June 17th, 2013 at 4:54 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Wall Street gave Rhode Island a sharp rebuke Monday as Moody’s Investors Service downgraded its rating on the bonds sold to benefit Curt Schilling’s defunct 38 Studios, citing a growing resistance among lawmakers toward paying back the bondholders.
June 17th, 2013 at 3:43 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is swinging his support behind Treasurer Gina Raimondo as she prepares to run for governor, three years after the billionaire leader backed incumbent Gov. Lincoln Chafee, because of his admiration for her as well as his differences with Chafee.
June 17th, 2013 at 9:47 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
East Side Monthly’s Steve Triedman has a great story in the latest edition about an apparent boom in retail on the East Side of Providence – a nice antidote to the endless drumbeat of bad news about the capital city’s economy.
A sample of Triedman’s most interesting nuggets:
There are over 400 stores, restaurants and coffee shops to choose from, with more on the way. Retail occupancy on the East Side is well above the national rate of 93%. …
An unnamed national retailer is close to inking a deal on the recently vacated Gabrielle store in Wayland Square. …
On North Main Street, a major fitness chain is opening a 40,000 SF facility in the old Sears building, which has been partially occupied or vacant for 15 years. The old Ethan Allen store has been demolished and the rumor mill has narrowed the new tenant down to either a CVS, auto parts store or a bank. The Shaw’s Plaza, below North Main Street, which makes up the majority of the vacant retail space on the East Side, has been sold to Ocean State Job Lot, which is a major draw and will likely change the complexion of the plaza.
Read the rest here. There’s also a sidebar about why some buildings are still vacant. It’s particularly good to hear something may finally be happening at the old Sears store, which closed back in 1993 and is a sad spectacle of decay on busy North Main Street.
Slate’s Matt Yglesias frequently writes that we are witnessing “the end of retail” in America, but the situation on the East Side suggests we may be seeing the end – or at least the decline – of big-box stores; maybe the right smaller establishments located in dense urban environments can still thrive.
• Related: Study: Providence commercial tax rates highest in the US (May 10)
(photo: ArtinRuins)
June 17th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
June 16th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
June 15th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site, The Saturday Morning Post
Welcome to another edition of my weekend column – as always, send your takes, tips and trial balloons to tnesi@wpri.com. For quick hits all week long, follow me on Twitter: @tednesi.
1. You probably haven’t heard much about what may be Rhode Island’s biggest policy undertaking this year: the local rollout of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. In a basement office, a small staff of true believers and outside consultants led by Christine Ferguson are working around the clock to set up the state’s new health insurance exchange – the marketplace where individuals and small businesses can buy coverage under the law – in time for enrollment to start Oct. 1. The exchange’s insurance costs should be finalized before mid-July, with announcements about its brand name and new call center, plus a big marketing push, to follow. (Policymakers also need to figure out how to fund the exchange’s operating costs locally once federal money runs out in 2015.) The Chafee administration is focusing more on business users than some states; unlike the federal government, Rhode Island’s exchange will let workers whose employers use the new Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) buy any insurance plan they want with their premium money. Ferguson is envisioning more than an Expedia for insurance – she wants the exchange to drive changes in how health care gets delivered in Rhode Island, with an eye on reducing costs and improving quality. The stakes are high: health care costs are strangling small businesses in Rhode Island, as elsewhere, yet health care also has been one of the only sectors of the state’s economy adding jobs.
2. Here’s something that may surprise you: Rhode Island’s economy grew faster than the New England average last year, expanding 1.4% to $43.8 billion, after barely treading water in 2011. The only state in the region that performed better was Massachusetts (up 2.2%), while the one often held up as a model for Rhode Island to emulate – New Hampshire – managed to grow just 0.5%. (Connecticut’s economy actually shrank.) Some of the outperformance, then, is the soft bigotry of low expectations for growth in New England: Rhode Island’s 1.4% expansion only placed 34th nationally. Also interesting is which three sectors were responsible for much of Rhode Island’s 2012 growth: real estate, finance and wholesale trade. Notably – and perhaps ominously – the biggest drag on the state economy was actually health care and social assistance, which had been growing steadily in recent years. Rhode Island’s real GDP was $41,678 per capita last year, just below the national average.
June 14th, 2013 at 5:16 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Education Commissioner Deborah Gist said the state recommended that changes be made at the Birch Vocational School in Providence a year before a federal investigation found it was operating a so-called “sheltered workshop” for developmentally disabled students.
