Question of the Week: What does the near-future hold for the RI House? 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) The grand jury probe into the short-lived audit ordered by Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello is expected to wrap soon. The big question, of course, is what happens next? More to the point: does the process result in an indictment or no true bill? The answer could shake the House of Representatives to its core, perhaps with a change in leadership. Mattiello has maintained a strong majority in the chamber since 2014, when he moved quickly to consolidate support amid the fall of Gordon Fox. Mattiello’s belief that the best defense is a strong offense was evident when he proclaimed victory while striding into the Cranston Grange on Election Night in 2016 – even though television screens showed GOP challenger Steve Frias with more votes. (Mattiello was right – thanks to mail ballots, he edged Frias by 85 votes.) If the speaker is not charged, his hand will gain strength, at least in the short term. But even if there is an indictment involving the speaker or a top aide, there’s no certainty that Mattiello will step down. On the contrary, with his political life and legacy on the line, the Cranston Democrat could be more inclined to stay and fight. If that happens, watch for an awkward tilt in the remainder of the House session, with some reps puzzling on how to balance their own ambitions and their loyalty to Mattiello. As Omar says, in a paraphrase of a time-honored bit of political philosophy, “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
2) Twin River criticized IGT last year for seeking a no-bid 20 year contract extension with the state. Now the two companies are working together on a no-bid 20-year deal. Does that render the past criticism hypocritical? “Absolutely not,” said Marc Crisafulli, executive vice president for Twin River Worldwide Holdings, on Political Roundtable this week. “This is a very different deal from last year. If you remember, we said our primary concern last year was the quality of the machines, and making sure that we had competition on the machines. And this resolution that we’ve done with IGT actually ensures that. IGT goes down to 40 percent of the [VLTs on the] floor, and then we have six other vendors that will perpetually compete for that.” Crisafulli also points to how the proposal also includes more investment by Twin River (at Lincoln and in a new company HQ targeted for the Wexford Building) and a guarantee of about 1,000 IGT jobs, with a higher base pay than was in last year’s proposal. Asked if the nexus of IGT and Twin River presents a “too big to fail situation,” because of their importance to state revenue, Crisafulli said, “I don’t think that’s a risk; obviously, it’s something the state needs to pay attention to, but I actually think this provides us more competitive balance in how the state balances the third-largest revenue source.”
3) The biggest takeaway from the presidential race this week was the poor performance turned in by Democrat Mike Bloomberg – Gov. Gina Raimondo’s candidate – during an MSNBC debate. That’s sparking questions about the former New York City mayor’s ability to deliver on his self-description as the best person to take on President Trump. But the Democratic side of the race has already seen a lot of twists and turns, and there are more ahead. It won’t be a surprise, for example, if Joe Biden gets a strong boost out of South Carolina. And Bloomberg could rebound, in part due to his philanthropy, vast personal wealth and large campaign organization. Raimondo touted Bloomberg with out of town reporters earlier in the week, a day before she faced questions about some of the candidate’s less-flattering moments.
4) Of course, one need not be a billionaire to make an impact in Rhode Island politics. With that in mind, it’s worth reading activist Paula Hodges’ essay on how to deepen democracy in the state, recently published by Steve Ahlquist’s UpriseRI. Her recommendations include demystifying party committees, expanding rules reform in the General Assembly and backing non-partisan turnout programs. As Hodges writes, “Rhode Island’s small scale presents our greatest opportunity and challenge. One statewide leader can know every legislator and district, building a far-reaching network for change. And when that person falls from grace (or goes to prison) the whole system resets around the cult of a new personality.”
5) Then again, not all is well with small-d democracy in our republic. As Norman Ornstein writes in reviewing Ezra Klein’s new book, “Why We’re Polarized,” “As the country grows more diverse, the representation and power in our politics will grow even less reflective of that dynamism.” The upshot, Ornstein notes, is that the Electoral College will be less responsive to the popular vote and “30 percent of Americans will elect 70 of the 100 senators.” The irony is how this lack of representation is what sparked Rhode Island’s Dorr Rebellion back in 1842. (As William G. McLoughlin writes in “Rhode Island: A History,” “[I]n 1840 Newport was still entitled to six seats in the General Assembly, while Providence was entitled to only four,” even though it had almost three times the population of Newport. To bring things back to the present, Klein calls for such steps as eliminating the Electoral College, abolishing the Senate filibuster, and making Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia into states. Given the uphill battle facing these recommendations, the outlook appears less than sanguine.
6) While Twin River’s Marc Crisafulli, not surprisingly, is bullish on the outlook for the company’s venture with IGT (which faces General Assembly approval), he doesn’t see room for additional gambling venues in southern New England. “I don’t believe this region can handle another casino right now,” he said on Roundtable. “As it is, you can see most of the Massachusetts facilities are struggling …. [with the possibility of other entries in the Bay State], we’re hopeful that none of that happens, because when you take a look at the performance of the Massachusetts facilities, it’s far below expectations. We’ve been really fortunate here in Rhode Island that we’ve been able to weather the storm and continue to perform at very positive levels, but we can’t take that for granted. It’s one of the reasons why this new proposal with IGT is so important. We need a strong three-way partnership between the state, IGT and Twin River, so we can adjust into the future.”
