RI Political Corruption
My essay on apathy and fear in Rhode Island is in today’s Providence Journal. From the version that Anchor Rising readers may have already read on the American Spectator’s site, I’ve changed the focus a bit and added some key anecdotes with a much more local focus. To expand even more on the anecdote about…
The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity has posted state payroll information to its transparency Web site, RIOpenGov.org. The site lists all state employees by name, department, and division, and presents their pay, including overtime, for the years 2010 and 2011. The Ocean State Current drew some attention to this data last week, with reports…
Explaining Rhode Island’s decline in four brief sections: legal process, the economy, the media, and fashionable graft. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Mainly on government’s bad incentives: bad housing spending in Providence, unlearnable spending lessons for the governor, stimulus corruption, and Medicaid reform. Continue reading the Ocean State Current…
3:27 p.m. After a quick zip across from the WPRO studios in East Providence, I’m in the Board of Elections hearing room awaiting the board’s vote on withholding phone and email information from voter registrations on an emergency basis. See Andrew Morse’s background report for details. I’d wager that the attendance is not usually so…
This ruling is worth highlighting before it slips in the vast mire of news about Rhode Island’s fatally ill civic structure: The state-appointed receiver running Central Falls can go after Mayor Charles D. Moreau and the City Council to recoup legal fees spent defending the receivership law from Moreau’s unsuccessful state Supreme Court challenge, a…
I wanted to go to last night’s Publick Occurrences event, but after around 10 hours of motivational speeches and get-rich sales pitches, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Part of the problem is my suspicion that the game is already set, and like those sales pitches, everything being said right now is just…
Have you spotted the line of argument that members of the General Assembly have devised for explaining why legislators who benefit from public-sector pensions are free to vote to changes to the system? Here’s retired NEA member and recently elected representative from East Providence (whose pension comes in at $54,512, annually): Echoed Duffy Messier: “Everyone…
Mangeek’s comment to my post about the very Rhode Island background of the prospective head of hte 195 commission is just too appropriate not to reproduce for additional commentary: “when Kane’s father was a principal of a Providence elementary school” I had the pleasure of attending that school during Principal Kane’s tenure. He was an…
Even putting aside the inevitable corruption and fingers on the scale with the latest redistricting commission — which will help in determining which constituencies are grouped together for the purpose of electing government officials — the membership strikes me as having a conspicuous narrowness of geographic coverage: Rep. Stephen Ucci, Johnston Rep. Grace Diaz, Providence…