• Related: State, city reach settlement over Birch School violations (June 13)
June 14th, 2013 at 5:13 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – When Rhode Island stops paying for the New England Common Assessment Program test in 2017, it will have spent more than $48 million over the course of 14 years on the controversial exam that is now tied to a high school diploma, WPRI.com has learned.
• Related: 40% of 11th-graders in RI in danger of not graduating (Feb. 14)
June 14th, 2013 at 9:59 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Patrick Kennedy is out of Congress, but he’s not out of the spotlight.
The former Rhode Island congressman will be the top interview on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” tonight at 10 p.m., likely talking about One Mind for Research, the nonprofit he cofounded to push for more research into brain science.
Kennedy isn’t the first Rhode Island politician to appear on Maher’s show: Lincoln Chafee was a guest on the program in October 2006 and again in October 2009, shortly before he kicked off his run for governor. (He got paid less than $1,000 for the ’09 spot.)
• Related: Bill Maher backs Taveras (and Chafee) on paring back pensions (July 16)
June 13th, 2013 at 10:54 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Well, they don’t call Rhode Island “Clinton Country” for nothing.
Ted Widmer, the former Bill Clinton speechwriter who ran Brown University’s John Carter Brown Library from 2006 to 2012, will reportedly serve as the ghostwriter for Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming memoir, according to a Showbiz411 story published Thursday.
The revelation isn’t a big surprise. Brown announced Sept. 12 – the day after the Benghazi attack, as it happens - that Widmer would become a senior adviser to Clinton, who was then finishing up as secretary of state. He is continuing at Brown as a special assistant to President Christina Paxson, too.
Clinton has a deal with Simon & Schuster for the new book, due out in June 2014, and was expected to pocket an advance of as much as $14 million. Bill Clinton also got some help from Widmer in writing his own memoir.
Widmer’s ties to Rhode Island are longstanding; his father, Eric Widmer, was on the Brown faculty and served as dean of students for a time. The younger Widmer has also quietly aided Lincoln Chafee on some of the governor’s key speeches.
(photo: Brown University)
June 13th, 2013 at 5:35 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – More than 85% of the fines issued for illegal dumping, uncontained trash and excessive sidewalk debris in the city of Providence since July 2011 have gone unpaid, WPRI.com has learned.
June 13th, 2013 at 10:45 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne has a column today about the debate over surveillance, and one of the voices in the piece is that of U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (who also expressed concerns to WPRI last week):
That we’re now more inclined to question the national security state should not surprise anyone. “In the period immediately after the attacks of 9/11, the American people were willing to give the government broad power to keep them safe,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), one of Congress’s most thoughtful voices on national security, said in an interview. “Now, more than a decade later, it’s entirely appropriate that Americans are asking about the balance between security and privacy.”
Reed believes that we still need extensive surveillance programs. But he was also in the minority last December in supporting an earlier version of the Merkley proposal on the FISA court decisions. He also favored another amendment, proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), that would have required the director of national intelligence to submit a report to Congress and the public on the impact of the revised FISA law on the privacy of U.S. citizens.
This is a rare issue that divides Reed and his junior colleague, Sheldon Whitehouse.
Reed voted yes but Whitehouse voted no on the two measures from December that Dionne references – the Merkley amendment to disclose legal justification for surveillance and the Wyden amendment to require a privacy report. As I wrote in Saturday’s column, Whitehouse’s views may relate to his past service on the Intelligence Committee, his time in law enforcement and his general trust in the federal government.
• Related: Sen. Whitehouse defends Obama on surveillance programs (June 7)
June 12th, 2013 at 1:02 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The organization that oversees the state’s pension system is considering seeking criminal or civil action against six disabled retirees that were overpaid $559,000 by the state, General Treasurer Gina Raimondo said Tuesday.
June 12th, 2013 at 10:22 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
One of the goals of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was to extend health coverage to uninsured Americans without disrupting the current system of employer-based insurance and safety-net programs. That means Rhode Island will have a patchwork of health coverage provisions starting on Jan. 1, 2014, when the law’s major policies take effect – and what you use will depend on how much you make annually.
