Happy Weekend and thanks for stopping by for my weekly column! As usual, your tips and comments are welcome, and you can follow me through the week on the twitters. Here we go.
1. Forging ahead with a $4 million bridge-repair program on the 6/10 Connector checks a lot of boxes for Governor Gina Raimondo. It jump-starts her much-debated RhodeWorks plan. It delights some of her union supporters while likely boosting job-creation numbers in time for the 2018 campaign. And as Raimondo emphasized during a Statehouse news conference, moving ahead reduces the possibility that Rhode Islanders could be injured (or worse) due to the sorry state of our crumbling infrastructure. The loser in all this is a different possibility — the notion that remaking the 6/10 Connector as a boulevard would open land for recreation and development while knitting together neighborhoods. Transit activist James Kennedy was among the critics incensed by Raimondo action. “RIDOT officials were not concerned about moving the process along quickly when they delayed Providence from having public forums on the subject, then stonewalled Providence Planning and almost didn’t show up,” Kennedy wrote on his web site. “The meetings did happen, many months after they were originally planned [and then attracted strong attendance].” And it’s not like the poor condition of 6/10 Connector bridges was unknown earlier on; a big proportion of RhodeWorks money was always planned for that section. The difference appeared to be a mid-August letter from the Federal Highway Administration warning about the condition of one particular bridge. Bottom line: if Raimondo (or DOT director Peter Alviti) never showed much public interest in the boulevard concept, they did inherit a state with among the worst bridges in the country. “I wish we had time,” Raimondo said during her presser. “I wish these bridges were in better shape and administrations before me had taken action, so we weren’t left where we are.”
2. Twenty-seven legislative primaries will be settled by voters next Tuesday. The two most high-profile races are Marcia Ranglin-Vassell‘s challenge to House Majority Leader John DeSimone, and the tilt between Cranston Republicans Steven Frias and Shawna Lawton. Even if citizens mostly tune out these kinds of primaries, a few surprise outcomes are likely. Another key question is the relative effectiveness of progressive efforts to storm the General Assembly.
3. For a last-minute primary preview, Scott MacKay, Ted Nesi and yours truly discussed the top races during this week’s RI Public Radio Political Roundtable (Providence and Cranston) and Bonus Q+A (elsewhere around the state).
3. A retirement announcement from Col. Steven O’Donnell, superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, seemed abrupt when it emerged Thursday, although O’Donnell said Governor Raimondo did not ask him to leave.
5. Who knew? Pete Wells, The New York Times’ restaurant critic who wrote a famously eviscerating review of Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant, grew up in the suburbs outside Providence. That’s the only mention of Rhode Island in Ian Parker’s New Yorker profile of Wells, but it’s well worth the read, for a number of reasons: 1) it offers a window on how high-profile restaurant critics remain influential in the post-newspaper age; “The danger is getting friendly with people you should feel free to destroy,” Wells tells Parker); 2) Fieri declined to be interviewed for the article; 3) Wells writes one column a week; nice work if you can get it; 4) restaurant criticism done well is a real consumer service.
6. Four people from the ProJo newsroom — Jim Donaldson, Channing Gray, Tony LaRoche, and Bob McNamee — signed up for the latest buyout offered by GateHouse Media, along with one person each from advertising and pre-publication. Providence Newspaper Guild president John Hill said three others on the news side (who he declined to identify) also signed up for the buyout, but pulled out ahead of a deadline Thursday. Hill said it’s unclear for now whether further cuts are anticipated.
7. With the University of Chicago and some other institutions standing against political correctness, Brown University President Christina Paxson wrote an op-ed on free speech in The Washington Post this week. She writes that safe spaces and trigger warnings have a place, while also saying, “I don’t share the view that American college students want to be protected from ideas that make them uncomfortable. Just the opposite. Over the past few years, our students have addressed topics that make many people very uncomfortable indeed — racism, sexual assault, religious persecution. These are some of the toughest problems facing society today, and we do not shy away from them.” Then again, Brown has not always been a bastion of free speech. To cite one example, a 2013 lecture by New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly was effectively canceled by protesting students. Years earlier, some students stole copies of the Brown Daily Herald when it included an ad opposing reparations for African-Americans.
8. Tim Kaine recounts how he got the call to be Hillary Clinton‘s running mate while in Rhode Island, in episode 2, “Honey, I just got a call from Hillary.” Senate Jack Reed‘s staff got a shout-out for helping Kaine to evade those pesky reporters.
9. As the ProJo’s Tim Britton reported earlier this week, PawSox attendance dwindled this year, even with a good team, a ton of new promotions, and a commitment by ownership to stay put for at least the short term. Up in Boston, the Red Sox continue to draw well. Yet even with the big league team in a tight AL East race, there might be a wider enthusiasm gap for baseball beyond an aging core of diehards.
10. Middletown native Cameron Greene, staff assistant for US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, made the cut for The Hill’s latest listicle of DC’s 50 Most beautiful people. Previous honorees include Marie Aberger, presently moving up as a senior adviser to Governor Raimondo.
11. Ralph Mollis no longer resides in North Providence, but the former mayor and secretary of state is still involved in the town’s Democratic mayoral primary between incumbent Charles Lombardi (who succeeded Mollis in a 2007 special election) and challenger Kristen Catanzaro. Lombardi said Mollis is campaigning for Catanzaro; Catanzaro parsed the issue, saying Mollis is “supporting the issue that I asked him to help me with” — the removal of snow from senior high-rises — “and I’m proud of that.” (RIPR will air my story on the North Providence mayoral contest Monday morning.)
12. After serving in the Carcieri, Chafee and Raimondo administrations, Jamia McDonald will be headed to the private sector. McDonald has most recently led efforts to overhaul the long-troubled state Department of Children, Youth and Families. Here’s the makeup of the search committee for her successor: Central Falls Schools Superintendent Victor Capellan; Elizabeth Roberts, secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services; state Child Advocate Jennifer Griffith; Darlene Allen, executive director of Adoption RI; retired legislator and educator Nancy Benoit; and former DCYF director Linda D’Amario-Rossi.
13. The NRA Political Victory Fund gives high marks to Senators Frank Ciccone, William Walaska, James Doyle, and challenger Daniel Issa. On the House side, the favored candidates are John DeSimone, Ramon Perez, Steven Frias, Patricia Serpa, David Kruzona, Robert Nardolillo, Ewa Dzwierzynski, Spencer Dickinson, William O’Brien, David Coughlin, and James Cawley.
14. Staff moves: Evan England, who ran Seth Magaziner‘s winning campaign for general treasurer in 2014, is moving from City Hall to become Magaziner’s communications director, effective September 19. England succeeds David Ortiz, who recently signed on as Governor Raimondo’s press secretary …. Steve Gerencser, who worked on Lorne Adrain‘s 2014 Providence mayoral campaign and later as chief of staff/deputy secretary for Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, has joined Brown University as assistant director of government relations.
15. RIPR’s John Bender offers a charming audio profile of that Rhode Island classic — the coffee cabinet.
16. ICYMI: two hard-hitting editorials this week: the ProJo says there’s something wrong in how Invenergy is getting the cold shoulder while offering $700 million in private investment in Rhode Island. And EcoRI is unimpressed by the hype about Citizens Bank’s new headquarters in Johnston.
17. Could you imagine being the guy who checked-in some of the 9/11 hijackers out of Dulles International?
18. Best wishes to PR man and community activist Andy Cutler as he heads off for a new adventure in Washington. D.C. The ProJo’s Ed Fitzpatrick had a nice tribute to Cutler — a guy whose love of Rhode Island seemed enthusiastic and authentic.
