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.

3. Speaking of health care, Governor Chafee made a key pick in that arena Thursday when he tapped Dr. Kathleen Hittner to succeed Chris Koller as Rhode Island’s health insurance commissioner, a powerful job that doesn’t exist in any other state. It’s an intriguing pick. Whereas Koller came out of the insurance industry as a former Neighborhood Health Plan CEO, Hittner was a top executive at Lifespan, the state’s most powerful hospital group; she’s best-known for her successful effort to revitalize The Miriam Hospital. Appointing as commissioner a physician with deep knowledge of hospital finance suggests Chafee and Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts want Hittner’s office to drive changes across the state’s medical sector, particularly since she’ll also play a crucial role in regulating the state’s Obamacare exchange. Think about it: there’s only so much the commissioner can do by squeezing Blue Cross and the other insurers – their ever-rising premiums are driven up by the prices Lifespan and other providers charge. To get a sense of how Hittner thinks, watch her September guest appearance on Executive Suite.

4. Cokie and Steve Roberts think Lincoln Chafee’s decision to become a Democrat is another death knell for the moderate middle in American politics. “His conversion … marked another significant step in the gradual extinction of an ancient and honorable political species: Progressive Northeastern Republicans or PNRs,” they wrote in their column this week, adding: “The PNRs are just about gone. And American politics is much poorer without them.” Meanwhile, The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza is writing off Rhode Island Republicans’ chances in 2014 now that Chafee has become a Democrat.

5. There was a late-breaking story Friday out of South County with significant implications: the National Education Association Rhode Island won a National Labor Relations Board election to unionize 27 custodians whose jobs were privatized a year ago by the North Kingstown School Committee. The janitors technically now work for GCA Services Corp., a private firm owned by The Blackstone Group, and thus have the right to strike. No question, this is a shot across the bow. “It sends a message that we won’t back down, that workers have a right to union representation and, to the extent [town officials] thought privatizing was going to take away that right, the NLRB has a different set of rules,” NEARI Executive Director Robert Walsh told me. “Let this be a message to anyone else that has similar ideas – we’re still going to be there, representing workers in the public schools.” Sounds like NEARI is following the “Fortress Unionism” model Rich Yeselson outlines in the new issue of Democracy.

6. My pal Tim White was in Boston this week to cover opening statements in the Whitey Bulger trial, and the biggest initial headline was the defense team’s admission that Whitey, now 83, profited from the drug trade. “While it might come as little surprise that mob bosses would make money any way they can,” Tim said, “it completely shattered the myth that Bulger chased drug dealers out of South Boston.” Although Tim has been reporting on Bulger since the 1990s, “it dawned on me that this trial was the first time I’ve laid eyes on him in the flesh. For years he was a ghost. For the opening statements he’d shaved his beard and wore a green long-sleeved jersey, blue pants and white high-top sneakers.” He arrived to find a massive media scrum outside the Moakley Courthouse, with national and international reporters lined up to cover the trial. “In fact,” Tim said, “I sat next to a correspondent from the Irish Times – who began typing furiously when the defense argued Whitey could never have been an FBI informant because it was against his heritage to be a rat.” Another big difference in Boston: reporters can tweet in federal court, unlike in Providence, which Tim says “is seemingly stuck in 1975. Nationally, federal courts still ban cameras in the courtroom – a real shame considering the Bulger trial is also about the erosion of public trust in government – but each court can decide its own policies on phones and computers. Maybe Providence’s Chief Judge Mary Lisi will have a change of heart.” Tim will have more updates on Bulger’s trial in the months ahead.

7. Angel Taveras and Lincoln Chafee are at odds over whether Providence’s streetcar proposal is ready for a $39 million federal TIGER grant; Chafee has thrown his weight instead behind an application for $10 million to fix up the roads in Apponaug. Greater City: Providence’s Jef Nickerson thinks Taveras has the better of the argument, yet in making his case Jef revealed just how tough it will be for Rhode Island to win any TIGER grants this year: the U.S. Department of Transportation says it received $9 billion in TIGER applications, “nearly 20 times the $474 million Congress made available to the program.” It’s going to be a challenge for either Providence or Warwick to get a significant chunk of change.

8. A dispatch from WPRI.com’s Dan McGowan: “The number one question I’ve received following Tim White’s explosive report on the Providence school accused of running a sweatshop with disabled students has been, ‘How did this go on for 25 years (and four mayoral administrations) without anyone noticing?’ It’s true that the Council of Great City Schools raised an eyebrow about the Birch School in 2011; it’s also true that the R.I. Department of Education asked questions in 2012; and it’s true that the city tried and failed to fire the school’s principal in April. But Providence Superintendent Dr. Susan Lusi said the city’s real mistake was failing to change with the times. ‘As I look at this situation, the standards of practice for [intellectually and developmentally disabled] students, as well as for all students, have changed over time,’ Lusi said Thursday. ‘Speaking for Birch and the Providence Public Schools, we failed to keep up with that change in practice and expectations.’ For what it’s worth, the federal government isn’t just focusing on Rhode Island; the Justice Department is currently taking on the state of Oregon after finding that 61% of the state’s developmentally disabled residents were working in similar ‘sheltered workshops.’”

9. WGBH Boston invited me back for this week’s episode of “Under the Radar,” Callie Crossley’s program about overlooked news stories across New England, along with the Cape Cod Times’ Paul Pronovost and WNHN’s Arnie Arnesen. I shared two Rhode Island stories: the Birch School revelations Dan mentioned above and the fiscal crunch in Woonsocket. The show airs Sunday at 6:30 p.m. on 89.7 FM and online – tune in!

10. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – R.I. Education Commissioner Deborah Gist. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Duffy & Shanley’s David Duffy and Jon Duffy. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him 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.

3. Senator Whitehouse’s unequivocal defense of President Obama’s surveillance programs during this week’s Newsmakers came as somewhat of a surprise, but perhaps it shouldn’t have. Whitehouse is a loyal Democrat who trusts the White House far more with Obama rather than George W. Bush in the Oval Office. As a former U.S. attorney and attorney general, Whitehouse’s deep familiarity with the tactics used by law enforcement may make him more sensitive than some of his colleagues to their side of the argument in these debates. The junior senator has also been displaying a hawkish streak of late, calling for more aid to Syria alongside John McCain. More subtly, though, Whitehouse’s opinions on surveillance may reflect the fact that he believes in a powerful federal government. In Britain, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee has argued that liberals may undercut their own cause when they overemphasize civil liberties, which “turns the state into public enemy number one.” Toynbee wrote in 2007, “That is the traditional rightwing view, but many on the left who should know better are buying into this creed of individualism against the collective.” Perhaps Whitehouse agrees.

4. When Whitehouse isn’t defending surveillance or battling austerity, he can sometimes be found waving the flag of Rhode Island patriotism on the Senate floor thanks to his annual Gaspee Day speech. Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren happened to be presiding over the chamber Tuesday when Whitehouse delivered this year’s edition, which led to a funny moment as he compared the “rigid theocracy” of her home state with tolerant Rhode Island – watch the YouTube clip here.

5. Sorry, denizens of Smith Hill: it looks like the General Assembly’s 2013 session won’t be ending anytime soon. House Finance Committee Chairman Helio Melo looked at me like I had three heads when I asked whether legislative leaders’ revised budget might be released next week. “I don’t think so,” he replied, and his raised eyebrows said more. That suggests the finance panel won’t take up the budget until the week of June 17-21 at the earliest, and if the House waits the usual seven days before voting on it, they wouldn’t pass it until at least June 24-28. House Finance approved the budget on May 31 last year, so it’s taking considerably longer to finish it this session – perhaps because they have $56 million less to spend than expected.

6. Here’s this week’s dispatch from WPRI.com ace Dan McGowan: “Governor Chafee’s decision to extend Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s contract may have left the teachers’ unions livid, but don’t expect the newly minted Democrat to find himself on U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s speed dial anytime soon. Chafee, who has long expressed concern about federal mandates put in place by the Obama administration, told WPRI.com in May that teacher evaluations and the NECAP graduation requirement were two issues where he saw ‘room for improvement’ in the coming years. Both Gist and Board of Education Chairwoman Eva Marie Mancuso deflected questions Thursday about whether either initiative would be slowed down or scaled back now that Gist’s contract has been renewed. However, Mancuso didn’t offer a ringing endorsement for the policies: ‘Whether they go forward the way they are or not, we’ll see what happens,’ she told reporters after the vote.”

7. A passage in Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s Princeton commencement speech last weekend stuck out to me. “Honest error in the face of complex and possibly intractable problems is a far more important source of bad results than are bad motives,” Bernanke argued. “For these reasons, the greatest forces in Washington are ideas, and people prepared to act on those ideas.” Both statements are true about Providence, as well.

8. One more update from Washington: David Cicilline got some attention from BuzzFeed this week in a front-page story about the growing House LGBT Equality Caucus, which he co-chairs. “What this year marks is not just that we’re here but that we’re here in a big enough number that we have a real caucus, with staff, so that now the work that we’re doing can be supported,” Cicilline told the site. His spokesman Rich Luchette reports the LGBT Caucus has 108 members total (107 Democrats and one Republican, Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen) and Cicilline is taking an active role in raising its profile. He also helped find its two staff members, an executive director and a fellow.

9. Did you know local lawyer and GOP activist Steve Frias moonlights as a journalist? His thoroughly researched Cranston Herald columns are consistently terrific – I read him each week, and almost always learn something I didn’t know – and his 2011 book “Cranston and Its Mayors: A History” is an essential primer on Rhode Island’s third-largest city. Steve is giving a talk about the book at the Cranston Public Library’s annual meeting on Tuesday night – the event is free, and he’ll be signing copies of “Cranston and Its Mayors” afterwards. Check it out and buy Steve’s book!

10. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Chairman Colin Kane and Executive Director Jan Brodie of the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission, with PBN’s Patrick Anderson joining me on the panel. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

An earlier version of this post incorrectly said Rep. Frank Ferri was from Cranston, not Warwick.

1. Spin artists from every likely gubernatorial candidate’s camp were out in full force this week following Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s decision to join the Democratic Party, but here’s one thing they all seem to have in common: they all believe their horse will perform well in Providence, the city that made all the difference for Myrth York when she eked out a Democratic primary victory over Sheldon Whitehouse in 2002. York won that race by 926 votes thanks in large part to her 2,379-vote win in the capital city. For Mayor Angel Taveras, supporters can point to his convincing victory in the 2010 Democratic primary and a 2012 Brown University poll that showed 60% of Providence voters believed he was doing an excellent or good job as evidence that he’ll perform well in his home city. Then again, Chafee’s decisive victory in Providence – he won with 50% of the vote – was one of the key reasons he held off Republican John Robitaille in 2010 and he has continuously gone to bat for the city since taking office (just wait until his campaign commercials feature Taveras praising his commitment to Providence). But don’t count out Gina Raimondo either. The treasurer has a strong base on the East Side and was the second-highest vote-getter – less than 1,000 behind Taveras – in the city in the 2010 general election. (By the way, don’t miss Ted’s smart analysis on Chafee’s big switch and what it means for the 2014 race.)

