The political pot keeps simmering as the calendar turns to August. Thanks for stopping by. As always, feel free to send me a tip or comment at idonnis (at) ripr (dot) org, and to follow me through the week on the twitters. Here we go.
1. Cranston Mayor Allan Fung trotted out contrite phrases (“Hindsight is 20/20”, “I’m not perfect”) when he faced the media Tuesday and apologized for his role in a host of problems related to the Cranston Police Department. Mistakes were made, the mayor said, without using that precise phrase, although Fung insisted his intentions were good and he denied deliberately misleading voters as the Republican candidate in last year’s race for governor. Asked how the September 2014 primary with GOP rival Ken Block would have been different if voters knew then what they know now, Fung said he couldn’t speculate on that. Yet it’s clear that the outcome of the primary would likely have been very different. The cover-up is worse than the crime, as the saying goes, and some voters will harbor memories of how this played out. Then there are the blistering findings in the 182-page report released Monday by State Police. While Fung has more than a year before the November 2016 election to try to repair his standing with Cranston voters, the report and its findings are bound to remain a staple of Cranston politics for many months to come.
2. Here’s a roundup of some of the reaction to Fung and his response to the State Police Report: On RI Public Radio’s Political Roundtable, former attorney general Arlene Violet said, “I think the apology probably belongs statewide, because, in my view, there’s no question he was doing it for political purposes …. Certainty, after reading this report pretty thoroughly, it’s clear he would have had to known what was going on.” …. On Facebook, Jeff Deckman, a former executive director of the Rhode Island Republican Party, said Fung “is just another RI politician who abuses his power and builds cultures of hooliganism. Then says he is sorry after who is is gets revealed for all to see.To me, he is in the same category as all the other pols who constantly soil the name and reputation of our state just so they can feed their egos and Napoleon complexes.” … From a ProJo editorial: “It is clear now that the people of Rhode Island dodged a bullet when Cranston Mayor Allan Fung narrowly lost his run for governor last November. A State Police investigation of the Cranston Police Department paints a portrait of the soft-spoken mayor as devious, willing to condone abuses of power, and basically unconcerned about the plight of at least one citizen who felt threatened by Mr. Fung’s police chief.” … Ralph Petronio, who runs the City Hall Barber Shop in Cranston, said his customers call the findings “terrible” and some debate whether Fung should resign .. Read here for Scott MacKay‘s take.
3. State Sen. Frank Lombardi (D-Cranston) said he’s “absolutely not” considering becoming a candidate in Cranston’s next mayoral election. “I love being a state senator,” Lombardi said, adding that he would have to take himself out of a busy legal practice to serve as a full-time executive. The idea of running for City Hall “never even dawned on me.” Lombardi is the brother of state Rep. John Lombardi (D-Providence), who briefly served as mayor of Providence following Buddy Cianci’s departure in 2002. While Michael Sepe, Cranston’s longtime Democratic City Committee chairman, has already made clear his intent to run for mayor of Cranston, other candidates are likely to join the race. The possibilities could include city councilor Michael Farina and former councilor Maria Bucci. The bigger question could be whether Fung — assuming he seeks re-election; he said he’s leaning toward doing so — faces a GOP primary challenge.
4. Speaking of mayoral races, Stephen C. Boyle, president of the Greater Cranston Chamber of Commerce, is considering a possible challenge to Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian, Boyle resides in Warwick, and would join Richard Corrente as a Democratic candidate if he decides to pursue a race. “I’m looking at it, I’m considering it,” said Boyle, adding that he’s been intrigued by politics since he was a teenager and then a political science major at Providence College. In 2014, Avedisian bested GOP challenger Stacia Petri with 65 percent of the vote, in his first challenge in four years. Avedisian has proven a durable and drama-free municipal leader. He said he’s probably not going make a decision on whether he’ll seek re-election until this fall.
