just imagine if every town’s financial information were easily accessible to everybody in the state and a significant number of people understood how to use it to connect dots!

78

Legislative Grants and Reform Leadership

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The legislative grants that the Rhode Island General Assembly gives to its leadership teams in both chambers for leverage and public relations perks are a favorite complaint of Rhode Island reformers. It looks a lot like leadership uses them to buy support from our reps and senators, who in turn use them to buy support and good will in their communities.

So with the question being knocked back and forth of who is the “reform” candidate to replace Gordon Fox as Speaker of the House — Nicholas Mattiello (D, Cranston) or Michael Marcello (D, Cranston, Scituate) — I thought it might be interesting to follow my quick review of campaign finance reports with an even quicker review of their legislative grant requests, as they currently stand.

As of January 1st, Mattiello had requested (and received) $11,250 for CLCF Baseball, Day One, and Oaklawn Grange #42. Marcello had requested (but not received) $18,000 across 21 different organizations, mainly in his district.

That Mattiello has received more only tells us where he stood with Gordon Fox. That Marcello requested 60% more only tells us that he’s comfortable with the practice. It might tell us that he’s more comfortable with it than Mattiello, or maybe being majority leader meant that Mattiello didn’t feel a need to get all of his in right away.

And so it goes; you could make as much of the specific grants as you want, or not. You could infer one thing from the fact that Marcello wanted $5,000 for fire departments, but you could infer quite another from the fact that they’re all volunteer departments. The most important fact, however, is probably simply that they happen to be in his district.

The most important metric that I’ve found remains gauging Rhode Island progressives’ dislike of Mattiello, as expressed on Twitter. If you’ve got a finger in the air, that’s a strong, cold blast.

79

The role of the Ethics Commission to enable maximum corruption?

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A state doesn’t get to Rhode Island’s current condition unless every institution that’s supposed to be a corrective to the corrupting power of government is perverted. And so:

[According to the state Ethics Commission, it] is OK for School Committee Chairwoman Andrea M. Iannazzi to participate in decisions that affect school bus drivers and mechanics, even though her father administers a benefits fund for the labor union that represents those employees. …

The ethics advisory opinion was based on a letter to the commission written for Andrea Iannazzi by Ronald F. Cascione, School Committee lawyer. Cascione said Donald Iannazzi’s fund works on behalf of a North Providence unit of Local 1322 — not the unit that represents Cranston school bus drivers and mechanics.

Rhode Islanders have to consider the Ethics Commission to be a detrimental force to the extent that it effectively becomes a board to determine the outermost limits of conflict that are allowed, thereby defusing any political controls against corruption short of that. Put differently, voters can and should insist on a higher ethical threshold than the commission possibly can, because voters are not bound by legal language and regulatory restrictions, but they are less likely to be able to do so in the face of official rulings.

The realities of electoral politics, especially at the town level, make the commission’s advisory opinions a sort of clean bill of health for fundamental corruption, thwarting the power of the public’s common sense.

Worse, this clean bill is acquired at taxpayer expense, because they are paying the lawyers who massage the legalisms for incumbents. Meanwhile, as with campaign finance reporting, newcomers who just want to serve their communities in elective office become targets for smears because they lack those taxpayer-funded resources.

80

Free Advertising for the Incumbent

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Graffiti vans advertising the name of the Providence mayor, who is currently running for governor, ought to raise questions about campaign finance and the appropriate uses of public office.

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Things We Read Today, 7

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Today it’s debt and gambling, from bonds to pensions to entitlements, with consideration of regionalization, ObamaCare, and campaign finance.

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DAILY SIGNAL: Is Your Money ‘Voting’ for Things You Don’t Believe In? Strive Lawyer Sounds Alarm

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NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Americans with investments in the “Big Three” financial companies—BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard—may see their money “voting” for things they don’t believe in, warns the top lawyer at Strive Asset Management, the firm founded by former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. “I think, for a long time, we’ve been really focused on, where is […]

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Richmond, RI: Dueling Advocacy Groups at it Again

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After both Republican and Democrat Richmond Town council members, in separate interviews, were provided the opportunity to air their views on the The Current’s popular video podcast, In The Dugout with Mike Stenhouse … now one  local pro-taxpayer group has mailed a letter to unaffiliated voters in the town about another new “community” group that […]

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