Thanks for stopping by for my weekly column as we head into the run-up to Thanksgiving. Your tips and thoughts are always welcome via email, and you can follow me through the week on the twitters. Here we go.
1. Rhode Island’s fifth-place ranking in the Center for Public Integrity’s annual review of government ethics and accountability isn’t anything to crow about, given the D+ grade. As Mike Stanton wrote in his assessment, the Ocean State’s standing “speaks more to greater problems elsewhere than a tailwind of progress in the Ocean State.” Common Cause of RI’s John Marion, who was among those interviewed by Stanton, offers this analysis: “One takeaway we have is that Rhode Island has been attentive to putting in place strong laws in these areas in the last four decades, but we don’t always see the most stringent of consistent enforcement. For instance, in 2012 we put in place a national model for disclosure of independent spending in our elections, but the Board of Elections has not enforced the law. While plugging loopholes (in the jurisdiction of the state Ethics Commission, for instance) and enacting new reforms (independent redistricting, for example), sometimes making sure the work we have done in the past is carried out is important.” Meanwhile, let’s not overlook the role played by citizens in politics. If the public is mostly disengaged, and legislative races marked by an absence of competition, are the results all that surprising?
2. One of the longest serving members of the Rhode Island House, state Rep. Eileen Naughton (D-Warwick), faces a Democratic primary challenger next year: three-term Warwick Ward 3 Councilor Camille Vella-Wilkinson. Vella-Wilkinson, who had a 15-year active duty career with the US Navy, said she pledged while running for the council in 2010 to serve no more than three terms. A Brooklyn, New York, native who has lived in Warwick since 1988, she points to her military, municipal and professional experience in making the case for why she wants to go to Smith Hill. Vella-Wilkinson said her platform will include the environment, senior issues, and advocating for gun owners’ rights. Naughton couldn’t be reached for comment, although she said through House spokesman Larry Berman that she definitely plans to seek re-election. She was part of the big post-banking crisis class that first won election in 1992. Six other reps remain from that class: Edith Ajello (D-Providence); John DeSimone (D-Providence); Robert Jacquard (D-Cranston); Charlene Lima (D-Cranston); Anastasia Williams (D-Providence); and Thomas Winfield (D-Smithfield).
3. State Rep. Scott Slater (D-Providence) hopes to organize a trip to Colorado, possibly with other lawmakers, to gather first-hand information about the impact of legalizing marijuana in the Rocky Mountain State. “People need to see what a tax and regulate environment would look like,” Slater said. “The sky is not falling.” The Providence Democrat calls concerns on legalization overstated, and he thinks the state could squander an advantage if other nearby states move more quickly in legalizing marijuana. “The important thing for Rhode Island is to be ahead of our neighbors,” Slater said. While House Judiciary chairman Cale Keable (D-Burrillville) has expressed a view that marijuana legislation is unlikely to move ahead in the election year of 2016, Slater believes Speaker Nicholas Mattiello is keeping an open mind on the issue.
4. Providence City Council President Luis Aponte took the better part of a year before settling on a chief of staff, so perhaps the time was needed to figure out what type of relationship he would have with Mayor Jorge Elorza and what kind of chief of staff would be necessary. The appointment of Cyd McKenna, who ran Buddy Cianci‘s campaign last year, indicates that Aponte wants a more central role in legislating and running the city. While the City is considered to have a “strong mayor” type of government, most City Hall decision can be effectively managed if a Council president has a 10-vote veto-proof majority. As with the House of Representatives, the City Council can use a veto-proof majority to pass a budget and decide the city’s policy priorities. McKenna certainly has the skill-set to play a big role with that, and she has a cadre of powerful advisers, from Cianci and Joseph R. Paolino Jr. to Art Coloian, who can assist her in doing so.
5. With state regulators considering their response to the questions raised by such sports-picking sites as FanDuel and DraftKings, State Rep. Deborah Ruggiero (D-Jamestown) may roll out related legislation in the new General Assembly session. “We have to see if it’s a game of chance and not a game of skill,” in which case a law would like be needed to regulate the sites, Ruggiero said.
6. Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien‘s standing has improved considerably since he risked being perceived as “the mayor who lost the PawSox.” While the outcome is far from certain, and even Grebien puts the team’s chances of staying at 50-50, this is still a lot better than where things stood even a few months ago. First, the PawSox brass said they hoped to open 2016 in Providence. Then, it was 2017. Now, the team’s new president, Dr. Charles Steinberg said, via The Times of Pawtucket, “We’re committed to Rhode Island for another five years,” and the PawSox are no longer ruling out staying in Pawtucket. Similarly, the team’s messaging has shifted to mending fences with fans turned off by the ill-fated stadium quest. In one example of that, the PawSox announced plans to host a Friday evening steak dinner for veterans at McCoy Stadium, along with a $5,000 contribution from the PawSox Charitable Foundation to the Rhode Island Veterans Home in Bristol.
7. In a setback for the City of Providence, US District Court Judge William Smith on Friday granted a motion for summary judgment for Buck Consultants. Under former Mayor Angel Taveras, the city had faulted Buck for miscalculating $700,000 in pension savings.
8. In a win for the capital city, arbitrator John Cochran denied a grievance filed by the Providence Fraternal Order of Police, over a collective bargaining agreement covering 2010-2012. The union argued the city had violated the agreement by failing to pay a salary stipend for fiscal 2013 or a base salary increase for that fiscal year.
9. Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio (D-Providence) calls an ethics bill passed by the Senate in 2015 a step in the right direction for the kind of concerns raised by the Center for Public Integrity (see item #1). In 2016, “I think you’ll see something very similar to what we passed previously,” Ruggerio said on this week’s RI Public Radio Political Roundtable. Common Cause of RI has objected to how the legislation would incorporate an additional level of appeal for targets of Ethics Commission enforcement (and at any rate, the House didn’t pass it last year.) “We did not feel that was a deal-killer,” Ruggerio said. “We thought that was in interest of fairness. You have to keep in mind that when issues are discussed on the floor in the speech-in-debate context, there has to be some protections for those individuals who have to have the right to say whatever they feel is appropriate in order to represent their constituents.” It was back in 2009 when the state Supreme Court made a decision stripping the Ethics Commission of its ability to police legislative behavior. Speaker Mattiello has become increasingly bearish on the commission, so attempts to restore the body as a Smith Hill watchdog remain uncertain at best.
10. At the outset of the Providence Journal’s extensive #RaceinRI series last May, then-executive editor Karen Bordeleau offered this comment: “While The Providence Journal news staff lacks diversity — even more so after years of layoffs and attrition — we are fully committed to reporting about race and convening a conversation around race.” That admission notwithstanding, some ProJo readers continue to question if the newspaper’s series will include an article examining the racial composition of its staff or perhaps the RI media at large. Media organizations rarely do a good job of reporting on themselves (and the ProJo became more averse to self-scrutiny under Belo’s ownership, as I reported for the Phoenix back in 2000). However, as part of a Pulitzer-winning 1983 series on race, The Boston Globe did take a hard look at its own hiring record. Here’s an excerpt from David Wesssel‘s story, starting at the top: Compared with other private employers in the Boston area, The Boston Globe’s record in hiring and promoting blacks is poor. Of the 2339 full-time and part-time workers on the payroll of The Globe Newspaper Co., 69, or 2.9 percent, are black. In contrast, 6.5 percent of the employees of all private employers in the Boston area are black. The absence of blacks is particularly severe outside of The Globe’s newsroom. Of the 1260 blue-collar workers – from the pressmen to the janitors – only 13 are black. None of the 34 employees in the circulation department is black. None of the 13 persons in the personnel department is black. None of the nine officers of The Globe’s parent company, Affiliated Publications Inc., is black; none of the 11 directors is black. The record in the newsroom is better. Although all seven of the editors on the masthead are white, 21 of the 331 editors, reporters, photographers and artists at The Globe are black. That’s about 6.3 percent. And in advertising, where there was only one full-time black employee in 1974, there are now nine out of 157; that’s 5.7 percent. “The Globe’s record of hiring minorities is among the top half dozen newspapers,” said Editor Thomas Winship. “And that in itself is a distressing fact because our own record is so disappointing.”
