Old stories have a way of cycling back into the news in Rhode Island, and this otherwise quiet week was a case in point. So thanks for stopping by for my weekly column. As always, your tips and thoughts are welcome at idonnis (at) ripr (dot) org, and you can follow me through the week on the twitters. Here we go.
1. Slowly, slowly, slowly. After a long lull, a key detail in the mystery of 38 Studios emerged this week when Ted Nesi and Tim White reported on state lawyers’ claim that disgraced former House speaker Gordon Fox orchestrated the deal. This may not be particularly surprising; In 2012, legislative challenger Mark Binder hammered the theme that Fox was the one who made 38 Studios happen. (More to the point, there’s a lot of value to documenting what actually happened.) Yet the miasma of 38 Studios continues to haunt Rhode Island, sparking sharp and ongoing public opposition to projects that might bolster the state and its economy. “In my opinion, the pushback against the baseball stadium, to a large extent, comes from a basic distrust of our leaders to be negotiating these kinds of deals in private after what happed with 38 Studios,” former GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Block, part of the coalition that called Thursday for an outside investigation, tells me. “We need this accountability on what happened with 38 Studios so that we can move forward as a state. After five years, the fact that we don’t have this accountability yet is an outrage.”
2. In response to calls for an outside probe, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello maintains the House of Representatives isn’t an investigatory body (though Steve Frias says it can be otherwise). “If the State Police, the Attorney General’s office or the FBI feel that an investigation is warranted after learning of this new information,” Mattiello adds in a statement, “then I would encourage them as the appropriate agencies to do so.” For the record, back in 2012, a spokesman for US Attorney Peter Neronha told the AP that the office had done “a ‘narrow and focused’ examination of 38 Studios to judge whether or not federal laws were broken, and has decided to not continue the search.” To bring things into the present, Emily Martineau, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Peter Kilmartin said via e-mail, “Our office continues to review the information presented to us by the Rhode Island State Police. At this time, the investigation is active and ongoing, and it is the policy of this Office not to comment on the details of any investigation.” Governor Gina Raimondo‘s office, meanwhile, says that the state’s lawsuit over 38 Studios has to wrap up ahead of other efforts to document what happened. “[T]his is an important and essential step in establishing facts, proving culpability, and recovering taxpayer dollars,” said spokeswoman Marie Aberger. “We do not want to interfere or jeopardize this litigation in any way.”
3. The questions overflow: Why is State Police/AG investigation taking so long? Even if no crimes were committed in the nexus of Rhode Island and 38 Studios, did shady things happen, and will the public get the details? Will Rhode Island see anything like the response to the 1991 credit union crisis, which included not just a 186-page report, Carved in Sand, led by then-Brown University president Vartan Gregorian, but also tough-minded subpoena-backed legislative hearings, informally known as the Teitz Commission?
4. The Cranston City Council is scheduled to take a no-confidence vote Monday regarding Mayor Allan Fung and the findings of the recent State Police review. Council President John Lanni said he expects a majority of the 9-member council to vote no confidence in the mayor; the panel includes 6 Democrats and 3 Republicans. (For an opposing take on the State Police review, read what Justin Katz has to say.) Fung has made himself steadily available since shortly after the findings surfaced, perhaps hoping that his accessibility will dispel voters’ concerns ahead of Cranston’s November 2016 election. The mayor is also touting his record beyond the Police Department — which almost enabled him to become governor last year. Yet between the concerns highlighted by the State Police, and attempts by some Democrats to keep the mayor off-balance, Fung has his work cut out.
5. Will a Providence City Council ordinance introduced at the behest of stadium opponents become an obstacle on the uncertain path to a new home for the PawSox?
6. Former Rhode Islander Aaron Renn has a justly deserved reputation as a thoughtful expert on cities and the urban experience. So it caught my eye when Renn tweeted, “Rhode Island’s culture is one of systemic corruption.” Certainly, the Ocean State is among a number of states — including Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Louisiana, to name a few — where many public officials have gotten jammed up over time. Yet “systemic corruption” may be a term better applied to a place like Mexico, where pay for police is so poor that officers are expected to supplement their income with little bribes. On the other hand, during occasional man on the street interviews, I’ve been surprised by the extent to which everyday Rhode Islanders think our politics is rife with corruption. So I put the question of whether Rhode Island suffers from systemic corruption to Common Cause of Rhode Island’s John Marion. Here’s his response: “The evidence is pretty clear that Rhode Island ranks high when it comes to political corruption as defined by federal law. As Ed Fitzpatrick wrote about last year, two political scientists have done their best to create an objective measure of state public corruption convictions and they put Rhode Island at #3. Why does Rhode Island suffer so badly from corruption? One theorist, David Schleicher, posits that the absence of partisan competition means urban politics (and Rhode Island is often defined as a city-state) are less ideological and more transactional. I would go further and argue that some of the transactional politics we see, such as creating jobs for political allies or using legislative grants to shore up one’s leadership coalition — that don’t rise to the legal definitions of corruption, but is exposed by an enterprising press — is why people feel we suffer from systematic corruption in Rhode Island. We have a political culture that tolerates too much transactional politics. Common Cause has worked hard over decades to enact, strengthen and defend our revolving door statute and regulation to help prevent the use of public jobs as part of our transactional politics.”