5. Tracee Herbaugh, who helped to inject some youthful energy at the ProJo after joining the paper last spring, is leaving the paper later this month for a news-writing job at a tech-media company in Boston. Herbaugh, who has a young son and has been commuting to RI from the Boston area, said she decided her work schedule didn’t fit with her personal life. It’s a particular concern for Herbaugh; she’s writing a book proposal about her mom, Sharon Herbaugh, who in 1993 became the first female AP bureau chief to die while on assignment and who was a fleeting presence in Herbaugh’s childhood. Tracee has been among a few younger staffers hired on Fountain Street in recent years, to help make up for a newsroom depleted by repeated buy-outs and layoffs. We wish her well in her next move.
6. Who is the Republican candidate for governor in 2018? Sure, Don Carcieri basically came out of nowhere to win in 2002. Yet right now, the GOP bench looks very thin.
7. The talk is that the Commerce Corporation is ramping up an effort to lure business across the border from Connecticut. GE and other businesses said they might be open to moving due to corporate tax hikes in the most recent Nutmeg State budget.
8. Speaking of #TeamGina, Governor Raimondo caught some criticism for being a bit slow in responding to storm damage in Cranston and Warwick this week. Yet on the whole, the governor had another whirlwind week. There was the $12.5 million settlement with 4 defendants over 38 Studios (in a case initiated by her predecessor, Lincoln Chafee). Raimondo spoke in Boston to the New England Council, a business group. Her administration struck an agreement with SEIU 1199NE on child care providers; unveiled plans for a new energy plant in Burrillville; and detailed a new effort with Bruce Katz and the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program to “identify Rhode Island’s best growth opportunities, assess the condition of its key economic drivers, highlight barriers that need to be overcome to strengthen these drivers, and propose strategies and action steps to move the state forward in a changing global economy.” The fruits of this approach, and series of panels assigned to various problems, remain to be seen. Yet the governor also got a burst of Raimondomania in a very favorable Bloomberg Business story (“The Governor Who Has Figured Out How To Fix Bridges and Pensions“). The piece has her “applying the same vigor” from the 2011 pension overhaul “to building a robust economy with jobs that pay $60,000 or more,” and it optimistically calls CVS Health, Hasbro, and Textron “stars in a growing constellation, driving numbers that show Raimondo’s first term is off to an encouraging start.” Update: Raimondo closed out her Friday in style, dining at Al Forno with Canada’s ambassador to the US and his wife, as well as the First Dude, of course.
9. A familiar dynamic with the PawSox continued this week: Speaker Nicholas Mattiello expressed hope that a Providence stadium agreement is getting close; the Raimondo administration maintains a lot of things still need to happen; and Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien tries to keep McCoy Stadium in the conversation. Just to make things more interesting, Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed has remained deliberately apart from the talks, leading to this reaction from Mattiello: “The Senate President is free to define her role in any way she deems appropriate. It is the Constitutional responsibility of the Speaker and the House of Representatives to participate in all matters involving state appropriations, and we are fulfilling that obligation. If a proposal is ready and is supported by the public, the House will be prepared to come back into session.” In other developments, Larry Lucchino sat down Tuesday with Grebien at lobbyist Robert Goldberg‘s office, for what was billed as an introductory meeting.
10. State Police Colonel Steven O’Donnell got kudos from reporters and other open-government advocates this week after the RISP released a lightly redacted version of their Cranston report. Less well known is how O’Donnell, earlier in his career, infiltrated the Patriarca crime family for six years by posing as an associate.
11. The Cranston City Council is considering asking the General Assembly to overhaul the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights. The move is mostly inspired by the perception among councilors that LEOBOR inhibited transparency in the case involving Captain Stephen Antonucci, identified in the State Police report as the police union leader who ordered a 2013 blitz of parking tickets in two city wards. Steven Frias this week took up LEOBOR, arguing that it blocks accountability for wayward police. Yet Daniel Beardsley, executive director of the RI League of Cities and Towns, said he hasn’t heard recently from any municipal leaders about changing the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights. Beardsley said the outlook is uncertain, since he expects police unions would sharply oppose attempts to change LEOBOR.
