The early phase of Rhode Island’s legislative session remains busy, with scores of people coming to the Statehouse to sound off on one of the nation’s most divisive issues. That’s part of what we’re looking at, 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.
1) Supporters and opponents of abortion rights point to different numbers in making their respective cases. Opponents say their side had the greatest presence when the House Judiciary Committee held a marathon hearing that began Tuesday late afternoon and ended shortly before 3 am Wednesday. Supporters cite a poll, done last year for The Public’s Radio, The Providence Journal, and ABC6, showing that 71 percent of Rhode Islanders back abortion rights. But the most important numbers in this debate may be 39 (the quantity of House cosponsors of the Reproductive Health Care Act, the bill favored by choice supporters) and 14,000 (the approximate population of House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s District 15 in Cranston). The conservative lean of Mattiello’s district (not to mention the staunch opposition of Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin) raises the question of why it would be in his political interest to bring an abortion bill to the House floor. Yet 39 representatives is more than half the chamber, and the number of progressive-leaning lawmakers has climbed in recent elections. A House vote on the bill from Rep. Anastasia Williams (D-Providence) to more narrowly codify Roe v. Wade could leave both abortion supporters and opponents irritated. Yet that approach could also help Mattiello to move past the perennial conflict on the highly charged issue.
2) Here’s my report looking at some of the arguments for and against the Reproductive Health Care Act.
3) “I did it. I found a significantly accomplished, defensibly qualified Democratic officeholder who isn’t flirting with — and hasn’t fantasized about — a presidential run in 2020.” That’s how The New York Times’ Frank Bruni began a recent Sunday column about Gov. Gina Raimondo. Bruni describes Raimondo as out of sync with the rising progressive trend among national Democrats, despite various attributes — “her youth (she’s 47), her working-class background, her educational pedigree (Harvard, Rhodes scholar, Yale Law), her role as the chairwoman of the Democratic Governors Association and her situation far from the nation’s swampy and unpopular capital.” There’s also this quote from the governor: “It takes a lot of spine to be a centrist in America today. You get whacked from the left and whacked from the right. That’s my life. I get whacked.” The column sparked a measure of eye-rolling in Rhode Island, where conservatives tend to view Raimondo as a free-spending liberal, some progressives consider her a captive of Wall Street, and business types consider her a pro-business Democrat.
4) Bruni’s column renewed speculation that Raimondo covets a national post (beyond her current role chairing the Democratic Governors Association), despite her stated commitment to serve out her term and her previous disavowal of ever running for the U.S. Senate. FWIW, Raimondo’s departing communications director, Mike Raia, says her staff did nothing to cultivate the attention from Bruni. “I’ve maybe made two or three phone calls in the entire time I’ve been in the governor’s office to someone from Washington or New York media,” Raia said during Bonus Q&A on The Public’s Radio this week, “and usually it’s been around a pre-scheduled trip and we try to fill a little bit of time and do a meet-and-greet or do a get-to-know ya. What Governor Raimondo is doing in Rhode Island is capturing the attention of people from other places because it’s moving the needle in Rhode Island, in a way that has never really happened, at least in recent years. Frank reached to our office and said he was looking to come up to New England and wanted to sit down and chat with the governor ….”
5) Raia said DCYF Director Trista Piccola – the subject of a no-confidence vote by social workers this week – “has done great work to turn a really troubled agency around. There’s still a ton more to do, and no one in the administration is blind to that. Trista has the governor’s confidence in that she’s going to look into this individual case,” involving the death of a nine-year-old girl in Warwick, “and get to the bottom of it. She’s going to hold whoever she needs to accountable for what went wrong there, and most importantly, make sure that we learn enough so that nothing like that ever happens again.”
6) Gov. Raimondo and Speaker Mattiello were spotted having dinner at the Capital Grille this week.
7) Eric Hyers, who has run campaigns for Raimondo and U.S. Rep. David Cicilline has signed on as the campaign manager for Kentucky gubernatorial hopeful Andy Beshear.
8) A bill introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Robert Craven (D-North Kingstown) would more than triple the cap on the amount of film/TV tax credits that can be carried forward, from $7 million to $25 million. Craven tells me the Teamsters’ union encouraged him to introduce the bill, and that he wants to see he wants more discussion “to see specifically how sales tax, employment tax and other ancillary benefits that are expected to come from these shows – what are they actually producing? And then we would make a decision as to whether or not it was in Rhode Island’s best interest to expand, leave it at the same, or eliminate it all together.” Rhode Island’s film and TV tax credit was created in 2005. A state Revenue Department study found last year that the credit has a negative return on investment, with an average annual loss of almost $2 million.
9) The push to create an independent civilian group offering oversight of the Providence Police Department began in the late 1990s, back when Buddy Cianci was still in power at City Hall and issues ranging from an exam-testing scandal to troubled police-community relations beleaguered the department. The Providence External Review Authority was created in 2002, but even as things improved in the Police Department, PERA has been mostly dormant. An effort to invigorate the group intensified in recent years, and PERA this week nominated lawyer and former public defender Jose Batista as its executive director. “My approach is going to be trying to build common ground and consensus,” Batista, who faces City Council confirmation, told me in an interview this week. “Both the police and the community want to feel safe – that’s the whole point of what we’re doing. And so we can build on a point that we have in common and learn how the other organizations have done that. I think we’ll be a good position.”