2. Campaign finance fun: We know Raimondo is lapping the field when it comes to fundraising; she has $1.7 million compared with the mayor’s $561,000 and Chafee’s $358,000. But guess know how many people have cut $1,000 checks to at least two of the three likely primary opponents in 2014 since they all took office in 2011? The answer: 84. The list of donors that have hit the trifecta and written $1,000 checks to all three is much shorter: 11. (Note: that does not include donors who have made several smaller donations that add up to $1,000.) Something tells me things will be getting quite awkward at the Hope Club come this time next year.

3. Don’t look now but more than half of the 27 bills included in the Senate leadership’s “Moving the Needle” economic development package have already sailed through that chamber, including legislation that would require the governor to submit a long-term plan for the economy; a bill that would allow unemployed workers to collect unemployment while receiving  six weeks of training at companies; and legislation that incentivizes completing a college degree. Senate spokesman Greg Pare told WPRI.com that while progress has been made, there is still plenty of work to do: “While the Senate has passed many pieces of legislation, none have been enacted yet,” Pare said. “We are taking a varied and comprehensive approach to address the factors which caused Rhode Island to rank poorly in national business-friendliness surveys and to improve the business climate in the state, and look forward to continuing to work towards enactment of the bills.”

4. Major congratulations are in order for my talented colleagues Tim White and Ted Nesi on being named Rhode Island’s top political reporters by The Washington Post’s The Fix blog this week. Having had the honor of working with them over the last few months, I can tell you first hand no one deserved it more. I considered Tim and Ted friends before I joined the team in January; now I consider them mentors. And kudos to Ian Donnis and Scott MacKay from Rhode Island Public Radio for also earning praise from The Fix.

5. A normally quiet corner of Rhode Island is getting some serious attention by state officials charged with overseeing troubled municipal pension plans. As Tim and Ted previously reported, elected officials there have said they are not legally responsible for a non-teacher school employee plan that is set to run out of money by 2025. Many members of the state pension study commission haven’t taken too kindly to the apparently unprecedented approach by Coventry to wash their hands of a pension plan and called a special meeting this past Thursday to deal with the controversy. Earlier this week WPRI.com obtained a rather terse letter from the Coventry town manager, threatening to sue the state if Rhode Island officials withheld local aid over the scuffle. It’s likely the case will end up in court.

6. With a few weeks left in the legislative session, there are still plenty of unanswered questions on the table, but here’s one bill we know is dead: the Senate’s bid to add another member from its chamber to the Joint Committee on Legislative Services. Currently, the committee – which administers the General Assembly’s $39.5 million budget – is comprised of three members of the House and two members of the Senate, but the Senate wants to even things up to wrestle control away from Speaker Gordon Fox. But while the bill passed unanimously in the Senate, it is not being considered in the House, according to spokesman Larry Berman. “There are three House members of JCLS because there are twice as many members in the House as there are in the Senate,” Berman told WPRI.com. “This is a bill that has been introduced for many years and never passes in the House.”

7. The Providence City Council on Friday gave first approval to Mayor Taveras’s $662 million budget that increases residential property rates while holding the line on commercial, motor vehicle and personal property taxes. And while nearly every member of the council acknowledged the tax hike will be a tough pill to swallow for residents, there is at least some silver lining: With Taveras eyeing the governor’s race and City Council President Michael Solomon and Councilwoman Sabina Matos considering bids for mayor, Providence residents are more likely to see Gov. Chafee embrace the Tea Party than they are to see another tax increase in an election year.

8. Speaking of Chafee, here’s something that slipped under the radar this week: On the same day he officially joined the Democratic Party, the governor also published the salaries of every single state employee on his transparency portal website. (It’s worth noting that Rhode Island is one of the few states where the highest-paid state worker isn’t a basketball or football coach.) The governor’s office also posted the status of every current R.I. Economic Development Corporation loan; loans in default weren’t included.

9. A mishmash of must-reads from the week: With the Taveras administration looking to beef up the Providence Redevelopment Agency, Boston Magazine goes deep on the PRA’s sister organization… Ben Austen’s fascinating look at the Chicago housing crisis… For the education crowd, the New Haven Independent analyzes the graduation rates at one of the Achievement First high schools… And here’s my story on chronic absenteeism in Rhode Island… Congratulations to Ed Achorn on being named editorial page editor at The Providence Journal… For sports fans, don’t miss the Wall Street Journal’s look at the greatest – and most pathetic – ballplayer of all time or Terrence McCoy’s brilliant profile on Dennis Rodman… Thanks to Bob Plain for sharing a Guardian piece on unpaid internships in journalism… For the techies, everything you need to know about startups… The Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi has some interesting thoughts on the race to replace Mayor Thomas Menino.

10. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Eyewitness News political analyst and pollster Joe Fleming and Providence Journal Editorial Page Editor Edward Achorn. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – David Marble, president and CEO of OSHEAN, and Rhode Island Business Plan Competition winners Alison Cariati of jeweler Haverhill and Tyler Benster of tech startup Azavy. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). Ted will be back here next Saturday morning. Thanks for having me!

Dan McGowan ( dmcgowan@wpri.com ) covers politics, education and the city of Providence for WPRI.com. Follow him on Twitter: @danmcgowan

1. An iconic local property is empty, with its famous corporate tenant gone. Politicians want to see the place occupied and thriving, but the developer says he needs government support. Think it’s the Superman building? Think again – this was Boston’s Downtown Crossing, longtime home of Filene’s Basement. Back in 2010 Steve Roth, chairman of the developer that owned Downtown Crossing, boasted about using a “blight” strategy in New York City: “I was thinking in my own awkward way, that the more the building was a blight, the more the governments would want this to be redeveloped; the more help they would give us when the time came. And they did.” After hearing this, an outraged Mayor Menino threatened to seize the Downtown Crossing site by eminent domain, and eventually revoked Roth’s permits; a new developer is now in place. Here in Providence, High Rock Development says the economics of the Superman building won’t work for the firm without a public subsidy to convert it into apartments – and High Rock also says it won’t sell, leaving the structure in limbo. Spokesman Bill Fischer told me High Rock won’t rule out mothballing the Superman building, either: “That’s not a political tactic; it’s just sound real estate to take a step back and say, who can we get in there?” The tale of Downtown Crossing, though, illustrates why Rhode Islanders are wary: developers know they have serious leverage when they control the fate of a beloved local landmark, and they may not be afraid to use it.

2. A programming note: I’ll be away next week but never fear – Nesi’s Notes will be as good as ever. I’ve commissioned thought-provoking guest posts from four Rhode Islanders that are sure to spark some debate. Plus, my colleagues Dan McGowan and Tim White will be posting their usual must-read reports on the blog as always. (And yes, the individual entries are called posts – not “blogs.”) Check in every day and follow @NesisNotes_WPRI on Twitter. I’ll be back June 4.

3. Speaking of Dan McGowan, here’s his weekly dispatch to the Post: “With Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras already jockeying for position ahead of their seemingly inevitable Democratic gubernatorial primary next year, it will be worth watching how aggressive the Young Democrats of Rhode Island get in supporting either candidate. The group – whose president is former Anthony Gemma spokesman Alex Morash – recently voted to amend its bylaws to allow the organization to endorse candidates in primaries. ‘It is important to have more young people involved in the democratic process and we want to assist people running,’ Morash told WPRI.com, adding: ‘The next step will be forming a PAC.’ The change to allow endorsements would seemingly benefit Taveras – the board is filled with progressive organizers – but Morash said it’s too early to tell which candidate will win the Young Dems’ support.”

4. An important clarification to last week’s column item about the proposed Ocean State Regional Water Authority. I wrote that the authority would be exempt from oversight by the R.I. Public Utilities Commission, but that’s an exaggeration: the commission wouldn’t have oversight over any sale or lease agreement entered into by the authority, but water rates and water quality would be overseen. Providence Water Supply Board Chairman Brett Smiley, who backed the proposal, acknowledged to me the outlook for passage this year isn’t promising, but he’s not giving up. “I think the bill is a complex piece of legislation that has many good things that’s going to take people a while to digest,” Smiley said. “It may be a two-session endeavor.”

5. A fascinating longread from The New Republic: “The Science of Loneliness: How Isolation Can Kill You.”

6. Time for a checkup with the congressional delegation. … President Obama has nominated Jack Reed’s legal counsel and senior policy adviser, Kara Stein, to serve on the SEC. “Kara is a real expert on securities law and a dedicated public servant,” Reed said in a statement. “She has earned bipartisan trust and respect. Her departure will be a loss for my office and a real gain for the SEC and those it protects.” … Sheldon Whitehouse got some favorable publicity for gently correcting Chuck Grassley on the definition of “court-packing.” The publicity was less favorable for Whitehouse’s ill-timed Senate speech about Oklahoma tornadoes and climate change. … Ben Veghte of Social Security Works took to HuffPo to defend David Cicilline after PolitiFactRI‘s latest ruling, writing: “Rather than misinterpreting his words, [Cicilline] should be congratulated – certainly given the benefit of the doubt – for having such a keen understanding of the issue that he could respond to a question in a live interview so thoughtfully.” … Jim Langevin is concerned about implementation of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, telling WPRO: “Obamacare was designed to exempt over 96% of businesses from the employer-responsibility requirements; however, that has proved little consolation to many Rhode Island small-business owners I have heard from who are attempting to make sense of the new law.”

7. Lincoln Chafee, 60, isn’t sure whether Hillary Clinton, 65, will have the stamina to mount a 2016 presidential campaign. When the Brown Political Review asked the governor whether he thinks Clinton will run, Chafee replied: “I do, at least that’s her plan right now. I don’t know whether the fatigue will set in, whether she can really keep this up. She’s going to do a book and then go on a book tour and eventually, it’s going to catch up to her. It seems like we just ended ’12 but that’s the sport that we’re in.”

8. What’s going on in Coventry? The rural community of 35,000 has been fertile ground for a slow-moving taxpayer revolt against obligations run up by the town’s various government jurisdictions. Most famously there’s the Central Coventry Fire District, which is just months away from liquidation after running a deficit of nearly $1 million [pdf] in 2011-12. Among other debts, the tiny fire district has an unfunded pension liability of $3.3 million. (The numbers are hard to pin down because, unlike cities and towns, Rhode Island’s 91 special districts don’t file financial audits with the state.) And then there’s the bizarre case of the orphaned Coventry Teachers Association/School Related Personnel Pension Plan, which has an unfunded liability of $23 million that town leaders say isn’t their problem. As Tim White and I reported this week, the retirements of hundreds of Coventry workers are riding on whether a solution is found, and state leaders are quite concerned. It’s understandable that Coventry taxpayers may be frustrated about the town’s fiscal situation, but it’s not clear how these two revolts will end.

9. WGBH was kind enough to include me on the panel for this week’s episode of “Under the Radar,” Callie Crossley’s program about overlooked news stories across New England. My contributions were Rhode Island’s weak economy and the Superman building. (Hey, it’s mostly a Massachusetts audience!) The show airs Sunday at 6:30 p.m. on 89.7 FM, so I hope you’ll tune in.

10. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Attorney General Peter Kilmartin. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – a look at Rhode Island’s agricultural revival with Farm Fresh Rhode Island’s Noah Fulmer and Blue Skys Farm’s Christina Dedora. Watch a special showing Monday at 10:30 p.m. after the news on Fox, or catch it during the usual times: Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV, or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox. Dan McGowan will be here next Saturday morning, and I’ll be back in two weeks. Have a good Memorial Day Weekend!

