A decent snowfall in mid-November leads the way to the Thanksgiving slowdown, along with another hardy local perennial — red ink in the state budget. There’s always a feast on the politics beat, so 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.
With the January 1 start of a new General Assembly session a little more than a month away, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello remains non-committal on whether he’ll extend an olive branch to the 21 Democrats who voted against him during a recent caucus. “What I would say it that we have a very collaborative process and that everybody’s input is important,” Mattiello said on Political Roundtable on The Public’s Radio this week. “No one thought process controls, including my own, the majority leader’s, the committee chair. Sometimes you just have to accept that your legislation’s not ready to go irrespective of who’s making the decision.” While the speaker’s critics say he has too much power and remains the gatekeeper deciding which bills make it to the floor, Mattiello insists the reality is more complicated: “We go through layers. The committee is the first screening layer, then it goes to the majority leader, then it goes to me. And we have never had a bill that everybody wants passed that I said, ‘no, absolutely not.’ It just doesn’t happen.” Mattiello said legislation (like the bill backed by Rep. Carol McEntee, D-South Kingtown, to create a longer statute of limitations in sexual abuse cases) requires a tough vetting to guard against unintended consequences. “In fact, I don’t like when you don’t have enough voices,” the speaker said. “The more voices that go into the final product, the more comfortable I am with it.” Meanwhile, frustration still simmers among the so-called Gang of 21 (potentially making it a challenge for Mattiello to get the votes to pass the budget), and the dynamic between the House and Senate in 2019 remains another story yet to play out.
2) Rhode Island faces a $41.9 million deficit in the current-year budget, according to a new memo from the state Budget Office. The red ink is due to a combination of factors, including lower revenue and caseload growth, but mostly higher spending by state agencies. “There are several agencies forecasting deficits in FY 2019 as of their first quarter reports,” according to the memo from state Budget Officer Thomas Mullaney. “These include the Departments of Labor and Training, Revenue, Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals; Children, Youth and Families; Human Services; Corrections; Education; Public Safety and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (Medicaid). The Budget Office is working closely with these agencies to develop corrective action plans to resolve deficits and to identify savings in current year spending plans in other agencies to offset any additional funding needs.” While the Raimondo administration claims credit for reducing the state’s structural deficit, the deficit hole offers a reminder of how difficult it is for Rhode Island to move past ongoing deficits, even in a time of low unemployment and economic growth.
3) The big question facing Gov. Gina Raimondo is whether she can engineer a fundamental transformation of Rhode Island’s economy over two terms. While critics point to mismanagement in different corners of state government, Raimondo’s supporters believe she’s already started on the path of making the Ocean State’s economy more resilient. But the current-year budget hole is a reminder of how the state remains short of cash, and a recession in the coming years could make things considerably worse. There are often other, unexpected challenges. Lame duck status will settle in somewhere around the mid-point of Raimondo’s second term, and questions remain — despite the governor’s stated intention to serve out her term — about whether she’ll try to vault into national politics. For now, Raimondo is keeping a low profile ahead of the holidays. But after winning election in 2014, she managed expectations by offering a detailed State Room presentation on the depth of Rhode Island’s economic woes. Moving ahead, Raimondo’s two terms offer a test case for just how much a motivated governor can do to put Rhode Island on a stronger footing for the future. And that’s got to be front and center in her thinking in the run-up to her inaugural in January.
4) Three on sexual harassment: 1) While some reps remain critical of Speaker Mattiello’s handling of the harassment allegation made by Rep. Katherine Kazarian (D-East Providence), Mattiello said he did the right thing. “It was a friendship that went bad, so I separated them,” he said on Roundtable, referring to Kazarian and former House Judiciary Chairman Cale Keable (who denies harassment). “And what’s the responsibility of an employer that’s faced with allegations that are of a certain nature? You’ve got to deal with them and you’ve got to stop the situation, which I did. They haven’t had any communications for two, three years ….” 2) Rep. Chris Blazejewski (D-Providence), deputy majority whip in Mattiello’s leadership team, offered a proposal this week for dealing with Statehouse-related claims of harassment and discrimination. John Marion of Common Cause of RI credited Blazejewski with making a serious proposal, but said the plan needs more work. On a related note, Blazejewski’s role as part of Mattiello’s leadership has become a bit of a hot potato for the Providence Democrat; he cut his political teeth as a promoter of the bygone Drinking Liberally discussion series at the Wild Colonial pub, but now faces some questions about his progressive bonafides; critics of Mattiello plan to canvas in Blazejewski’s district on Saturday, November 17, “to demand legislative oversight and rules changes to put a check on the Speaker of the House and ensure that every representative’s voice, and their constituents’ voices, are heard.” 3) On a related note, Mattiello argues that a proces for reviewing harassment complaints can be credible and effective, even if it’s part of the Joint Committee on Legislative Services (which is effectively controlled by the speaker). “It’s the kind of office that has independence,” Mattiello said on Bonus Q&A. “If there’s an allegations and there’s any credibility to it, can you imagine anybody trying to get in the middle of that?”