12. US Senator Jack Reed this week supported a rule adopted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission requiring publicly traded companies to disclose the pay gap between their CEO and rank-and-file employees. In publicizing the change, due to go into effect in early 2017, Reed pointed to an AFL-CIO report showing, according to a news release, “the average CEO at S&P 500 companies earned 373 times more than the typical U.S. worker in 2014. While in 1980, the report found CEOs made about 42 times more than the average employee.” In reporting on the rule, the Washington Post added, “Once the pay-ratio rule is in place, millions of workers will know exactly how their top boss’s payday compares with their own, revealing a potentially embarrassing disparity in corporate riches that many companies have long fought to keep hidden. While the average American’s pay and benefits have been growing at the slowest pace in 33 years, executive wages have soared. Fifty years ago, the typical chief executive made $20 for every dollar a worker made; now, that gap is more than $300 to $1, and it’s growing.”
13. Speaking of Reed, Erin Arcand, formerly a field organizer with the National Consumers League and a consultant/marketing officer with Care New England and Lifespan, has joined the senator’s staff as community affairs coordinator.
14. Massachusetts Congressman Joseph Kennedy recently talked on the need for more regional economic planning between southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The message found a receptive audience with the editorial board of the Fall River Herald News: “Kennedy argued that efforts aiming to connect the far-flung SouthCoast region to Greater Boston may make little sense when it has a much closer cultural connection and geographic proximity to Providence. Could it make more sense to better connect the SouthCoast to Providence instead of Boston?” Perhaps it does. Yet New England remains a provincial place, and planning across state borders goes against tradition. New Bedford and Providence are a case in point; NB Mayor Jon Mitchell said he keeps in regular touch with Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza, and chatted with Elorza’s predecessor, Angel Taveras, before that. Yet during an appearance this week on WPRI’s Newsmakers with Ted Nesi and myself, Mitchell said tangible efforts have not yet emerged from the communication. Interestingly, the person most vocal about the need for Rhode Island to pursue economic development regionally, at least until Governor Raimondo brought it up this week while speaking to the New England Council, was former EDC director Keith Stokes.
15. Arlene Violet served one-term as attorney general in the 1980s — an era when Republicans were a lot more successful in winning state general offices. She thinks today’s GOP is too cozy with ruling Democrats, as she explained during an appearance on RIPR’s Bonus Q+A. “I think you have to be cordial, but you’re supposed to be the grand old opposition. And I just think it’s a shame, really, that [Democrats and Republicans] have metamorphorsized into one party in the state.”
16. Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea has been appointed co-chair, with Alabama counterpart John Merrill, a Republican, as co-chair of the National Association of Secretaries of States’ Standing Committee on Voter Participation for 2015-2015.
17. Jon Stewart ushered in an era in which televised satire and mock-news could be as illuminating as some of the better political reporting. “He’s more like an H.L. Mencken — someone who causes you to think about serious things, but does so in an insightful and entertaining way,” powerhouse Washington, D.C., lawyer Robert Barnett tells NPR’s Eric Deggans. As Deggans notes, Stewart “was expert at using media figures’ own words to prove their shortcomings.”
18. The Center for Public Integrity has an eye-opening report — “Drunk on Power: Booze distributors ply statehouses to keep profits flowing” — as Rhode Island craft brewers target increased sales and market share. Some of the findings: “Alcohol makers have been chipping away at the hold that wholesalers have over the distribution of their products. At least 22 states had bills in 2015 seeking to allow alcohol makers to circumvent distributors and sell their products directly to customers.” YET: “U.S. alcohol distributors bankroll scores of lobbyists and give millions of dollars in political contributions to protect the post-Prohibition regulations that guarantee their business and give them wide-ranging power over Americans’ drinks.”
19. Greg Cook reports: “How Foo Fest Became an Extraordinary Music and Arts Festival for Only $10.”