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Providence’s push for a new Ocean State Regional Water Authority deserves a closer look. The bill, which was supposed to get a hearing Thursday but got yanked from the agenda, would pave the way for the city-owned Providence Water Supply Board to lease its system to the new authority. Notably, any lease or sale agreement entered into by the Ocean State Regional Water Authority wouldn’t be subject to approval by the R.I. Public Utilities Commission; if the capital city got a big upfront payment under the terms of the lease, the new water authority would presumably need to borrow a significant amount to pay the tab – money that would come out of ratepayers’ water bills. The new authority would also still need to come up with a lot of cash over the coming decades to pay for more than $300 million in water-infrastructure projects. Selling a water supply isn’t a new idea – London’s system is privately owned and operated, though not without its critics – but if Providence needs cash and the water system needs capital, it’s unclear if a quasi-public is the best approach. An alternative option would be selling or leasing Providence Water to a private company. For example, Aquarion Water Co., a division of Australia’s Macquarie Group, is in talks to buy yet another Connecticut town’s water system, with the promise of cash and new property-tax revenue once the deal goes through. Perhaps a firm like Aquarion could bring capital from outside Rhode Island to invest in the water system. The privatization option is at least worth considering if Providence Water is keen to change the current regime.

2. This week marks the 65th anniversary of the end of passenger trolley-car service in Providence. The United Electrical Railways’ last streetcar ended its final trip at the Swan Point trolley shelter in the early hours of May 15, 1948. “It was, thus, officially ending a transportation era, which began in Rhode Island in 1864, with horsecars,” a local journalist remarked at the time. “The first line was electrified in 1892 and trolley cars hung on despite introduction of busses [sic] in 1932 and trackless trolleys in 1931.” Has the time come for streetcars to make a grand return to Providence (if not Blackstone Boulevard)? Mayor Angel Taveras included the idea in his big economic-development plan, though funding remains elusive; possible solutions have been offered by Jef Nickerson and Stephen Miller.

3. While taping “Lively Experiment” on Thursday, Director of Administration Richard Licht good-naturedly chastised me for overlooking the “silver lining” of Rhode Island’s falling unemployment rate and instead focusing on the state’s shrinking work force. To the extent that reduced unemployment is a sign of reduced human misery, Licht is right to see good news. The question is how much that’s the case. Since January 2010, when the jobless rate peaked, the number of unemployed Rhode Islanders has fallen by 18,510 – yet the number of employed Rhode Islanders has risen by only 5,624. If those 12,886 unemployed-but-uncounted workers had stayed in the labor force, Rhode Island’s April unemployment rate would have been 11.2%. While that’s still better than the 11.9% unemployment rate of January 2010, it would be far less positive than last month’s actual reported jobless rate of 8.8%. And this isn’t a universal phenomenon: the 6.4% April jobless rate in Massachusetts doesn’t change when you carry out the same exercise, because the Bay State has increased total employment and the size of the labor force since the worst of the recession. That said, DLT statistician Donna Murray told me Friday she thinks a key reason for the recent drop is delayed retirements finally taking place: raw data shows the number of Rhode Islanders ages 55 and older who weren’t in the labor force because they don’t want a job jumped by 15,800 from December to April.

4. We’ve read a lot about various controversies surrounding the Obama administration this week, but some of the most thoughtful critiques of the president didn’t have to do with the daily headlines – they have to do with his entire foreign policy. First there’s Mark Ambinder’s review of “The Dispensable Nation,” which he describes as “the best anti-Obama book I’ve read” thanks to Vali Nasr’s critique of “a president with extreme myopia.” It fits right in with two other new pieces on Obama’s Syria policy: Dexter Filkins’ long New Yorker analysis, and Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest Bloomberg View column.

5. A loyal and good-looking Saturday Morning Post reader informs me Rhode Island’s capital gets a mention from indie band Vampire Weekend on their new album. The lyrics to “Hannah Hunt,” the sixth track on the release, begin: “A gardener told me some plants move / But I could not believe it / Til me and Hannah hunt / Saw crawling vines and weeping willows / As we made our from Providence to Phoenix.” Long trip.

6. The New York Times’ David Carr has a must-read column this week about the disastrous business strategy of Advance Publications in New Orleans, where their Times-Picayune is under assault from The Advocate of Baton Rouge. A recent raid of Times-Pic journalists by The Advocate, Carr writes, “served as a reminder that The Times-Picayune’s former monopoly over talent was a thing of the past. That doesn’t mean that The Advocate will have anywhere near the impact on New Orleans that The Times-Picayune once did, or that it will magically defy the laws of contemporary publishing economics. But it does suggest that Advance’s belief that it had New Orleans to itself and could do as it wished was deeply mistaken.”

7. This week’s dispatch from WPRI.com ace Dan McGowan: “Providence City Council President Michael Solomon this week announced plans to create a 15-member commission tasked with studying the vacant ‘Superman building’ and other potential economic-development projects throughout the city. Both the council and the Taveras administration have expressed concern about offering incentives to help turn the 111 Westminster St. property into apartments – the city has already approved 13 tax stabilization deals since 2011 – but Councilman Terry Hassett said the city must find a way to preserve the iconic structure: ‘We simply cannot allow 111 Westminster to languish,’ he said. No matter what recommendations the new commission makes for the building, the state will still need to subsidize at least some of the project, according to Bill Fischer, a spokesman for High Rock Development, which owns the property. Fischer said his client has continued to meet with Governor Chafee, Mayor Taveras and House and Senate leadership and that he hopes leaders are beginning to understand the magnitude of the project. ‘It’s hard to imagine a refurbished Kennedy Plaza with an empty Superman building sitting next it,’ Fischer told WPRI.com.” Read all of Dan’s reporting here.

8. Congratulations to The Providence Journal’s Phil Marcelo, who was selected this week as one of the International Center for Journalists’ 14 International Reporting Fellows for 2013. Phil will travel to Liberia in mid-July to report for the Projo on how Rhode Islanders are helping the country rebuild after its civil war. By coincidence, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was in Washington this week, where she met with both U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and Congressman David Cicilline.

9. Rhode Island PBS was kind enough to include me on the panel for this week’s episode of “A Lively Experiment,” along with Richard Licht, Gary Sasse and Maureen Moakley. Topics include the State House fight over economic development, the various scandals in Washington, and whether Richard deserved that raise. Watch tonight at 7 p.m. on WSBE Learn (Ch. 36.2), Sunday at noon on WSBE-TV (Ch. 36.1) or online at the RI PBS blog.

10. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – former Treasurer Frank Caprio in his first TV interview since the 2010 campaign. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – ShapeUp CEO Rajiv Kumar. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the Ocean State Regional Water Authority wouldn’t be subject to oversight by the R.I. Public Utilities Commission; the authority’s lease and sale agreements would not be subject to the commission’s oversight, but its other activities would be.

1. Now that we know both Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras have hedge funds managing big chunks of Rhode Island’s biggest and second-biggest public pensions, it’s likely citizens and other policymakers will want to take a closer look at their investing strategies. (Taveras aides emphasize that, unlike Raimondo, the mayor didn’t actively move money into hedge funds – he just left it there after taking office.) The treasurer has defended her use of hedge funds as a way to, well, hedge – to invest in assets that won’t move in lockstep with the stock market à la 2008. Yet while publicly traded stocks have rebounded smartly since the recession, The Economist reports that hedge funds are “going nowhere fast.” An index fund with 60% equities and 40% bonds would have returned more than 90% over the past decade; hedge funds returned only 17% after fees. Raimondo doesn’t dispute this, saying that she and the State Investment Commission have made a strategic choice to accept lower returns in order to minimize losses. Still, government pension funds are the ultimate long-term investors: should they have piled into public equities when they were cheap in 2008-09 rather than run away from them – particularly for systems whose funding levels are only 59% (Rhode Island) and 36% (Providence)? Without big investment gains, taxpayers and retirees will be left to fill those sizable shortfalls. Josh Barro, though, says Raimondo has this right: “Higher equity rates of return are purely compensation for risk, and downside risk would be born by RI taxpayers. … Hedge funds might be bad for other reasons, e.g., they charge too many fees. But she’s right not to chase returns by adding risk.”

2. With private-sector labor in a seemingly unstoppable decline, there’s been some interesting discussion on the left lately about alternative ways of organizing workers outside of traditional unions. Josh Eidelson tackled the question in The American Prospect earlier this year, and this week The Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson weighed in. Some of the ideas sound reminiscent of Fuerza Laboral, the Central Falls-based group that helps low-paid workers fight employer exploitation. Josie Shagwert, Fuerza’s former executive director, explained its work on Executive Suite last Labor Day.

3. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse had a notable victory on the Senate floor this week, winning 67 votes for his proposal to create a National Endowment for the Oceans, Coasts and Great Lakes, which would fund aquatic research, restoration and conservation. Notably, 13 Republicans voted in favor of Whitehouse’s proposal, among them John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Jeff Sessions, Saxby Chambliss and Thad Cochran – a sign the senator has stronger relationships across the aisle than some back home might expect in light of his liberal image. (Not that Whitehouse’s lefty bona fides should be in doubt: the other night MSNBC’s Chris Hayes devoted a TV segment to the senator’s most recent speech on climate change.) That said, the oceans endowment is still a long way from handing out grants. It’s unclear if and when the House will take up the Water Resources Development Act reauthorization that it’s attached to, it doesn’t have any designated funding yet, and last year the measure was stripped out of a BP cleanup bill by House-Senate conferees. Legislating is a long game.

4. Speaking of the Senate, sometimes it seems like Massachusetts freshman Elizabeth Warren is an honorary member of the Rhode Island delegation. She was in Rhode Island last month to headline a fundraiser of Jack Reed, who helped get her onto the Banking Committee and has worked with her to defend her baby, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Just this week Warren announced her support for Sen. Whitehouse’s sequester alternative, which would replace the across-the-board spending cuts with revenue from the Buffett Rule and higher corporate taxes. It’s not surprising Warren would make common cause with Reed and Whitehouse – they’re kindred spirits as wonky liberal Democrats from Southern New England. Warren is also in the somewhat odd position of being her state’s senior senator just months after taking office, thanks to John Kerry’s appointment as secretary of state – perhaps she’s looking a bit to her colleagues from the south.

5. A must-read for politicians and bureaucrats - Cass Sunstein on why government forms should be simple.

6. So former Senate President Joe Montalbano will get a Superior Court judgeship from Governor Chafee – no surprise perhaps, considering that in 2011 when I pressed the governor on whether it was appropriate to make Montalbano a magistrate, he gave me a look and replied: “I’m not going to fight with the General Assembly.” Chafee’s decision to give judgeships to Montalbano and another magistrate, Patricia Asquith, is a double-win for the Senate because it will let the chamber dole out two more plum appointments once their magistrate slots are vacant. But is it even constitutional for Rhode Island to have magistrates, who are appointed by judges, and can send people to jail and grant divorces? Former Rep. Keven McKenna thinks not. He argued forcefully before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year that magistrates’ actions are “constitutionally void” and a violation of the will of Rhode Island voters, who approved merit selection 19 years ago, because magistrates exercise the powers of a judge but aren’t picked by the governor and the Judicial Nominating Commission. “Chief judges and chief justices have no authority to appoint anyone to exercise judicial powers. Only the governor can do that,” McKenna said. “Separation of powers is really simple: The governor can only administer, the General Assembly can only legislate, and judges can only adjudicate – they can’t appoint. Appointments are not adjudicating functions.” Those comments fell on deaf ears with the senators in attendance that afternoon – among them Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, who’ll likely be fitted for the black robes herself someday – though Charlestown Rep. Donna Walsh keeps pressing the issue.