5) Across the partisan aisle, here’s a perspective from Steve Frias, the Republican who almost unseated Mattiello in 2016, on what the RI GOP needs to do differently to have more success in winning elections: “Because of high taxes and State House scandals, the R.I. Republican Party’s message of fiscal conservativism and good government does resonate. However, this message can be overshadowed when there is a Republican president who is not popular in Rhode Island. As a result, Republicans must focus on legislative seats where President Trump won or came close to winning in 2016. These seats are located in Rhode Island’s Heartland, and constitute about one-third of General Assembly seats. If Republicans won just over one-third of the seats in either chamber, they would have a direct impact on the budget. Candidate recruitment for targeted seats must begin early. Until there is public financing for state legislative races, Republican candidates may need to self-fund their campaigns. However, a good candidate with enough money to get out an appealing message in a targeted seat may still lose because most Republican legislative campaigns are essentially one person operations. This is because since 1957, the R.I. Republican Party has generally focused on statewide races. The R.I. Republican Party must raise funds to create a year-round field operation for targeted legislative seats. Lastly, the deep schism among House Democrats arising from the 2018 election combined with the statewide unpopularity of Speaker Mattiello, as shown in the UNH poll [done for The Public’s Radio, The Providence Journal and ABC6], presents an opportunity for Republicans in targeted House seats to defeat Democrats aligned with the Speaker. In the next election, Republicans can win more state legislative seats but there is much to do and it needs to start soon.”
6) U.S. Rep. David Cicilline is all-in for Nancy Pelosi as U.S. House speaker, even as some Democrats favor a different choice: “She brought us back into the majority,” the congressman said in a statement. “She’s the best strategist, legislator, and fundraiser that Democrats have today. After you win the Super Bowl, you don’t cut the team captain.” But U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin remains non-committal and “has not yet made any commitments in the speaker’s race.”
7) Cicilline, meanwhile, who serves as the ranking Democrat on the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, has been sharply critical of Facebook, amid The New York Times’ findings that, among other things, the social media colossus “employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros”: “Facebook cannot be trusted to regulate itself. This staggering report makes clear that Facebook executives will always put their massive profits ahead of the interests of their customers. We’ve known for some time that Facebook chose to turn a blind eye to the spread of hate speech and Russian propaganda on its platform. Now we know that once they knew the truth, top executives did everything they could to hide it from the public by using a playbook of suppressing opposition and propagating conspiracy theories. It is long past time for us to take action. I am confident that, despite Facebook’s best efforts to buy Congress’s silence, the will of the American people will prevail. Next January, Congress should get to work enacting new laws to hold concentrated economic power to account, address the corrupting influence of corporate money in our democracy, and restore the rights of Americans.” Meanwhile, as he battles for the role as assistant Democratic leader, Cicilline’s remarks attracted widespread attention, including from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, The New York Times, and other sources.
8) Some less-than-stellar optics for two of the current growing forces in Rhode Island’s political scene: First, Attorney General-elect Peter Neronha, who faces high expectations in the AG’s office, attracted a less-than-flattering headline in the ProJo about not naming the members of his transition team. And then Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, who touts her efforts on behalf of citizens, got attention for delaying the release of public records.
9) So it begins. Eric J. Beane, secretary of Rhode Island’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services, is the first publicly announced departure from Gov. Raimondo’s second term. In a statement, the administration credited Beane “with stabilizing the UHIP eligibility system and strengthening community services across the EOHHS agencies. Lisa Vura-Weis, currently a deputy chief of staff in Governor Gina Raimondo’s office, will serve as the acting Secretary while a comprehensive search for a permanent replacement is conducted.” Raimondo noted how Beane has been a part of her team since she took office in 2015 “and I am forever appreciative of his efforts and commitment. He is driven by public service and leads with compassion.” Beane departs his current gig in December. He was among a group of Raimondo staffers with previous government experience in Maryland, including former COS Stephen Neuman and comms director Mike Raia. Looking ahead, we’re bound to see a number of other departures in the governor’s second term.
