Hard to believe, but September and a fresh school year is close at hand. 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.
Much ado about nothing or a serious ethical lapse? The Rhode Island Ethics Commission will decide the merits of a state GOP complaint against Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo after voting in favor of an investigation this week. The RI Republican Party cheered the news and repeated its accusation that Raimondo offered “special treatment” for IGT “while Raimondo and Donald Sweitzer, a lobbyist for IGT, have been associates in the Democratic Governors Association.” But it remains unclear for now whether the Ethics Commission will validate this claim. For her part, Raimondo insists that her support for the IGT contract extension is based on a desire to keep a Rhode Island-based company, with about 1,000 jobs, in the Ocean State. The lawyer representing the governor in the case, Washington, D.C.-based Jonathan Berkon, maintains the GOP complaint will crumble. “We applaud the Ethics Commission’s decision to throw out one of the two claims filed by the state Republican Party,” Berkon said via email. “We are confident that when the Ethics Commission reviews the facts relating to the other claim, it will once again conclude this latest partisan complaint has no merit.”
2) “We’re going to have to work room by room,” Providence’s interim schools superintendent, Fran Gallo tells The Public Radio’s John Bender, to shape up school buildings across the city.
3) CNBC reported this week on how some top Amazon executives made campaign contributions to U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, the chair of a subcommittee leading an antitrust review, ahead of hearings on that subject. “The donations serve as an example of how companies and executives work behind the scenes with lawmakers to try to advance their corporate interests — albeit with mixed effectiveness,” wrote CNBC’s Eugene Kim. Meanwhile, Freedom Project USA, the group founded by Connecticut political consultant Matt Wylie (who recently signed up the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s Mike Stenhouse as a Rhode Island representative) accused Cicilline of hypocrisy. “Cicilline accused others of being ‘bought’ by corporate special interests, then takes money from the very corporate special interests he in charge of investigating,” Wyle said in a news release. Asked for comment, Cicilline spokesman Richard Luchette said Cicilline implemented a formal policy on the day when the antitrust probe began “of refusing campaign contributions from executives that may be subject to scrutiny. As you know he already refuses campaign contributions from corporate PACS. Also, as CNBC reported, he has already expressed his displeasure with Amazon. So if they hoped to benefit, they were clearly mistaken.”
4) The view from John Marion, executive director of Common Cause of RI, on the Amazon contributions and whether Wyle’s criticism is on- or off-point: “It would have been more judicious had Congressman Cicilline not taken money from Amazon executives before his subcommittee started its hearings on antitrust issues around the tech industry and put in place sooner his policy to no longer take such donations. Congressman Cicilline has been a strong ally on campaign finance reform, including proposals for public financing of elections, that appear in H.R. 1, the omnibus reform legislation passed by the U.S. House earlier this year. However, it’s hypocritical of groups that support tearing down the already weak limits on money in politics to call out politicians for taking what are legal contributions.”
5) Elsewhere on the campaign finance front, the Rhode Island agency responsible for policing political spending – the state Board of Elections — lacks the staffing to chase down missing information from filings or to perform random audits of campaign accounts, as I reported this week. The BOE has played a growing role in rooting out wrongdoing by elected officials in recent years, due largely to a change in leadership in 2016. Yet the Elections Board is still making up for lost time, and its web site is way overdue for an update. Vice Chairman Stephen Erickson remains hopeful that heightened attention about campaign finance violations will “maybe giving us some more flexibility in terms of employment, an investigator, an auditor, something along that line.”
6) Rhode Island Kids Count, the children’s advocacy group, led by Elizabeth Burke Bryant, has been around for a quarter-century, so it’s worth listening to Burke Bryant’s view on the most important step to improve the Ocean State’s economy. “We know that employers that want to relocate are looking at what are the educational opportunities for future employees should the company come to Rhode Island and that’s why it’s urgent that we have a world-class education system that shows real progress for all kids,” Burke Bryant said on Bonus Q&A this week. She discussed a range of other topics on Political Roundtable.
7) Will immigration be the defining issue of the 2020 presidential race? That doesn’t seem like a stretch, given President Trump’s continued emphasis on the issue. Critics call the focus misguided. As Scott MacKay wrote in his commentary last week, “Since colonial times, immigration has been both blessing and bane for the country. Native Americans were slaughtered by European settlers. Then waves of immigrants seeking work, freedom and the path to a better life were roundly discriminated against by the Protestant majority.” Yet even though the number of undocumented immigrants from Mexico has trended down in recent years, and even though research shows immigrants commit less crime than naturalized citizens, a sense of grievance about the supposedly negative effects of immigrants animates many voters, including some in Rhode Island.