11. Governor Gina Raimondo visited California this week for a series of economic development meetings. She also delivered the keynote address at the annual meeting in San Francisco of RSTP, a technology growth equity firm with additional offices in New York and Washington, DC. “The purpose of the trip is to continue our efforts to build an innovation economy in Rhode Island,” said spokeswoman Marie Aberger. “We want innovative companies — like Lighting Science Group — to invest in Rhode Island and put Rhode Islanders to work. To get that outcome, we have to meet with these companies and sell Rhode Island’s strategic location, world-class universities, and skilled workforce.”
12. ProJo op-ed columnist Steven Frias recently outlined the deficits that chronically plague RIPTA. Yet mass transit advocates point to far more extravagant public subsidies for cars and the highways upon which they travel, resulting in runaway development, environmental degradation, and other adverse effects. “We know that every year we ‘invest’ $25 billion of federal taxes in auto-dominated transportation,” the late Jane Holtz Kay wrote in her 1997 book, Asphalt Nation. “Add to this the amount from state and local agencies. We have seen the direct costs and indirect ones, the incalculable sums spent in the wrong way, in the wrong place, for the wrong way of life. It is time to price them correctly — to right the imbalance toward sustainable transportation.” Asked for comment, Frias said he’s not a fan of subsidies for cars or mass transit. “Sometimes people make suburbanization and cars synonymous but suburbanization was actually spurred by early mass transit in the form of electric trolleys,” Frias added. “Suburban homes was the goal for some before the car got into the picture. Cranston was a suburb during the electric trolley era. So when people talk about subsidies we must be careful to distinguish between any ‘subsidies’ that benefit suburban living in general and “subsidies” that benefit car usage. There is a difference. Also we should be specific by what is meant by subsidy. What is a subsidy can be a topic of great debate.”
13. The blue bastion of Rhode Island remains an outlier in the increasingly red US, as The New York Times reports: While Mr. Obama’s 2008 election helped usher in a political resurgence for Democrats, the president today presides over a shrinking party whose control of elected offices at the state and local levels has declined precipitously. In January, Republicans will occupy 32 of the nation’s governorships, 10 more than they did in 2009. Democratic losses in state legislatures under Mr. Obama rank among the worst in the last 115 years, with 816 Democratic lawmakers losing their jobs and Republican control of legislatures doubling since the president took office — more seats lost than under any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
14. Congrats and welcome to David Butler, who started on the job this week as the ProJo’s executive editor. According to the paper’s own coverage, he plans to live downtown, prefers local coverage with depth and said another priority will be “effective management of staff members’ time.”
15. Luis Vargas, who challenged state Rep. Joe Almeida (D-Providence) as an independent in 2014, is already raising money for another run against the longtime lawmaker next year. Almeida, meanwhile, has been an outspoken supporter of the campaign to hire a black police major in Providence.
16. More Dominick Ruggerio. The Senate majority leader responds to whether there’s too much labor influence in the state Senate, and other questions, during our Bonus Q+A segment.
17. Remember when ProJo staffers were encouraged to use social media? The paper and its reporters have come a distance in the three years since then, with a now-ubiquitous stream of tweets and other kind of additional Internet output. Things remain bleaker in the General Assembly, where most lawmakers see little value in putting their thoughts and beliefs into pixels. Meanwhile, the glum reports about Twitter continue, making us wonder about the long-term outlook of this catnip for reporters and news junkies.
18. In the annual battle over holiday cheer, regional fave-rave Dunkin’ Donuts is clobbering Starbucks, at least if you go by the preference of Faith Based Consumers.
19. Doug Manchester, the wealthy former owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune, is seeking $21 million for the Newport mansion he bought in July for $15 million.
20. Pit bulls often get a bad rap in RI, and elsewhere. Yet as former Providence AP reporter David Klepper reports, the stereotypes don’t hold up.