7. Could this be the African Century?

8. This week’s dispatch from WPRI.com ace Dan McGowan: “When the Taveras administration announced plans this week to transfer ownership of the decrepit George C. Arnold building on Washington Street to the Providence Redevelopment Agency, it marked the first time in 15 years the city has moved to exercise its use of eminent domain. In 1998, former Mayor Buddy Cianci used that power to take over another crumbling downtown building that housed the Fox Lady, the city’s most famous strip club. In its place now is Bravo Brasserie, a French restaurant that has become one of the jewels of downtown. The Arnold building may not be the only building the city seizes: Taveras has signaled he is willing to keep using those powers to redevelop unkempt properties in the coming months.”

9. My colleague Tim White offers some belated praise for the Chafee administration. Target 12 recently exposed a state worker charged with inspecting needy Rhode Islanders’ home-heating systems rather strangely parking his state car behind his house during work hours. (Watch the video.) Key to the report was a series of documents – time-cards and itineraries – that confirmed the employee not only was on the clock but wasn’t where he told his supervisors he was. In the course of his reporting, Tim tells me he ran into a roadblock with lawyers from the Department of Human Services, who were reluctant to provide the records. “Then Chafee’s office stepped in.” The governor’s spokeswoman, Christine Hunsinger, worked to get all the documentation released to WPRI, telling Tim: “It’s better to be transparent.” (Amen!) Tim also notes that this is different from what happened with an eerily similar 2009 report in which Target 12 found that the entire Department of Labor and Training fraud unit was failing to do its job. The Carcieri administration refused to release the relevant documents, which were eventually leaked. Last summer, however, Chafee signed a beefed-up public records law that called for greater transparency. “Coincidence?” Tim wonders.

10. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Congressman David Cicilline. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Siena Restaurant Group’s Anthony and Chris Tarro, plus Laurie White and Jon Duffy from the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce discuss “The Garage.” Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms reading this. See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

This post has been updated.

1. The Superman building wasn’t the only important economic story in Rhode Island this week. You may recall the “Kickstarter for T-shirts” startup Teespring and its 24-year-old founder, Walker Williams, from Williams’ appearance on Executive Suite last fall. Well, a just-published New York Times article reveals Williams and his co-founder have left Rhode Island for Silicon Valley in exchange for a $100,000 investment – and priceless connections – provided by Y Combinator, the famed startup accelerator and the subject of the Times story. (Imagine: at $100,000 a pop, the $75 million borrowed for 38 Studios could have backed 750 Teesprings.) Williams is the star in the article, which reports Teespring just topped $1 million in monthly revenue and has raised $1.3 million from investors; its founders hope to make $1 billion someday. Not that Teespring has bolted Rhode Island: Williams tells me Teespring remains headquartered in Providence and still has 14 people in its local office. Yet the fact that its two founders decamped for the Bay Area shows what an uphill battle Rhode Island faces in retaining its most promising prospects, a challenge that has less to do with high taxes – California ain’t Texas – and more a lack of early-stage capital or a tech sector that can compete with San Francisco and Cambridge. Indeed, even what exists now is imperiled: Providence recently ended its $50,000 equity investments in Betaspring graduates, of which Teespring is one.

2. Food for thought: Lincoln Chafee defeated John Robitaille in 2010 by only 8,600 votes. That means the choices of fewer than 1% of Rhode Islanders – or half the population of Central Falls – determined that the governor would be a socially liberal independent rather than a socially conservative Republican. It’s no understatement, then, to say the 8,600 voters who put Chafee over the top are the reason same-sex marriage will become legal in Rhode Island on Aug. 1, 2013; Robitaille opposed gay marriage and presumably would have vetoed the bill, which might never have reached the governor’s desk in the first place without clear gubernatorial support. Elections matter.

3. It’s interesting to compare this year’s two House votes on same-sex marriage, which secured five additional “yea” votes over the last three months and passed 56-15 this week, up from 51-19 in January. Only two lawmakers actually switched sides, both changing from opponents to supporters – Pawtucket Democrat Raymond Johnston and West Warwick Republican Patricia Morgan. (One other Republican, Brian Newberry, also voted yes.) Four Democrats who missed the roll call in January voted yes this time, as well: South Kingstown’s Spencer Dickinson, Johnston’s Deb Fellela, Hopkinton’s Brian Patrick Kennedy and Charlestown’s Donna Walsh. Three others cast votes in January but failed to on Thursday: Gregg Amore (yes), Mike Chippendale (no) and Ray Hull (no). Last and apparently least there’s Cranston Democrat Peter Palumbo, the sole representative out of 75 who didn’t cast a vote in January or in May – making him the only one of the 113 General Assembly members who never cast a vote on gay marriage this year.

4. WPRI.com ace Dan McGowan reports: “If Providence Mayor Angel Taveras doesn’t act fast, he may not be able to lock down a campaign website by the time he officially announces his plans to run for governor. That’s because the Providence firefighters union has been busy scooping up nearly every Web domain associated with Taveras. WPRI.com discovered at least ten URLs – including AngelTaveras.com, Taveras2014.com and TaverasForGovernor.com – that are registered to the group. Union President Paul Doughty declined to name every domain the firefighters have purchased, but said it’s a strategy they’ve used for the last decade: ‘Sometimes it comes in handy.’ Doughty’s union has been far chummier with Taveras during his first term than they were with former mayor and now congressman David Cicilline; back then, the firefighters owned CicillineLies.com.”

5. Congratulations to my alma mater, Attleboro High School, on getting chosen by The Washington Post as one of America’s most challenging high schools. I know I received a great – indeed, challenging! – education at AHS from teachers like Paula Sollitto, Sheila Rosa, David Sawyer, Peter Glass, Pete Tarsi and Mark Ferruccio.

6. The Providence Journal put up its paywall in February 2012. This week’s circulation report showed the e-edition has added almost 2,000 readers in the year since then, but the print edition has lost far more: nearly 13,000 on Sundays and more than 6,000 on weekdays. With new leadership in the newsroom, one of the big questions for Journal executives going forward is whether a digital replica is the best online strategy going forward. The New York Times and other papers are funding success with metered models – and the Projo’s sister paper, the Dallas Morning News, has announced it will implement one later this week. Could The Journal follow suit?

7. This short on the history of movie opening titles is really fun. Check it out.

8. One of the more interesting politicians to watch next year will be someone who’s not expected to face a tough campaign: David Cicilline. The former Providence mayor was showered with praise at Thursday’s same-sex marriage signing ceremony orchestrated by Lincoln Chafee’s office, and the independent governor would probably like to secure the congressman’s endorsement in 2014. It’s certainly easy to see why Cicilline might be cool to endorsing Angel Taveras considering the political peril Providence’s finances put him in – and Gina Raimondo’s support for the congressman in his hour of need was rather tepid. If Taveras runs for governor, Cicilline could also play an influential role in the race to succeed him as mayor – particularly on his home base of the East Side. What will the congressman do – and how much does it matter?

9. Time and People magazines threw a cocktail party before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last week, and Rhode Island’s own Alex + Ani got one of its products into the 20.6-pound swag bag.

10. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – a one-on-one interview with Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence Thomas Tobin. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Verizon’s Massachusetts/Rhode Island President Donna Cupelo and Dave’s Coffee CEO David Lanning. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. When the Rhode Island Senate backed same-sex marriage, the biggest winners included two people who voted no: Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed and Senate Judiciary Chairman Mike McCaffrey. Gay marriage was a rare issue that not only split the Senate Democrats’ ruling coalition but represented a real political liability for its socially conservative incumbents, McCaffrey foremost among them. While most people aren’t experts on the General Assembly, it wouldn’t have been hard for Ray Sullivan to educate Democratic primary electorates next year if their local senators were blocking same-sex marriage – and to recruit activists to make that case at voters’ doorsteps. (Think about it: How many Warwick voters tick off McCaffey’s name every two years assuming they’re getting someone with relatively Obama-ish views?) Paiva Weed – one of the shrewdest political minds on Smith Hill – has deftly removed the biggest electoral threat facing men like McCaffrey, Dominick Ruggerio and Frank Ciccone, all without any apparent damage to her authority as leader of the upper chamber. She also cleared the path for McCaffrey, a labor ally, to succeed her as Senate president – while simultaneously earning plenty of goodwill from liberals in her caucus, not to mention Speaker Fox. Well played, Madame President, well played.

2. How’s the 2014 race for governor shaping up? Read my new Bloomberg View op-ed and find out.

3. Next month Brown University will move most of its Admissions Office out of the Corliss-Brackett House and down to the Jewelry District in order to free up space on College Hill for academic departments. The decision follows Brown’s announcement that the School of Engineering will stay on the main campus. So is the Admissions move more bad news for the much-hyped “Knowledge District”? Not necessarily. In fact, one smart observer suggested to me, offices might turn out to be better than labs for the long-term viability of the district – they’re denser, and their inhabitants are less likely to be locked inside all day, meaning more activity and more vibrancy. As Cambridge’s Kendall Square learned, all work and no play makes an innovation hub a drab place. The underlying challenge remains, though – getting enough cutting-edge work happening down there that it becomes a place-to-be for top researchers.

4. If you breezed over it Thursday, go take a closer look at House Democrats’ 18 economic bills. They backed the bulk of RIPEC’s proposals for an EDC overhaul and a new commerce secretary – ideas which got a frosty reception from Governor Chafee last year. They included three unsexy requests from the business community – legalizing biweekly pay, making Victory Day a floating holiday, and revamping unemployment benefits. (The first two drew immediate opposition from the AFL-CIO.) There are new initiatives with catchy names – Joe McNamara’s Back to Work RI, Chris Blazejewski’s Innovate RI, a “Rhode Island Made” branding push and a new Rapid Rhody loan program. Then there’s the mysterious Capital Expansion Manufacturing Jobs Credits, which sound like music to Electric Boat’s ears. The question, of course: how much of this will become law? That’s unclear. Speaker Fox told me the plan for now is to pass the economic bills on their own – but he didn’t rule out putting some of them into the budget, an option he has if he wants to play hardball.

5. A dispatch from WPRI.com ace Dan McGowan: “One of the many unanswered questions about the 2014 Providence mayor’s race is whether a candidate from the East Side will throw his or her hat in the ring. Much of the focus has centered on Speaker Fox, but at least one other prominent figure isn’t ruling out running for the office: Myrth York. The former state senator and three-time gubernatorial candidate told WPRI.com she isn’t looking at the mayor’s race right now, ‘but being a politician, you never say never.’ City Council President Michael Solomon, Councilwoman Sabina Matos and educator Victor Capellan have all said they intend to run if Mayor Taveras decides to run for governor. State Rep. John Lombardi, who lost to Taveras in 2010, told WPRI.com he’s ‘still very interested’ in running for the job and Housing Court Judge Jorge Elorza is also considered a likely candidate.” (Editor’s note: check out the fancy new box featuring Dan, Tim White and yours truly on WPRI.com’s home page.)