9A) Meanwhile, Kate Brock is joining the staff of Treasurer Seth Magaziner as chief of staff.
10) Rest in Peace, Sue Carcieri, who died this week at age 76. She and former governor Don Carcieri were married for 53 years.
11) It’s not every day that you see a fiscal conservative like Rep. Brian Newberry (R-North Smithfield) retweet something from progressive favorite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But that’s exactly what happened when the congresswoman-elect posted a tweet excoriating New York’s winning effort to land one of the two sites for Amazon’s new mega-expansion. Other critics are unloading, warning about a negative effect on everything from dating to housing prices. Ron Knox, who managed Matt Brown’s gubernatorial campaign, offers this view in Slate: “While host cities and states obviously mean something different to Amazon than sellers who use its retail platform, the company’s tactics are much the same: Amazon’s immense power proves too tempting for its potential partners to resist—and once the company gets what it wants, it collects the data and the concessions, then delivers far less that what it promised.”
12) During the recent electoral season, Speaker Mattiello’s campaign framed his Democratic critics as “ultra-progressives.” So how does Mattiello define ultra-progressive? His answer, via Bonus Q&A on The Public’s Radio: “I would define it as folks that have an extreme polar-left leaning viewpoint, and that’s the herd they run in, and they don’t deviate. It’s just very, very left. I think some progressive issues are great. I’ve always said that. I think some conservative issues are great. I think most people should think along the full spectrum, and every issues gets determined differently. At least that’s the way I think. These folks band together because of a particular ideal or an ideology, and not necessarily taking all factors into account …. And because I’m moderate in thinking sometimes, as well as progressive in thinking sometimes, they vilify me. That’s not necessarily being thoughtful and it’s being ultra-progressive.”
13) Via Erika Sanzi’s education blog: “We are a year into the #metoo movement and it remains legal in the state of Rhode Island for teachers, coaches, school bus drivers, guidance counselors and all other school personnel to engage in sexual relationships with students in their care, as long as they have turned 16.” So why has did the House of Representatives not pass a bill backed by Rep. Alex Marszalkowski (D-Cumberland) meant to address this issue? Here’s the explanation from House spokesman Larry Berman: “Only one person testified on the bill …. — the ACLU expressed concerns that the bill was too broadly written and overreaching. Thus, the House Judiciary Committee did not recommend its passage. Speaker Mattiello said that should Rep. Marszalkowski re-introduce the bill, [and] he will ask the Judiciary Committee to take a closer look at it. However, he would like the committee to obtain greater input on the bill, particularly from the Attorney General’s office and the law enforcement community, which did not weigh in at the hearing.”
14) Is the political calculus changing in the US on guns?
15) On election night Speaker Mattiello told WPRI-TV’s Kim Kalunian that he was introducing a new media policy: “News media outlets that treat me fairly and are objective I’m going to converse more with.” It was a precipitous response for a speaker who has consistently made himself available to reporters. Some observers suspected Mattiello’s reply to Kalunian, a fine reporter and very nice person, stemmed from how her husband/colleague, Ted Nesi, broke the story of another allegation of sexual harassment involving state lawmakers. Mattiello has announced a ‘new media policy’ a few times before in a fit of pique, and as was the case then, he’s now walking back his remarks. “I don’t have a new media policy,” Mattiello said on Bonus Q&A on The Public’s Radio. “That evening I was frustrated by particular reporting. I had the adrenaline running from just receiving the results of my victory.” House spokesman Larry Berman says the “particular reporting” that irked the speaker was less the reporting and more so the timing of Nesi’s story, coming just a week ahead of Election Day.
16) On Monday, November 19 (4-5:30 pm) at the Joukowsky Forum, Brown’s Watson Institute is staging a conversation on the midterm election results with university alum Tom Perez, chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee. Both men are senior fellows at the Watson Institute. Meanwhile, some activists plan to attend the event, with the intention of encouraging Perez and other Democrats to support greater investments in renewable energy.
17) How the Beatles made ‘The White Album.’
18) The Public’s Radio is looking to hire a New Bedford-based reporter and a morning producer (downside for the latter job: you need to sit between me and Scott MacKay.)
19) “Hillary Clinton’s press secretary on why beating Trump in 2020 is harder than you think” Meanwhile, here’s a look at some of the Democrats gearing up to challenge the president.
20) To the surprise of no one, the World Champion Red Sox have raised their ticket prices for 2019, by an average of 2.5 percent. Call that part of the price of success. Meanwhile, can Sox manager Alex Cora – who made all the right moves in 2018 – maintain the magic in the new year?
