Governor Raimondo reduced the budgets of tourism boards around the state with the explicit goal of coming up with a unified marketing campaign for Rhode Island as a whole. And now her administration is giving up on a key component of it???

The tagline is ‘Rhode Island,’” the state’s commerce secretary said Wednesday, announcing that Rhode Island will not look for a new slogan to replace the maligned and abandoned catch phrase “Cooler & Warmer” as it moves ahead with a $5-million marketing campaign.

So why are we here? Put everything back the way it was. Leave tourism promotion where it has clearly belonged all along: in the hands of regional boards who know best how to promote their area of Rhode Island.

In a closely related matter, the Raimondo administration has clearly not made their case for an additional $5 million in tax dollars for tourism promotion. The track record here is a strong warning that these dollars would simply be squandered.