6. Aaron Renn has a great piece over at Greater City: Providence bemoaning Rhode Island’s decision to spend $100 million extending commuter rail service to South County rather than speeding up service; he suggests “bringing a different philosophy to transit investment, one focused on improving the quality of the connection to Boston from areas that are well-positioned for success rather than expanding service to places like Wickford Junction.” (Imagine if Providence became Attleboro for MBTA trip times?) Don’t miss the 36 comments – not much love for the Wickford station there – and afterwards read Peter Brassard’s 2012 Pedestrian Observations post suggesting an in-state Rhode Island shuttle service.

7. John Chafee passed away more than a decade ago, but he’s still exerting influence over a new generation of politicians. The latest example is D.C. Republican Patrick Mara, who called Chafee his political idol in a Politico piece about “a renewed effort by a handful of GOP candidates and activists to edge the party into being more competitive in America’s cities.” Mara, a 38-year-old Rhode Island native who worked in Chafee’s U.S. Senate office years ago, mounted an energetic campaign for an at-large D.C. Council seat in an election held this week. (“I realized at a young age the benefits of divided government,” Mara told a local blog in 2011. “Rhode Island only had six GOP members of the state legislature. This caused a serious case of group think.”) Alas, Mara came in third despite an endorsement from The Washington Post and campaign support from Chris Christie, to the distress of local Republicans.

8. David Cicilline is a trendsetter in Rhode Island’s congressional delegation. After Cicilline got some attention for his heavily co-sponsored House resolution opposing President Obama on “chained CPI,” Sheldon Whitehouse decided to take a page out of his colleague’s playbook and signed onto an anti-chained-CPI resolution introduced in the Senate by Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders. In fact, Whitehouse wants to give senior citizens more money through Social Security by switching to a new inflation measure specifically for them – although the CBO is somewhat skeptical about the benefit of measuring inflation specifically for the elderly, a so-called “CPI-E.”

9. Could this be the African Century?

10. Health wonks, mark your calendars for Tuesday at 5 p.m.: The Rhode Island Foundation and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island are co-hosting a screening of the documentary “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare” at the Providence Place IMAX, followed by a panel discussion featuring BCBSRI CEO Peter Andruszkiewicz, Rhode Island Medical Society President Dr. Alyn Adrain and Lifespan CEO Dr. Tim Babineau, as well as a Neighborhood Health Plan member. Wonder what the three of them thought about Steve Brill’s magnum opus?

11. Congratulations to Barrington native Nancy Dubuc, who got a big promotion this week to become the new CEO of TV giant A&E Networks, parent of cable networks History, Lifetime and A&E. The New York Times called Dubuc “one of the most successful programmers in cable television” and “an executive who had become one of the most sought-after in the television business,” and the Los Angeles Times said the 44-year-old “led History Channel to historic ratings.” For more on Dubuc, check out this 2011 Marie Claire piece. Someone should invite her back to Rhode Island to speak soon.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Pawtucket Sen. Donna Nesselbush, Cranston Rep. Art Handy and the Ocean State Current’s Justin Katz discuss same-sex marriage. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Hunt Yachts’ Peter van Lancker and Social Venture Partners Rhode Island’s Kelly Ramirez. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

For reasons I’m sure you’ll understand I ran out of time to do a full column, so this is going to be an abbreviated edition. As always, though, send your takes, tips and trial balloons to tnesi@wpri.com. For quick hits all week long, follow me on Twitter: @tednesi.

1. Is Providence ready? That question lingered all week as alarmed Rhode Islanders watched Boston deal with a serious terrorist attack followed by a massive manhunt that shut down America’s Athens. The incident offers an opportunity for officials, organizations and individuals in Providence to double-check their own preparedness for a major catastrophe. To understand how much that could matter – particularly for employees at Lifespan and Care New England – read The New Yorker’s Atul Gawande explain “Why Boston’s Hospitals Were Ready.” Also read Harold Pollack on why all of us should learn first aid.

2. Rhode Island is back on the national radar screen this week. The state’s 2014 governor’s race is already attracting significant attention, with National Journal and National Review both hyping it up in recent days and The Fix moving it to #2 on its list of the most competitive races. (I’ll have my own take on the 2014 state-of-play next week in a new op-ed for Bloomberg View.) And that’s not all. I’m told The New York Times’ Matt Bai will publish a major examination of the 38 Studios debacle in this Sunday’s newspaper – check the business section tomorrow.

3. Two dispatches from Washington, this time on the House side from Jim Langevin and David Cicilline. By a vote of 411-3, Langevin got an amendment added to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act that changed the word “local” to “political subdivision” in a section about power plants’ cybersecurity, which he described as a way of “allowing more utilities to receive the protections built into our bill.” Rhode Island’s pair split over the final vote on the cyber bill: Langevin voted for it, Cicilline voted against it. Meanwhile, the latter is already making a mark in his new perch on the House Budget Committee. This week Cicilline joined with the panel’s powerful ranking Democrat, Chris Van Hollen, and sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner pressuring him to convene a formal conference committee to hash out the chamber’s differences with the Senate over the budget. Cicilline also made The New York Times with his resolution opposing “chained CPI.”

4. Here’s a set of rankings where Rhode Island scores relatively high: the State Technology and Science Index from the Milken Institute. Rhode Island ranked 17th overall in 2012, doing particularly well in the categories of “research and development inputs” and “technology and science work force,” while lagging a bit on “risk capital and entrepreneurial infrastructure.”

5. Don’t miss the exclusive investigation Tim White and I published Wednesday night, for the first time detailing who owns the 38 Studios bonds. Others said it was a secret; we went and found the answer.

6. I had a great time the other night meeting up with the students behind the Brown Political Review, a new student-run magazine at the Providence Ivy. The students leading the publication – Ben Wofford, Alexi Diplas, Carol Kim and Emily Gelber – are energetic and passionate about public affairs and making media matter in the age of BuzzFeed. They’ve also scored interviews recently with Lincoln Chafee and Allan Fung, among others – not bad for a student publication. Keep an eye on them.

7. Mark your calendars: the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on same-sex marriage this Tuesday.

8. Rhode Island PBS was kind enough to include me on the panel for this week’s episode of “A Lively Experiment,” along with RIPR’s Ian Donnis and the Naval War College’s Marc Genest. Topics include the marathon bombings and outlook for the General Assembly. Watch tonight at 7 p.m. on WSBE Learn (Ch. 36.2), Sunday at noon on WSBE-TV (Ch. 36.1) or online at the RI PBS blog.

9. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Christine Ferguson, executive director of the R.I. Health Benefits Exchange, plus Sergei Khruschchev and Reginald Centracchio. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Capstone Properties’ Neil Amper on commercial real estate’s rebound in Rhode Island. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. The conventional wisdom about same-sex marriage has changed jarringly fast. Just last month many questioned whether the measure could pass the Rhode Island Senate; this week I talked to a State House veteran who predicted a signing ceremony by mid-May. The strongest sign came when Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed announced there will be a floor debate on the topic this month – signaling the bill will pass the Senate Judiciary Committee soon. Ray Sullivan, who’s leading the legalization campaign, is cautiously optimistic, telling me: “We think when a vote is called, we can win – in the committee and on the floor.” If so, it’s a credit to the big grass-roots campaign Sullivan and his team have run over the past two-plus years and particularly the last six months, which has convinced many lawmakers that their constituents want them to vote yes – and will remember if they don’t. Supporters have also played a shrewd inside game by not demonizing Paiva Weed, a decision that was clearly already paying dividends when she appointed the new Judiciary Committee. (“We respect the process in the Senate and look forward to continuing to make our case,” Sullivan says.) No doubt the local activists have also gotten a boost from a shift in the national conversation, with figures including Barack Obama and Rob Portman coming out in support of gay marriage rather dramatically over the last 12 months. It seems Rhode Island could be the “hip, happenin’ place” of Lincoln Chafee’s dreams sooner than anyone expected.

2. Whither the “Knowledge District”? Just two days after Chafee and other leaders broke ground on the old 195 land, Brown University revealed its engineering school won’t be moving to the Jewelry District after all – despite school officials’ past suggestions to the contrary. Brown’s reasons for keeping engineering on College Hill make sense, but the decision means the district still lacks a major anchor. One option would be a URI-RIC nursing school at Dynamo House, but it’s not clear that will come to fruition – or how soon it will if it does. These questions will top the agenda for two new executive directors: Marcel Valois at EDC and Jan Brodie at the 195 Commission. Valois is a known quantity; does Brodie have what it takes?

3. As people digest Ted Siedle’s tough Forbes critiques of Treasurer Raimondo, it’s worth paying close attention to the substance of what he’s saying. Siedle has zeroed in on how Raimondo has shifted the pension fund into hedge funds – a shift that was not part of the 2011 law that upset many of Raimondo’s critics. Remember: the $7 billion pension fund’s investments are set by the State Investment Commission, not the General Assembly; Raimondo could have engineered the change in investments even if she never got lawmakers to change retirees’ benefits. All Raimondo needed was the affirmative vote by the State Investment Commission to approve a new asset-allocation plan, which she got – unanimously – in July 2011. (The commission’s members are Raimondo, Rose Gallogly, Thomas Fay, Paula McNamara, Andrew Reilly, J. Michael Costello, Robert Giudici and Marcia Reback.) Siedle himself wrote in his first piece, “I’m all for public pension reform – prudent contributing and investing coupled with sustainable benefits” – but he thinks Raimondo isn’t going to reap the returns she claims she will by investing so much in hedge funds. (He’s not alone.) Individuals associated with those investments also have good reason to support her politically, whether through her campaign or Engage Rhode Island. This line of criticism could be a problem for the treasurer over the next two years if she does indeed run for governor.

4. Speaking of pensions, don’t miss my analysis of Angel Taveras‘ historic settlement, finalized Friday.

5. The eagle-eyed Tim White informs me that Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s D.C.-based husband, Jock Friedly, has caused a stir down on Capitol Hill over the last two weeks after LegiStorm, his website about Congress, started publishing House and Senate staffers’ tweets. He’s probably used to this sort thing by now, though; a 2009 Washington Post profile of Friedly began: “Go ahead. Hate him. Jock Friedly couldn’t care less. This is a man who counts being burned in effigy among his career highlights.”

6. A dispatch from WPRI.com ace Dan McGowan: “The election of state Sen. Maryellen Goodwin as its chairman wasn’t the only thing the Providence Democratic City Committee changed on Thursday. For the first time in decades, the vote didn’t take place at the storied Rosario Society Hall in Silver Lake; instead the Dems opted for Speaker Fox-favorite Asian Palace on North Main Street. At least one former party chairman was disappointed with the change: ‘Generations of meetings have taken place there and it should be something to hold onto,’ Ken Richardson, who resigned in 2011, told WPRI.com. ‘Through all the coming together and all the infighting, it was still the place to go and meet. It symbolizes the Providence Democrats are in unity when we meet there.’ RIPR political analyst Scott MacKay told WPRI.com he can remember when Silver Lake was considered the center of city politics, but he said the neighborhood has changed dramatically over the last 25 years. ‘You’re more likely to hear Spanish walking down Pocasset Avenue than Italian,’ MacKay said.”