Obamacare will largely use two programs – Medicaid, the long-established state-federal health program for the poor, and the new Health Benefits Exchanges, which I wrote about Monday – to offer subsidized coverage to most Americans who make less than 400% of the federal poverty level (FPL). This chart from a recent RIPEC study offers the clearest breakdown of who’ll qualify for what coverage in Rhode Island on Jan. 1:
(“HBE” stands for the Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange, which is being created by Obamacare and will offer subsidies for insurance to roughly 83,000 people. “CHIP” is the federal-state Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers uninsured children whose families make too much to qualify for Medicaid.)
Of course, nobody gets paid in FPL percentages – they get paid in dollars. To help you match the chart’s top row with actual wages, here’s the 2013 federal poverty level standards, also from RIPEC:
• Related: Study: Obamacare to subsidize insurance for 83,000 in RI (June 10)
June 12th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The high school principal at the center of a months-long federal investigation into the violation of disabled students’ civil rights was on the cusp of being fired in April before an outpouring of support saved his job.
• Related: Federal probe finds civil rights violated at Providence school (June 11)
June 11th, 2013 at 7:56 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – A Providence school that caters to developmentally disabled students allegedly violated the Americans with Disabilities Act for years by making students work manual labor for little or no pay and acting as a “pipeline” to a similar program once they graduated, the Target 12 Investigators have learned.
June 11th, 2013 at 11:48 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Gov. Lincoln Chafee loves infrastructure – but he’s not ready to support Providence Mayor Angel Taveras’s ambitious request for $39 million in federal money to build a streetcar line in the city.
“The streetcar project is a promising concept but not ready to go,” Chafee spokeswoman Christine Hunsinger told WPRI.com on Tuesday.
Taveras has asked for $39 million from the federal government to fund a $114-million streetcar system in the capital. The grant would come from the competitive Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, which has $474 million to hand out nationwide this year – meaning Providence is seeking about 8% of the national pot.
Chafee, however, wants a different Rhode Island proposal to win TIGER money this year: the state’s request for $10 million to build new bypass roads around the Apponaug Business District in Warwick, where Chafee was mayor from 1993 to 1999. Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian is also chairman of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, which is supposed to manage Providence’s proposed streetcar system.
June 11th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Dan McGowan broke the news Monday that Providence Mayor Angel Taveras has asked the federal government for a $39 million TIGER grant to help fund construction of Providence’s long-discussed streetcar system, which would link College Hill and the hospital districts starting in 2017.
Streetcar geeks – like Greater City Providence’s Jef Nickerson – will want to dig into the city’s entire federal application (PDF). For the rest of you, here are some highlights from the Taveras administration proposal.
Let’s start with the most basic question you probably have. Where would the streetcars go? How often would they run? This map has a good basic overview:
Much more after the jump.
June 10th, 2013 at 5:32 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence Thomas Tobin received some unpleasant correspondence in response to his comments about same-sex marriage being legalized in Rhode Island.
In a speech Saturday to the annual Portsmouth Institute conference, Tobin said he “received a letter from an angry individual who began, as harsh critics so often do, by establishing his Catholic credentials.”
The prelate quoted the writer as telling him: “Bishop Tobin, based on your pastoral letter and a review of your previous comments on this subject, I have concluded that you are evil, reprehensible, homophobic, and bigoted, and that you should be ashamed of yourself in general and in particular as a so-called Christian.”
Tobin said he also received an email that called him a “fat, old, conservative bigot.” His reply? “I am not fat.”
Tobin’s address, “Evangelization in a Secular Age,” reflected on the modern era’s challenges for Christians. He cited a Barna Group survey declaring Providence the fourth-most post-Christian city in America.
“Is it the failure of the leaders of the Church to adequately preach and teach?” Tobin asked in response. “Is [it] the failure of rank-and-file Christians to give compelling witness in their daily lives? Is it the secular agenda promoted by the leaders of our government? Is it the atmosphere created by the left-leaning media and the erudite academic communities of our area? Is it a combination of all these things? Probably.”
• Related: Tobin: Think ‘very carefully’ before going to gay weddings (May 2)
June 10th, 2013 at 5:02 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Officials in Rhode Island’s capital city have asked the federal government for $39 million to help build a street car system that would connect the Upper South Providence neighborhood near Rhode Island Hospital to College Hill on the East Side by 2017.
• Related: Nickerson: Why Providence needs a streetcar system (April 6, 2011)
June 10th, 2013 at 2:57 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Nearly 83,000 Rhode Islanders will be eligible starting next year to get federal tax credits for health coverage to use in the new insurance marketplace being created under President Obama’s health care law, a recent study shows.