8) The Massachusetts political world is abuzz over a potential Democratic primary challenge next year by U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy (whose district reaches Fall River and Attleboro) against U.S. Sen. Ed Markey. While there’s considerable policy overlap between the pair, there’s a generational difference: Kennedy, whose public profile has taken off in the last year or two, is 38, while Markey, who served in the U.S. House for almost four decades before winning in 2013 the Senate seat formerly held by John Kerry, is 73. Markey (whose senior campaign strategist is West Warwick native Paul Tencher) shows no signs of backing down; he’s emphasizing his progressive stances and has the support of people ranging from Elizabeth Warren to former RI state rep David Segal. While there’s little doubt that Kennedy is a rising Democratic star, the question is how much harm would be caused by a bruising intra-party primary. Ted Nesi reports that Kennedy will make his choice within a few weeks.
9) The Sunrise movement is already making an impact in focusing attention on climate change, and the activist group is set to hold in Providence, from September 7-9, what it bills as its largest training session. “Until I found Sunrise, I always felt similarly powerless in the face of the climate crisis,” Jonah Kagan writes via email. “But from the day of my first Sunrise action, I started to feel just how powerful we can be as a collective. I want you to feel that power, too. That’s why I’m so hyped for the Summits. We’ll train to take on new leadership at the largest Sunrise training in history. In the first two days of the Northeast Summit, you will gather in classrooms to train. Those new to Sunrise will get the chance to learn about Sunrise’s history, structure, and strategy. Meanwhile, others will choose from 18 different specialized breakout trainings on action planning, fundraising, press and media, recruitment, building partnerships and other core skills to turn you into powerful leaders in our movement. We’ll all come together to talk about what we’ve accomplished over these past few months and what we need to do now as we prepare for 2020. On day three, we’ll immediately put our training to work as we all take action to send a clear and urgent message to our elected officials: climate change is an emergency and if you care about our generation, you need to fully embrace the Green New Deal.” The group plans to stage an unspecified action after the training.
10) The news conference called this week by RI Attorney General Peter Neronha spoke more to Neronha’s style than a significant development in the investigation of last week’s incident at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. Joined by Cols. James Manni of the State Police and Daniel Barzykowski of Central Falls, Neronha provided a public update on the probe, including the focus and the number of witnesses interviewed so far. Not surprisingly, there were some questions that Neronha declined to address straight on. Still, it’s worth noting how Neronha’s staff streamed the news conference, reflecting the prosecutor’s considerably more open stance to interacting with the public and the press than predecessor Peter Kilmartin.
11) WBUR’s Callum Borchers reports on how Fall River exemplifies the high stakes in the possible merger of GateHouse Media and Gannett: “A recent episode underscored the precious and precarious nature of local reporting: On a night this month when most of Fall River’s 90,000 residents had something better to do than sit through a City Council meeting, Herald News writer Jo C. Goode was in the council chamber to witness Correia show up, unexpectedly, to interrupt a debate about a troubled public works project. Council President Cliff Ponte told Correia to leave the floor; the mayor refused. In the middle of the standoff — which later ended with a premature adjournment and no resolution — Goode started live-streaming on Facebook, and approached Correia. ‘So, mayor, what are you hoping to accomplish here?’ Goode asked. ‘I’m just going to join in on the discussion, which is my right,’ Correia replied. ‘I am the mayor of the city, and there’s a very important discussion with a premier project of this administration that was being totally hacked by some councilors.’ Goode easily could have missed this showdown between Correia and the City Council because the short-staffed Herald News had assigned her to simultaneously cover another event.”
12) Congrats to Central Falls Mayor James Diossa and state Sen. Sandra Cano (D-Pawtucket) on the birthday Friday morning of Arianna Hallel Diossa. The baby, weighing 8 lbs, and mom are reported to be happy and healthy.
13) Pithy social commentary on Twitter by @CarFreePVD about the move to temporarily pull JUMP Bikes from Providence: ” ‘[officers followed] a gray Honda, which bombed around local streets and then onto Eddy Street, where it reached speeds close to 100 miles an hour’ – Hondas are being used to commit crimes on our streets. Time to remove them all from the city!”
14) With Lincoln Chafee eyeing a possible Libertarian run for president, travel back in time to when he was still a Democrat (after being a Republican and independent) and talked over soul food with Larry Wilmore.
15) Billionaire industrialist David Koch has died at age 79. For a sense of the impact of Koch and his brother Charles, given a listen to this ‘Fresh Air’ segment on the book “Kochland: How the Koch Brothers Changed U.S. Corporate and Political Power” by Christopher Leonard. Excerpt: “[I]t’s not just the size of Koch that makes it important; it’s the company’s reach into our daily lives. This is a firm that specializes in the kinds of businesses that are vital to modern civilization, the kind of businesses you couldn’t boycott even if you wanted to. Koch refines and sells the gasoline people use to drive to work. It makes the building materials and the walls and structures of our houses and offices. It makes the clothing materials and diapers and Lycra spandex. It’s one of the world’s largest producers of nitrogen fertilizer, which is one of those products that nobody thinks they really use, but nitrogen fertilizer is the bedrock of our modern food system, so you use it indirectly if you eat. This company is spread throughout our entire economic system. And for that reason, when you talk about Koch Industries, you’re talking about our whole economy.”