7. Also from Dan McGowan – Taveras raised $177,000 in the first quarter (and California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez says he’s running for governor). Still waiting to learn Raimondo’s haul.

8. Now here’s something that may surprise you. Governor Chafee’s spokeswoman, Christine Hunsinger, has a new book coming out Tuesday called “Terror Red,” a post-9/11 thriller co-authored with Col. David Hunt. But that’s not the surprising part; what’s surprising is that the book is blurbed by none other than Bill O’Reilly – yes, that Bill O’Reilly, the one who’s not exactly a Chafee fan. (“‘Terror Red’ is an exciting, tightly written thriller that could actually happen,” the Fox News commentator’s blurb says. “Let’s hope it does not.”) Unsurprisingly, O’Reilly’s connection isn’t with Hunsinger – it’s with co-author Hunt, who serves as a Fox News military analyst. Hunsinger – who toiled for former Chafee rival Ken Block before joining the governor’s team in 2011 – researched and edited Hunt’s previous nonfiction book “On the Hunt,” leading to their collaboration on “Terror Red.”

9. Rep. Charlene Lima’s proposal to create a state bank is intriguing. In recent years lefty publications The American Prospect and Mother Jones have both given favorable coverage to the Bank of North Dakota, the nation’s only state-run bank, and in a time of continued financial strife it seems worth exploring. But RIFuture’s Samuel G. Howard, no foe of government, thinks a state bank isn’t a good match for Rhode Island ca. 2013 – though his fellow contributor Tom Sgouros has extolled the idea in the past.

10. Washington PR guru Brendan Daly – former spokesman for Nancy Pelosi, and current brother of WPRI 12′s own Sean Daly – writes in to report that the New England Educational Opportunity Association gave its Claiborne Pell Award to Stan Salett during a banquet last Thursday at the Warwick Crowne Plaza. Salette worked as an aide to all three Kennedy brothers and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington; later he got the federal Upward Bound program off the ground.

11. Did you know Margaret Thatcher created National Grid, the utility giant that has a near-monopoly on electricity and gas distribution in Rhode Island? ‘Tis true. As part of her push to decentralize key British industries, in 1990 Thatcher’s government privatized the old state-run Central Electricity Generating Board – and created National Grid. Just a decade later, Thatcher’s creation purchased New England Electric System and its Rhode Island subsidiary, The Narragansett Electric Co.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – a debate on the newly proposed gun bills between Reps. Linda Finn and Mike Chippendale. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Brown University’s Mark Blyth discusses his new book, “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.” Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Gina Raimondo came out swinging Friday against Forbes.com contributor Ted Siedle in response to his blistering attack on her management of Rhode Island’s pension fund. While there was no smoking gun in Siedle’s broadside, his details about the $7 billion pension fund’s new hedge fund portfolio may have surprised those who didn’t read the Institutional Investor story about the treasurer. Putting nearly one-fourth of the fund in illiquid assets represents “massive risk,” Siedle argues. But Raimondo says she’s actually reduced risk compared with the equity- and cash-heavy portfolio of three years ago. “It is right in line with best practices throughout the industry,” she said. For Raimondo, the key fact is this: Rhode Island’s pension plan is only about 60% funded – and it was only 48% funded before the 2011 overhaul, a status quo that could be restored if Judge Taft-Carter throws out the law. Rich investment returns are the only option to close the fund’s shortfall without bigger contributions from workers and taxpayers. Still, even Raimondo seemed to acknowledge it’s fair to worry about the fees charged by hedge funds – something Dean Baker also noted when I interviewed him. Many states “pay huge management fees on pensions, and that’s something that really should be scrutinized,” Baker warned. “I think oftentimes they’re being ripped off. … So that would be a place you’d just be carving fat out of the system.”

2. It didn’t get much attention, but a set of economic rankings came out this week that saw Rhode Island place pretty high – the Beacon Hill Institute’s annual State Competitiveness Report [pdf], which ranked Rhode Island 23rd. (Mississippi was last.) PBN has a summary here, and the main takeaway is that Rhode Island looks better when the scope of the survey is widened beyond government finance. The bad news: Massachusetts is #1, and as Rob Atkinson once told me, “You can be Minnesota, where you have high costs but super-good quality, or you can be Mississippi, where you’ve got low costs but bad quality. And the whole problem is Rhode Island’s got the costs of Minnesota and the quality of Mississippi.”

3. It sounds like Education Commissioner Deborah Gist won’t be going anywhere anytime soon – music to the ears of her supporters and bad news for her opponents, no doubt. With Gist’s contract set to end, Tim White and I asked Board of Education Chairwoman Eva-Marie Mancuso on Newsmakers what happens next. “The governor is committed to have her extend the contract and be able to stay on in Rhode Island. We’re in negotiations right now,” she replied. Mancuso said she’s reviewing Gist’s annual performance evaluations and hopes the process – which will take place behind closed doors – can get wrapped up before the June 6 expiration of Gist’s contract. For now, though, Gist is the only candidate: “We have no search out there,” Mancuso said. “We are working right now to work with Commissioner Gist on extending her contract.”

4. Rhode Island spends a lot of time talking about its tax rates, but Bloomberg View’s Evan Soltas argues other policy levers can be crucial for tackling inequality: “Criminal-justice reform and education reform may be the most powerful anti-inequality weapons. … There’s more to be done – in public health, intellectual property and many other areas.” Worth a read.

5. A suggestion from Ryan Avent highlighted in last week’s column – that one way for metropolitan areas like Providence to increase housing supply is by improving transportation to let more people work in the city center – got me thinking about a related idea put forward by Pedestrian Observations blogger and former Providence resident Alon Levy. In 2011 he suggested speeding up MBTA commuter rail service in order to speed up a Providence-Boston trip from 70 minutes to 55 – which could help loop Providence into the thriving Boston economy. Read more of Levy’s ideas here.

6. The new “Great Gatsby” movie looks pretty damn good. Watch the trailer. You’ll agree.

7. This week’s episode of Executive Suite is one of my favorites so far – a look at the business of baseball with the top brass from the Pawtucket Red Sox. Among other things I learned doing research for the show: the team’s official name is the Pawtucket Red Sox Baseball Club Inc. … Forbes values the PawSox at $19 million, tied for 15th most-valuable in the minor leagues … its current owners are Madeline Mondor, wife of the the late Ben Mondor, along with President Mike Tamburro and GM Lou Schwechheimer … McCoy Stadium is owned by the city of Pawtucket, which leases it to the state of Rhode Island … Governor Chafee’s budget proposes investing $4.1 million in McCoy over the next few years to replace outfield lighting, upgrade accessibility and improve seating and parking.

8. Rhode Island’s U.S. senators are an industrious pair. Two under-the-radar dispatches about them from D.C. One: Sheldon Whitehouse’s “choose-your-own-adventure” carbon tax got an extended writeup in Ezra Klein’s influential Wonkblog. Two: Jack Reed’s beloved new Office of Financial Research got a favorable profile in The Fiscal Times as “The Secret Player Who Could End ‘Too Big To Fail.’” And if that’s not enough U.S. Senate coverage for you, check out David Bernstein’s Elizabeth Warren profile in the final Boston Phoenix.

9. Speaking of Congress, Rhode Island historian laureate Patrick Conley marked the centennial of the birth of Rhode Island Congressman John Fogarty (1913-1967) with this fascinating Projo remembrance. Conley argues that Fogarty “was the Ocean State’s most productive congressman yet, and had more impact on the world than any other Rhode Island political figure because of his path-breaking health initiatives.” (Former Lt. Gov. Charlie Fogarty is his nephew.)

10. “Offering to fix schools is one of the easiest promises to make during any campaign, but delivering on that type of pledge tends be more difficult,” reports WPRI.com ace Dan McGowan in a dispatch to The Saturday Morning Post. “That said, 2014 will likely see no shortage of statewide candidates who wish to make education a central focus of their campaign. Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, a likely candidate for governor, has been making the rounds touting his efforts to reform the city’s schools while Dan McKee, who is expected to run for lieutenant governor, serves as chairman of Rhode Island Mayoral Academies and is a favorite among ed reformers. It doesn’t end there. Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, a Republican who wants to run for governor, was a major advocate for bringing the Achievement First charter school to the state, and expected secretary of state candidate Ed Pacheco actually heads up an education-related nonprofit when he isn’t running Rhode Island’s Democratic Party.” Follow McGowan on Twitter.

11. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably wondered where you can get professional photographs of Lincoln Chafee, Arlene Violet and yours truly flanked by cats and dogs. The answer: Animal Prints, the annual fundraiser for the East Greenwich Animal Protection League. More than two dozen Rhode Islanders took pictures with pets at iconic locations around the state, and the prints will be sold off in a silent auction at the event, this Friday (April 12) at 7 p.m. at Crestar Picture Framing (51 Liberty St., East Greenwich). Admission is $20 and tickets will be available at the door – you may win a $500 Cardi’s gift certificate. See you there!

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – R.I. Education Board Chairwoman Eva Marie Mancuso. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Pawtucket Red Sox President Mike Tamburro and GM Lou Schwechheimer. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. I’m not Walter Cronkite, but I think I know the big reason Lincoln Chafee’s approval rating is so low. It’s not the media – it’s this chart. The percentage of Rhode Islanders with a job was at a historic low when Chafee took office, and it’s barely budged after two years under his leadership. To Chafee, fiscal responsibility means one thing: balanced budgets. But the best way to balance a budget is robust economic growth, and Chafee has shown little imagination when it comes to boosting short-term demand in Rhode Island. No wonder then that people are warming up to the idea of abolishing the sales tax: doing so would put money in Rhode Islanders’ pockets, which is a more obvious response to the state’s present crisis than anything Chafee has put forward. The governor’s aides complain that he doesn’t get credit for deficit reduction, but it’s hard to give him much when his best-known proposal for doing so – the 2011 sales-tax overhaul – crashed and burned in spectacular fashion. Chafee does have accomplishments – ending transportation borrowing, fixing the DMV, repairing Central Falls, avoiding a supplemental budget – but they’re limited. And while there are issues where his views are broadly popular – 38 Studios, municipal pensions, gay marriage – he’s not an op-ed columnist (or a U.S. senator); he’s the governor, and people care more about his effectiveness than his prescience. One reason why coverage of Angel Taveras and Gina Raimondo may seem more favorable is because they’re both much more committed than Chafee is to explaining themselves clearly – and repeatedly. Until Chafee improves, his approval rating won’t.

2. Three recommended reads about economic development. Stephen Miller offers lessons for Providence, inspired by Buffalo. “It’s time Providence started playing to its natural and historical advantages instead of ignoring them,” he writes. James Kennedy issues a call-to-arms: “Allowing the Superman Building to be demolished for more car-oriented development could be the straw that breaks Providence’s back, while a successful push to save the building could be an opening hurrah for making our city more transit and bike oriented.” Finally, while we’re talking development, what about switching to a land tax in the capital city?

3. We talk a lot about Rhode Island’s falling population, but when you dig into the data the picture gets more nuanced – and more interesting. The state is definitely losing locals: in 2011-12, the net result of migration between Rhode Island and other states was a 5% decrease in population, the 5th-biggest loss in the nation. But that same year, Rhode Island reported a 3.4% increase in residents from net international migration, the 11th-biggest gain in the country. Basically, Rhode Island is shedding Americans and attracting foreigners. That trend, if it continues, has big implications for the state’s future. It also raises the question of whether Rhode Island should be doing more to encourage its residents to have babies.