7) One more from Crisafulli. Here’s his explanation of why he didn’t respond to Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office when it reached out after Crisafulli described being threatened last year by Brett Smiley, at the time Gov. Raimondo’s chief of staff: “It was a company decision. The company just wanted to go forward and be the best possible partner it could be to the state and didn’t think it would be productive for anybody to try and go backwards. And even if you go back when I disclosed what happened, I did so reluctantly. It took me a couple of steps to get there and ultimately it looked like I was going to be subpoenaed to come in and testify again. I just thought, let’s just put an end to this and get it out there. But even then, I was very clear: it was not our intent of trying to pursue any criminal charges.” (Smiley denies that he threatened Crisafulli.)
8) Given the public dissatisfaction with the aftermath of 38 Studios, it’s unsurprising that the Rhode Island Supreme Court this week offered a history lesson on grand juries, as part of its decision keeping grand jury records in the case under wraps. With a start in the 12th century, the early days were not so good. “Far from being a bastion against unfounded accusations,” Justice Francis Flaherty wrote, “it has been said that: ‘The repressive nature of the medieval grand jury cannot reasonably be questioned.’ Indeed, the system as initially established was instituted as a means of increasing the power of the Crown, relative to the church and the nobility, and to raise money, because it was the King who received the resulting fines and forfeitures.” But by 1215, Flaherty adds, “the incipient building blocks of due process were laid when King John signed the Magna Carta.” While the acrid taste of 38 Studios still lingers, the Supreme Court decision leaned heavily on court rules and the tradition secrecy of the grand jury process in explaining its decision.
9) U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy, the challenger to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, seemed a bit unprepared for the initial (and predictable) question during a WGBH TV debate this week – why should voters elect him, given his similarity on most Democratic issues to Markey? But Markey also had a stumble or two, as Dan Kennedy notes. Ted Nesi has been paying close attention to the race, and he has a good roundup on the debate.
10) After less than a year as executive director of the Rhode Island Democratic Party, Cyd McKenna, who previously worked for Buddy Cianci and the RI House, is the latest Rhode Islander to sign on with the Bloomberg campaign. The timing is less than stellar for RI Dems, as two of McKenna’s predecessors observed on Twitter. Jon Boucher: “Terrible timing for the primary. Lot of work to go into the delegate selection process, convention planning, etc. I don’t envy anyone who has to jump in and fill that void.” Stephanie Mandeville: “Who will be ED nine months out from a presidential election? Who will prep for PPP? Who will herd cats to and from Milwaukee in July?”
11) Can the four-day work-week catch on? Via NPR: “The idea of a four-day workweek might sound crazy, especially in America, where the number of hours worked has been climbing and where cellphones and email remind us of our jobs 24/7. But in some places, the four-day concept is taking off like a viral meme. Many employers aren’t just moving to 10-hour shifts, four days a week, as companies like Shake Shack are doing; they’re going to a 32-hour week — without cutting pay. In exchange, employers are asking their workers to get their jobs done in a compressed amount of time.”
12) The fight for an independent redistricting commission remains an uphill fight in Rhode Island, as this column has noted before. So it’s worth noting how the Cranston Charter Review Commission voted 10-1 in favor of recommending an anti-gerrymandering charter amendment. Via the Cranston Herald: “The new language would require the redistricting process be conducted via ordinance. It specifically calls for the process to ‘respect the geographic integrity of local neighborhoods or local communities of interest in [a] manner which minimizes their division to the [greatest] extent possible,’ and it further requires that the place of residence of any incumbent or candidate ‘not be considered in the creation of wards.’ ”
13) Syringe exchanges remain politically unpalatable, even though they have been found to reduce the spread of HIV and hepatitis C.
14) Lovely stuff in this short essay by former NYT sportswriter Gerald Eskenazi, on the 40th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice: “The place was going mad with stomping and singing and people crowding the aisles while I was in the balcony trying to file my story to the Teleram. We were on deadline. I had to get a story to New York immediately. We dispatched Dave Anderson, who would win a Pulitzer Prize for his commentary that year, to the landing below. I typed a page and crinkled it into a ball — and threw it down to Dave. He caught it on the fly! He muscled his way to the basement, to our computer, where our colleague Gordon S. White Jr. retyped the page and sent it off to The Times. Then Dave ran back up. I finished another page, rolled it and threw it — Dave was off again to Gordon. This went on for several more pages. The article made the front page the next day.”
15) Via the BBC: “Can chatbots with a feminist perspective stop social media bullying and trolls?”