10) The Public’s Radio’s audience has continued growing since we expanded our signal a few years ago to include 89.3 FM, which covers most of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. The next step in the station’s expansion will be the opening in March of a New Bedford bureau. Nadine Sebai, who has a master’s in journalism, radio and investigative reporting from UC/Berkeley, and has most recently reported for Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, California, will report on New Bedford, Fall River and other nearby communities. We’re excited about Nadine joining our staff.
11) From Time magazine’s look at U.S. election security: “[There are] significant questions about whether the country’s election system is as secure as it needs to be for 2020. Amid this uncertainty, Rhode Island is pioneering a means of protecting its election results through a procedure called a “risk-limiting audit.” This method, which election experts consider the gold-standard of post-election checks, is essentially an efficient review of ballots that provides strong statistical evidence that the reported vote tallies in an election are correct. Because a risk-limiting audit takes place after an election, it cannot prevent hackers from gaining access to votes. But that is not the biggest risk facing U.S. elections. Despite all the fears raised in 2016, the prospect of a national election being hacked is highly unlikely, election officials and security experts say. The U.S. election system is extremely decentralized, making it difficult to cause a uniform problem, and the paper records that exist for the majority of votes mean that cyber intruders would need a very complex strategy targeting just the right unsecured ballots to affect any outcome.”
12) Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth: the Business of News and the Fight for Facts” looks at the varying fortunes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice and BuzzFeed. From Dan Kennedy’s review in The Boston Globe: “Inaccuracies notwithstanding, ‘Merchants of Truth’ is a valuable and insightful survey. It ends on an optimistic note, with one caveat: Abramson acknowledges that the relative good fortune of the four media organizations she profiles stands in contrast to the implosion of journalism at the local level. The media scene Abramson describes remains in turmoil. Witness the deep cuts at BuzzFeed that took place late last month. Whether journalism will outlive the wobbling vessels in which it is carried remains a fundamental question for the future of democracy.”
13) UConn professor Mike Stanton (who was a sportswriter at the ProJo before becoming an investigative reporter) talks about the history of the New England Patriots
14) The scene at Twin River, now that people can legally bet on the Super Bowl: “[A] steady stream of people, mostly middle-age to older men, queued up for their turn at one of the four windows where bets on the Super Bowl and many other sporting events were being accepted. ‘This becomes the world’s biggest indoor tailgate party. And it’s filled with people who love sports, and that’s exactly what we wanted the space to do,’ said Craig Sculos, vice president and general manager of Twin River, as he showed off the 3,600-square-foot area created last year for gamblers to try their luck picking winners. ‘As you first enter into the sports book what I think is most captivating right away are the number of televisions,’ Sculos said. ‘There are televisions on virtually every square inch of the wall that we could find space. We are constantly showing as many sports as possible with all of the proper sports packages.’ While waiting to get to the window, bettors can check the latest odds before laying their money down. ‘Every wager here is assigned a number,’ Sculos said. ‘So a guest simply can stand, [and] have their wager sort of formulated as they get to the ticket writer. They would simply say, ‘bet 525, $100 on the spread,’ and the ticket writer punches that into the system, and like magic the ticket appears. Then the fun starts.’ “
15) Via The Public Radio’s Megan Hall (who’s filling in on the healthcare beat while Lynn Arditi pursues a long-term project): “Partners Healthcare might be losing its CEO, but it remains committed to purchasing Rhode Island’s Care New England Health System. That’s according to Brigham Health, the Partners hospital at the center of the deal. Brigham says the retirement of Partner’s head Dr. David Torchiana “has no impact” on its intentions to move forward with the purchase. Partners applied for state approval of the sale in December. The Rhode Island Department of Health and the Attorney General’s office are still reviewing that application.”
16) RI Senate Majority Leader Michael McCaffrey is backing a bill meant to eliminate single-use plastic straws in restaurants. Via news release: “The bill, which is similar to a California law that went into effect on Jan. 1, calls for a notice of violation for first and second offenses. Subsequent offenses would be punishable by a fine of $25, not to exceed $300 annually. Americans disposed of more than 33 million tons of plastic in 2014, most of which was not recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. A study that same year estimates that there are 270,000 metric tons of plastic in the world’s oceans. It’s estimated that more than 500 million single-use plastic straws are used and thrown away every day in the U.S. as Americans use them at an average rate of 1.6 straws per person per day, according to the National Park Service. That translates into 175 billion straws a year.”
17) No one represented by the Providence Newspaper Guild took the latest buyout offered by management on Fountain Street.
18) An NPR rundown on which Democrats are running for president in 2020, and which candidates might have more staying power.
19) A tiny screw shows why iPhones won’t be ‘Assembled in U.S.A.’
20) “Got anger? Try Naming It to Tame It”