4. One reason people might be moving away – the relatively high cost of housing in Rhode Island. Ryan Avent suggests two ways to increase the supply of housing, thus driving down prices and allowing more people to take part in the Providence-area economy: “You can remove barriers to construction of housing, like zoning and height limits. And you can invest in transport infrastructure that increases access to these metropolitan markets. You can also do both, and allow for greater population density around and along new transport lines, the former providing a market for (and financing for) the latter.” That kind of thinking has led Providence’s Jason Becker to say it should be “a no-brainer” for Downcity homeowners to back a surtax that pays for the proposed streetcar line, which Mayor Taveras says he wants.

5. One thing to consider as discussions about the Superman building continue: opportunity costs. Taxpayers may be asked to provide $40 million (or more) in tax credits for the building’s overhaul – are there other ways to spend that money that would help the city’s economy more? Maybe not. But ask.

6. Last week, House Speaker Gordon Fox was with Gina Raimondo to unveil their road-repair bill. This week, he joined Angel Taveras for the unveiling of the mayor’s economic plan. With those two on a collision course as 2014 nears, I asked Fox if it’s getting awkward for him. “Everyone’s thinking about 2014,” he told me. “It happened to me – the minute I got elected speaker they were already wondering who the next speaker was going to be. At some point it’s about people doing their jobs, and I like to look at it – they’re both my friends, as is the governor, and if it propels them for interest in future office to do a great job, to be dynamic and be creative, then we’re all winners for that.” But, I pressed, would he endorse one of them over the other? “That is a question that’s premature,” the speaker said, sounding exasperated but amused. He added: “We don’t know who the candidates are yet!”

7. A few media notes … congratulations to my pal David Scharfenberg, who’s leaving The Providence Phoenix to become WBUR’s new online reporter in Boston … congrats as well to Philip Eil, who’s taking over as Phoenix news editor … smart move by Justin Katz’s Ocean State Current to go the traditional-article route with its overtime investigation, which led to much media pickup … savvy move by GoLocalProv to bring on Aaron Renn as a regular columnist.

8. Next year could be a big one for mayoral races in Rhode Island if Angel Taveras leaves Providence, Scott Avedisian leaves Warwick, Dan McKee leaves Cumberland and Henry Kinch challenges Don Grebien in Pawtucket. Cranston Mayor Allan Fung is also set for a statewide run, but his four-year term doesn’t end until 2016, so his seat wouldn’t open up unless he won higher office (or resigned). This year could be interesting, too, if Lisa Baldelli-Hunt challenges Leo Fontaine up in Woonsocket or James Diossa draws an opponent in Central Falls.

9. One of this year’s biggest battles on Smith Hill is over the push to rein in payday lending in Rhode Island. My WPRI.com colleague Dan McGowan writes from the front lines: “Much has been made about former House Speaker Bill Murphy lobbying for payday lending giant Advance America, but the group pushing to cap APRs at 36% has brought in a hired gun of their own: former ace fundraiser Brett Smiley. This week Smiley upped the pressure on Speaker Fox to pass a reform bill by convincing four mayors – Central Falls’ James Diossa, Cranston’s Allan Fung, Warwick’s Scott Avedisian and Woonsocket’s Leo Fontaine – to join the likes of Angel Taveras and Gina Raimondo in supporting the legislation. Advance America exec Jamie Fulmer, for his part, says the industry is willing to compromise, but he warns that dramatically lowering the interest rates will force his company out of Rhode Island. The clock is ticking: Fox spokesman Larry Berman expects the payday-lending bill to go in front of the House Finance Committee in ‘a few weeks.’”

10. Did you know the Peanuts gang made a cartoon for the EPA in 1979? Watch:

11. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Massachusetts Congressman Joe Kennedy III. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite - Tim Horan, president of National Grid in Rhode Island. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

12. Happy Easter!

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Friday’s ominous news about coming cuts at Lifespan should make Rhode Island leaders think again about banking on the “meds and eds” to power the state’s economy in the years ahead. There is growing pressure from regulators and insurers for the health-care industry to tighten its belt, a push that got new support from Steve Brill‘s big exposé on hospital prices. The story is similar in higher education (though Brown University could probably charge as much as it wants and still fill the dorms). Down in Washington, apparently the debate is over about whether the federal government should cut back – the only question now is how much austerity and how soon, with health a top target for savings. Researchers in Providence’s vaunted Knowledge District are heavily dependent on the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, both of which are being cut by the sequester; Rhode Island stands to lose nearly $8 million in funding from the NIH. It all presents a huge challenge, one which Margot Sanger-Katz nailed in a must-read National Journal article about Pittsburgh, a city often held up as an eds-and-meds model for Providence. “The health care boom that is propping up the American economy could eventually come back to haunt us,” she warns. Does Rhode Island have a Plan B?

2. Another reason to worry about the meds-and-eds model: it’s not clear it helps the less educated Rhode Islanders who’ve been hit hard by the recession. Aaron Renn suggested recently, “there’s no flow-through to people who aren’t directly tapped into the knowledge economy itself. … [T]he majority of residents are missing out.” What to do? Harvard’s Ed Glaeser thinks the answer is simple: ”The best policy for local economic development is to attract and train smart people and then get out of their way.”

3. A Campaign 2014 dispatch from my ace WPRI.com colleague Dan McGowan: “With Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras bringing in political operatives ahead of next year’s election, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung says he too remains ‘seriously interested in the governor’s race.’ The Republican wouldn’t rule out running for a different statewide office, but acknowledged that he enjoys being a chief executive. Fung doesn’t currently have a deep political team like his Democratic counterparts – he still takes personal calls from reporters – but he said that once he gets through his budget in April, he’ll be prepared to make some ‘head-scratching announcements.’” Stay tuned.

4. Reserve your free tickets now for Dan Ariely, the Duke professor whose research and writing on behavioral economics have made him a star of the TED-talk circuit and a New York Times bestselling author. Ariely is speaking in Providence on April 20 as part of RISD’s Presidential Speaker Series.

5. Newsmakers is, of course, appointment viewing week in and week out, but this weekend’s episode is a must-watch for anyone interested in Rhode Island politics: a half-hour interview with Rep. J. Patrick O’Neill, the Pawtucket rebel who bolted from House Speaker Gordon Fox’s leadership team last fall and caused mayhem last week with his (nullified) vote on the ethics bill. Why did O’Neill do it? How did Fox’s opposition to income taxes change their relationship? Who really knew 38 Studios was going to get $75 million? And does O’Neill still want to be the next speaker? Watch and hear his answers. Bonus: Tim White obtained video from the two hearings – the look on Rep. Edie Ajello‘s face as O’Neill makes his motion tells the tale.

6. Did you know a 30% federal tax killed off the big bands in the 1940s?

7. The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual study on rental costs estimates Rhode Islanders need an hourly wage of $18.18 to pay fair-market rent on a two-bedroom apartment – obviously significantly more than many people take home. It’s striking that rental costs remain so high despite years of high unemployment and population loss – what would happen to rents if, God forbid, the state economy actually started humming and more people wanted to move here for work? Rhode Island is already the nation’s second-densest state – the housing stock needs to get closer or higher if supply is going to expand, which would require a very different attitude from residents, regulators and zoning boards. Bringing more people here could be a way to expand the economy and boost productivity – as PBN’s Patrick Anderson put it, current policy is “devaluing one of our prime assets, underutilized urban land.” One suggestion from Nesi’s Notes commenter Mario: legalize basement apartments, which “would increase affordability and values.”

8. Here’s a provocative hypothesis from The American Conservative’s Daniel McCarthy: “The root of the GOP’s problem now is the same as that of the Democrats in 1969: the party’s reputation has been ruined by a botched, unnecessary war – Vietnam in the case of the Democrats, Iraq for the GOP.” Peggy Noonan offered a similar opinion in her column this week.

9. I finally got around to reading the big study of Rhode Island’s antiquated state personnel system and was struck by this statistic: the state government has cut 43% of its HR jobs since 2005, with the number of full-time HR employees dropping from 169 to 97. That brought Rhode Island closer to other governments: the state now has one HR staffer for every 114 state employees, down from one for every 83 in 2005, which means Rhode Island is now in line with New Hampshire and Vermont.

10. Fun fact: Lifespan paid George Caruolo $54,167 for serving on its board of directors in 2010-11.

11. Ted Orson, the attorney who represented Central Falls in its Chapter 9 bankruptcy case, doesn’t expect to see other local lawyers follow in his footsteps. “In Rhode Island I don’t think we’re ever going to need a Chapter 9 again,” Orson said at The Bond Buyer’s conference on distressed municipalities this week. “Negotiation is happening and state court litigation is happening. We believe it will not be necessary.” Orson may be right: the Central Falls disaster clearly scared municipal officials and retirees in many places, making it easier to negotiate previously unthinkable concessions on pension benefits.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Pawtucket Rep. J. Patrick O’Neill. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite - Michael and Timothy Ehrlich, co-founders of the Ocean State Angels investment group, and Daniel Kamil, co-owner of the Cable Car Cinema, to discuss his Kickstarter campaign to save the theater. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

This post has been updated.

1. Why is the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association sending up smoke signals about how much he’d love to have independent incumbent Lincoln Chafee join the party ahead of the 2014 elections? One reason: the White House. Barack Obama clearly likes Chafee and would be glad to give him the same treatment as Charlie Crist. But here’s another reason: Governor Raimondo – specifically, fears about that possibility on the part of national public-sector unions. Blocking the treasurer from winning the governor’s office could be their last shot at preventing her from becoming a national figure who could put a smiling, Democratic spin on cuts in government workers’ benefits. Their voice matters in intraparty debates thanks to the deep pockets of labor groups like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which spend big bucks backing Democratic candidates. Still, blocking Raimondo’s ascent won’t be easy in light of her campaign’s deep pockets and the fact she’s already got full-throated support from the head of Emily’s List.

2. House Speaker Gordon Fox’s allies undoubtedly think their maneuver this week to bottle up the ethics bill served a higher cause: same-sex marriage. The speaker and his allies are locked in a delicate dance with Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed on the issue – trying to find the right balance between pressuring her and protecting her, in the hopes the result will be Senate passage of gay marriage by July. Sending over an ethics bill that Paiva Weed is known to dislike – and takes heat for squashing – was probably not going to butter her up on the marriage issue. Plus, they see Tuesday’s committee vote as an act of revenge by Paddy O’Neill, not a principled stand. Such reasoning is a tad ironic, though, when you consider the majority leader’s own lawyer argued it’s the speaker’s critics who think the ends justify the means.

3. Who will the Republicans put up for statewide office in 2014? Dan Harrop, who hopes to be elected party chairman next week, knows what he wants: Allan Fung for governor, Scott Avedisian somewhere on the ticket, and no primaries. But this week’s Newsmakers shows the GOP isn’t united behind that idea: Harrop’s opponent, Mark Smiley, said he wants Brendan Doherty to run for governor. Of course, in the end it’s up to the potential candidates to decide who’ll run – and while Fung looks like a lock to throw his hat into the ring, Doherty isn’t sure yet.

