Labor
It must be difficult to continually strive to find concrete facts to bolster the clearly erroneous position that Rhode Island needn’t make dramatic changes to its public-sector union deals. In response to an op-ed touting North Carolina’s 106% funding of its public pension system — versus Rhode Island’s 53% — Pat Crowley presents the following…
A good letter from L. Chappell of Saunderstown: With the state and local budgets running deficits, the teachers’ unions wish to add insult to injury with a bill that would force municipalities to keep the expired contract in force while they negotiate a new one. This bill is clearly a reaction to the events in…
A pre-meeting executive session has occupied the Tiverton School Committee for the past hour and fifteen minutes. About twenty minutes ago, Chairman Jan Bergandy and Vice Chairwoman Sally Black stepped into the auditorium to announce that a discussion of legal issues related to the budget would delay them for another fifteen. Although my reader-funded high-speed…
I’ve got my reservations about Governor Carcieri’s tax proposals on the grounds that they don’t go far enough, especially in extending their effects to middle and working class residents. But some of the objections from the other side should inadvertently direct Rhode Islanders’ attention to the underlying problems of the state: Karen Malcolm, executive director…
I can most definitely relate to Michael Crawford’s observations: When Matthew Crawford finished his doctorate in political philosophy at the University of Chicago, he took a job at a Washington think tank. “I was always tired,” he writes, “and honestly could not see the rationale for my being paid at all.” He quit after five…
From a piece on the Caruolo Act comes this familiar anecdote: When West Warwick learned this winter that it would lose much of its revenue sharing funds from the state, [West Warwick Town Manager James] Thomas said the town laid off more than a dozen workers and secured union wage concessions. “Some of them will…
This story on the likely decreases in state aid to municipalities appears to break apart two categories of spending that are very closely related (emphasis added): Indeed, the numbers suggest that municipalities have largely avoided the budget cuts that swept across state government in recent years, according to a report to be released this week…
As I noted during liveblogging last night, Tiverton Guidance Counselor Lynn Nicholas had the following to say at the school committee meeting in November, at which the committee voted to hold off on approving a retroactive teachers’ contract until state numbers came in (stream, download): Before I ask Doug a question, I just need to…
A larger-than-usual crowd is in t Tiverton High School library for the first school committee after the financial town meeting cut the district’s budget by $627,247. A healthy TCC showing; the rest, I assume, are teachers and sympathizers. School Committee Chairman: “Our only priority in dealing with this cut is to protect our students, and…
Saturday morning, a majority of electors at the Tiverton financial town meeting (FTM) for 2009 voted to cut the Budget Committee’s recommended school department budget by $627,247 — explicitly subtracting $174,054 from the local contribution and $453,193 from the expected general state aid. Owing to a Budget Committee resolution passed earlier in the meeting, any…