The vast majority of those eligible for subsidies are working families and Rhode Islanders ages 34 and under, the study found. Based on federal income guidelines for 2013, the law will subsidize individuals who make up to about $46,000 and families of four who make up to around $94,000.
More coverage of the Affordable Care Act on Nesi’s Notes:
June 10th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
June 9th, 2013 at 10:44 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
June 8th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site, The Saturday Morning Post
Welcome to another edition of my weekend column – as always, send your takes, tips and trial balloons to tnesi@wpri.com. For quick hits all week long, follow me on Twitter: @tednesi.
1. Warwick Rep. Frank Ferri offered a short-term solution to the 38 Studios bond-payment controversy at Thursday’s Finance Committee hearing: “Maybe we should pay this year’s payment,” he suggested, “and then do our due diligence to come up with a clearer answer.” That sounds sensible. It’s important to remember that lawmakers aren’t being asked to pay the whole $90 million this year; Governor Chafee’s request for this year is only for $2.5 million, which is just 0.03% of next year’s budget – and far less than the $12.5 million that will be required annually starting in 2014. Making the initial payment preserves Rhode Island’s options on the remaining $87.5 million; skipping it will put the state in effective default, with all the consequences that could follow. If lawmakers are upset about the situation, they should amend this year’s payment and require Chafee, Treasurer Raimondo, Speaker Fox and Senate President Paiva Weed to commission a formal study of the consequences of default, as suggested by MMA’s Matt Fabian. (In fact, why wasn’t that done months ago?) In this age of bailouts and austerity, it’s understandable that lawmakers don’t want to pay bondholders money to which they aren’t even legally entitled – but if the direct and indirect costs of default top $90 million, they shouldn’t cut off Rhode Island’s nose to spite its face.
2. Staff changes are coming to Congressman Cicilline’s office as he settles into his second term. Word from the Beltway is that Scott Fay, who’s been Cicilline’s chief of staff since the former Providence mayor went to Washington, is preparing to leave Capitol Hill. Fay has spent more than a decade working in Congress for Cicilline, California’s John Garamendi and the late Ted Kennedy. The pair are scouting for a new chief of staff to be put in place before Fay’s departure.
June 7th, 2013 at 2:59 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – R.I. Education Commissioner Deborah Gist was already the highest paid state education official in New England even before the Board of Education voted to extend her contract – which includes a 2% annual raise – by two years Thursday.
June 7th, 2013 at 12:55 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse defended the Obama administration’s use of surveillance in terrorism investigations on Friday, breaking with fellow progressive lawmakers who have harshly criticized the president’s tactics this week.
June 7th, 2013 at 5:02 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) – It will be two more years for embattled R.I. Education Commissioner Deborah Gist.
The R.I. Board of Education voted Thursday to allow Gist to continue guiding the state’s public schools until 2015, a deal that will throw her square into the middle of a Democratic primary for governor next year that is expected to be contentious.
June 6th, 2013 at 6:20 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – In a battle pitting Rhode Island against Wall Street, Wall Street will always win.
That was the emphatic message Thursday from top aides to Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who warned the state would risk “severe” consequences if lawmakers refuse to pay bondholders roughly $90 million they loaned the R.I. Economic Development Corporation to fund Curt Schilling’s bankrupt video-game company, 38 Studios.
June 6th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
The Tax Foundation put together a set of maps showing how much of their total revenue state and local governments get from different kinds of taxes, using Census data from the 2009-10 fiscal year.
One big takeaway: Rhode Island gets a significantly smaller share of its revenue from income taxes (19%) than Massachusetts (30%) or Connecticut (27%). They rank fifth- and ninth-highest for income-tax share, while Rhode Island ranks 33rd. Here’s a map showing the comparison:
At the same time, Rhode Island is more reliant on property taxes (46%, or 4th-most nationally) than Connecticut (42%/9th) or Massachusetts (39%/15th), though all the New England states are in the top 15:
• Related: Making the case for property taxes across the pond (Sept. 26, 2011)
June 5th, 2013 at 7:11 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The Providence City Council is set to give Mayor Angel Taveras the green light to seize a landmark downtown building that’s been decaying for years.
• Related: Abandoned ‘Dynamo House’ could house URI-RIC nursing school (April 11)
Nesi's Notes covers politics and the economy in and around Rhode Island for WPRI.com. (Twitter: @NesisNotes_WPRI)