7. A bit of comic relief involving Lincoln Chafee.
8. Congratulations to former ProJo sports editor Art Martone, now the top editor for Comcast SportsNet’s New England web site, on his election to the Cranston Hall of Fame. “I was very surprised, and deeply gratified, to discover that I was being considered for the honor, more so when I was actually elected,” Martone tells me. “I found out I was on the ballot in April — in fact, I was going to Yankee Stadium for the Red Sox-Yankee game on the first weekend of the season — and was told I’d made it sometime in June. One of my life-long friends, Cranston Councilman Richard Santamaria (we are proud grads of Cranston West Class of 1973 and have stayed close friends ever since), nominated me and pushed my candidacy, for my work first at the Journal and later at Comcast SportsNet New England. He told me several of my colleagues and former colleagues — specifically, Sean McAdam and Bill Reynolds — wrote letters to the committee on my behalf.” The induction ceremony is set for Friday, October 16.
9. Saturday, August 22 marks the one-year anniversary of when Brett Smiley formally folded his Providence mayoral campaign and threw his support to fellow Democrat Jorge Elorza. The Prospect Park news conference was a pivotal moment in the race, and it helped push Elorza over the top in his close primary fight with then-City Council president Michael Solomon. Smiley never seemed to have a real path to victory, and he used some sharp rhetoric while trying to impeach Solomon in the eyes of Providence voters. But politics ain’t beanbag, as the saying goes. And shortly after Elorza’s victory over Buddy Cianci, Smiley was named to a high-level post at City Hall.
10. On Saturday, as part of a nationwide action, the Diocese of Providence and Rhode Island Right to Life are staging a 9-11 am protest outside Planned Parenthood’s Point Street clinic. “We have a handful of confirmed state legislators who will join me at the podium, and many who are working or out of town but have asked me to express their support for our efforts to address the reported atrocities,” RIRTL’s Barth Bracy says via e-mail. Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin is also slated to speak. Defenders of Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, point to what they call “a campaign of deception.”
11. Voter anger and diminished faith in government institutions are cited as big factors in the dramatic support for the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. So it remains striking that Rhode Island Republicans were unable to ramp up their General Assembly representation during the depths of the recent recession.
12. August is a month widely associated with vacation, especially if you’re a European or a Massachusetts psychiatrist. So a few related links: 1) “How to Get Low-Wage Workers into the Middle Class;” 2) The New York Times’ deep dive on Amazon’s workplace culture; 3) “Americans Feel Guilty on Vacation — for Relaxing.”
13. The opening of Rhode Island’s first drone store comes ahead of the naming of a House study commission, whose members are slated to be appointed this fall.
14. RIPR healthcare reporter Kristin Gourlay offers this dispatch on the HPV debate: “Rhode Island has become the first state in the nation to require both boys and girls entering 7th grade to receive the HPV vaccine. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease; it’s responsible for most cases of cervical and some other kinds of cancers. Studies show the vaccine is safe and effective, but the mandate has roiled a group of parents and political conservatives. They argue that vaccinating should be a parent’s choice, that this vaccine isn’t necessary because the diseases aren’t spread in school, and that the vaccine isn’t as safe as everyone says. They’ve got a case of what the World Health Organization calls ‘vaccine hesitancy’ — the ‘delay in acceptance or refusal of safe vaccines despite availability of vaccination services.’ In Rhode Island, parents can request a religious or medical exemption from the state Health Department. But vaccines work best when the majority of people who can get them, get them. Plus, this particular vaccine works best in pre-teens, before they become sexually active and when their immune systems are primed to respond. Hesitant parents aren’t raising many new issues — there are anti-vaxxers everywhere. But there’s a lot of misinformation out there about HPV vaccines. Get the facts here.”
15. Architecture maven David Brussat, ex of the ProJo, believes that concerns about losing a park to a Providence baseball stadium are misplaced. ‘[T]he river is already festooned with parks, another new park is now being built right across the river as part of the 195 corridor – and the proposed park that would be lost suffers from extraordinarily poor design, both from the aesthetic and the practical standpoints,” Brussat writes on his blog. “They didn’t even think of how the river walks would be extended under the proposed pedestrian bridge (also ugly, and now possibly on the chopping block).” Brussat also has a faint glimmer of hope that the tantalizing idea for a Ship Street Cancel (which I wrote about in 2006) may be resurrected.
16. Clay Pell and Michelle Kwan are hosting an August 31 Newport fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, entitled, “A Conversation with Congressman Joseph Kennedy III.” …. Also on the campaign finance front, Governor Raimondo, Speaker Mattiello, and Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed are presenting a RI Democratic Party fundraiser at the Rhode Island Yacht Club on September 8,
17. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is slated to speak at CCRI on Saturday, August 22.
18. Don’t miss Phil Eil‘s piece in the Atlantic on the complicated legacy of local son H. P. Lovecraft. Excerpt: [“N]o tale of posthumous success is quite as spectacular as that of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the ‘cosmic horror’ writer who died in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1937 at the age of 46. The circumstances of Lovecraft’s final years were as bleak as anyone’s. He ate expired canned food and wrote to a friend, ‘I was never closer to the bread-line.’ He never saw his stories collectively published in book form, and, before succumbing to intestinal cancer, he wrote, ‘I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales, and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.’ Among the last words the author uttered were, ‘Sometimes the pain is unbearable.’ His obituary in the Providence Evening Bulletin was ‘full of errors large and small,’ according to his biographer.
19. Back in 1993, the Lollapalooza music festival at Quonset State Airport (Rage Against the Machine, Beastie Boys, Fishbone, Smashing Pumpkins, Arrested Development, Alice in Chains) caused a huge backup on I-95. The payoff came when Billy Corgan started the Pumpkins set by shouting, “Rhode Island, smallest state in the nation, we will rock you!” So get set for a big music fest planned for Quonset — including Metallica and Foo Fighters — in the summer of 2016.