4. Always on the lookout for Rhode Islanders making a splash in the political world: Gabe Amo, the pride of Pawtucket and a Moses Brown alum, is now working at the White House as a staff assistant in the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Gabe worked on Obama’s 2012 campaign in Chicago last year, and it seems likely he’ll make his way back to Rhode Island at some point down the line. (Full disclosure: we went to college together.) And out west, Warwick native and one-time soccer star Andrea Marcoccio is taking over next month as executive director of the Montana Democratic Party. She’s not the first Rhode Island politico to end up there: Kilmartin campaign chief Brett Broesder worked for a time as the Montana Dems’ communications director.

5. And now for our next act, here’s Jack Reed jumping a barrier at the Capitol.

6. I’m grief-stricken about the looming execution of Google Reader, the company’s still-popular RSS reader, which has been an essential part of my Internet reading habits for nearly a decade. (The only service I use more is Instapaper.) It’s been suggested that since the service was free, people don’t have the right to complain that Google is pulling the plug – if you like something, pay for it. Fair enough. But Google never asked us to pay! And if the company had, you can bet a lot of people would have paid a reasonable subscription fee to continue using the familiar and functional service. Google has betrayed its loyal Reader fans: providing a service for years to an omnivorous audience that grew dependent on it, then pulling the plug without consultation. That’s their right, of course, but we don’t have to like it. I won’t forget this wisdom from Farhad Manjoo anytime soon: “Reader’s death illustrates a terrible downside of cloud software – sometimes your favorite, most indispensable thing just goes away.” Still, Marco Arment says Google Reader’s death is actually a good thing; I hope he’s correct.

7. Looking for a thought-provoking read this weekend? I recommend Jerry Muller’s Foreign Affairs opus on what the left and the right get wrong about the modern economy: “Contemporary capitalist polities need to accept that inequality and insecurity will continue to be the inevitable result of market operations and find ways to shield citizens from their consequences – while somehow still preserving the dynamism that produces capitalism’s vast economic and cultural benefits in the first place.”

8. During Tuesday’s press conference where Teresa Paiva Weed unveiled her 25 economic bills, one senator on the speaking list offered particularly fulsome praise for the Senate president, Majority Leader Dom Ruggerio and her Democratic leadership team – Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere. Considering Algiere’s Republican affiliation, you might expect him to be critical of a ruling bloc that’s presiding over the highest unemployment in the nation. Nope: Algiere actually went out of his way to say how much Paiva Weed, Ruggerio and the others have done in recent years to pass laws that are improving Rhode Island’s economy. It was quite a contrast to the hostility toward General Assembly Democrats you often hear at the Republican grassroots in Rhode Island, and it raises the question of how much of an opposition party Rhode Island’s Senate GOP really is. After all, just weeks ago North Kingstown Sen. Dawson Hodgson was the only senator who voted against installing Paiva Weed as Senate president – the other Republicans voted for the Democrat, unlike in the House where they voted for Brian Newberry over Gordon Fox.

9. After seeing Dan McGowan’s list of potential candidates to succeed Angel Taveras as mayor of Providence, a Saturday Morning Post reader argued the lineup could pose a problem for the mayor’s gubernatorial aspirations – there will be more pressure for him to serve another term in the capital city, which ain’t fixed yet, if residents don’t have confidence about the options for finding somebody to take over should Taveras depart to pursue higher office. I’m not sure how much impact that would have on the mayor’s decisions, but there’s no doubt plenty of Providence residents would happily cast November 2014 ballots with Raimondo for governor and Taveras for mayor.

10. You don’t want to miss the all-star panel “Everyday Exposés” this Tuesday at 6 p.m at RIC. Tim White, Ian Donnis, Kathy Gregg, Amanda Milkovits and Scott Pickering will discuss how to use Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act to uncover information. (There’s free parking and light refreshments.) The sponsors are NEFAC, ACCESS/RI, Common Cause, the ACLU and the Rhode Island Press Association. [An earlier version of this item incorrectly said the panel is Monday.]

11. Habemus papam! For a primer on Pope Francis, read John Allen’s National Catholic Reporter profile.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – the two candidates for chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Party, Dan Harrop and Mark Smiley. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – the PVD Lady Project’s Julie Sygiel and Sierra Barter, plus top Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee Chris Prazeres. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

An earlier version of this column incorrectly said the Everyday Exposes panel is Monday; it’s Tuesday.

1. Is Rhode Island suffering from hysteresis? As the FT’s ​Clive Crook​ defined it, hysteresis is “the likelihood that lengthening spells of unemployment become self-perpetuating, as skills erode or grow irrelevant.” The possibility of that phenomenon happening here should be an increasing concern for Rhode Island policymakers. Don’t be fooled by the falling unemployment rate: the percentage of the state’s residents who are employed has flatlined, with no real improvement since dropping below 60% during the recession. As of June 2012 one in three Rhode Islanders collecting jobless benefits had been out of work for more than six months, with 13% of them unemployed for more than a year – and there’s increasing evidence employers just aren’t interested in hiring someone who’s been out of work that long. Who are the state’s long-term unemployed? What can be done to put more of them back to work? Every month that goes by is another month when their skills degrade and their hopes dim. They’re at risk of becoming a permanent underclass – and a permanent drag on Rhode Island’s economy.

2. The 10% drop in Rhode Island’s working-age population isn’t the only troubling stat I found when I dug into the employment data this week. Here’s another: the share of Rhode Islanders ages 25-34 with a job dropped from 80% in 2006 to 72% in 2012. If the state wasn’t losing population, it would have fallen as low as 69%.

3. Color me amazed by ​Tim White’s ​investigation Thursday night that revealed Rhode Island correctional officers get paid ​double-time-and-a-half​ when the governor declares a state of emergency, sending their average hourly pay from $28.93 to $72.50 and ballooning the cost of natural disasters that already drain the state budget. While Council 94′s ​Mike Downey​ argued extra pay is needed to get workers to come in during a storm, plenty of taxpayers are forced to get to their jobs in bad weather – and don’t get two-and-a-half times their normal wages for doing so. Plus there’s the jarring discrepancy between Rhode Island’s policy and the one in Massachusetts: “Our corrections do not get any extra pay,” a Bay State official told Tim. “They are considered emergency personnel and when a state of emergency is called they are on duty with no extra pay.” With contract negotiations coming up, ​Governor Chafee​ will be trying to change the overtime policy.

4. Have you heard about “The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek,” the little-known Civil War battle when a sneak attack on Washington was thwarted by the 13th Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry – which included 290 women and children, led by a gay commander? That’s the story told in a new movie created by New York’s ​Wendy Jo Cohen​, parodying ​Ken Burns‘ famous documentaries. (Burns likes it.) Though the trailer is marred by one actress’s unfortunate pronunciation of “Pawtucket,” the independent film is getting good reviews and should be a no-brainer for some local cinema. “Right now I don’t have plans to screen in RI,” Cohen told me in an email, but “if there was a theater that wanted to host the movie I would love to show it there.”

5. The R.I. Board of Elections is none too pleased with Executive Director Robert Kando​ for failing to consult them before he had Rep. ​Bill “Landslide” San Bento​ file a bunch of bills that would make it harder to count votes. The board is set to discuss the San Bento bills – plus an unspecified “personnel matter” – at a meeting Monday. Members of the board have doubted Kando before, as ​Kathy Gregg​ reported: “Kando was hired by the Board of Elections in 2005 over the strenuous objections of then-chairman Roger Begin because he had no experience running elections and had been fired from his previous job as a District Court clerk.” Among other things, “Begin said that by choosing Kando, the board majority chose the only one of the candidates who did not meet the minimum qualification for administering an election,” the Projo reported in 2005.

6. Rhode Island is losing 243 MetLife jobs to North Carolina – but the deal is raising eyebrows down south, The Associated Press reports: “Gov. Pat McCrory avoided questions Friday about the state offering MetLife Inc. $94 million in tax breaks and other incentives to move thousands of jobs to North Carolina and using his former employer to help broker the deal.” McCrory is a Republican; as ​Stephen Miller​ noted on Twitter, “State corporate subsidies are bipartisan.”

7. My colleague ​Dan McGowan​ has been spending a lot of time in superior court, tracking the final stages of Providence’s landmark retiree settlement. Monday is a key day: Superior Court Judge ​Sarah Taft-Carter​ will rule on whether the city can move forward with the deal, which she’s expected to do. “The judge held a ‘fairness hearing’ on the agreement this week where several retirees – led by retired firefighter Stephen Day – voiced their concerns about the plan,” Dan reports. “The city is expecting some retirees to opt out of the settlement, but not too many of those with 5% and 6% compounded COLAs. Opting out means a retiree will have to file a lawsuit against the city or else be subjected to the city’s new pension ordinance, which may result in a longer suspension of the COLA.” That could be a costly fight for the holdouts.

8. Warwick native ​Laura Lang ​is leaving as CEO of storied magazine publisher Time Inc. after less than two years, as parent Time Warner prepares to spin off the magazine division as a separate company.

9. Current and aspiring talking heads, don’t say another word until you read these five false assumptions political pundits make all the time. Current and aspiring journalists who interview voters, don’t forget this gem of an observation from The Guardian’s ​Polly Toynbee:​ “Any honest reporter will record the sheer weight of indifference, ignorance and cynicism that sends you away downcast by the distance between the disengaged and our little world of political obsessives.”

10. And speaking of pundits, Brown poli-sci professor ​Michael Tesler​ is making quite a name for himself nationally, as I mentioned a few weeks ago after he showed up on ​Chris Hayes’​ MSNBC show and in The Atlantic. Wonks will be even more impressed that he’s contributing guest posts for The Monkey Cage, an influential and oft-cited blog manned by political scientists. Tesler’s latest post: “Who Cares about Budget Deficits?” (The answer, apparently: whoever’s in the opposition.)

11. Thank you to The Washington Post’s ​Chris Cillizza and the rest of the gang at The Fix for once again including Nesi’s Notes in their list of the best state-based political blogs – and congratulations to my RIPR pals ​Ian Donnis​ and ​Scott MacKay, whose On Politics justly shares the crown. (Of course, there are those rumors Donnis and MacKay took ‘roids…)

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – The Boston Globe’s ​Kevin Cullen​ and ​Shelley Murphy​ discuss their new book “Whitey Bulger.” Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – the future of Citizens Bank with Financial Times reporter ​Jennifer Thompson​ and WhaleRock Point Partners portfolio manager ​Robert Cusack. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Here’s an idea for Republicans who want to boost their woeful numbers in the General Assembly next year: if Senate leaders kill gay marriage again this session, the GOP could run candidates who support the measure in a bid to peel off Democrats and independents. It’s not as crazy as it might sound: the advocacy group Marriage Equality endorsed a number of Republican legislative candidates in 2012, including ​Dawson Hodgson, Chris Ottiano ​and ​Brian Newberry​, and others in the GOP share their stance. The gay marriage issue might allow Republicans to divide Paiva Weed Democrats from Obama Democrats: polling shows majority support for gay nuptials among Rhode Islanders, and low-information voters may be casting ballots for Assembly Democrats whom they wrongly assume are on board with the idea. Of course, Republicans would run the risk of losing support from their own party’s opponents of same-sex marriage – and they’d need to run competent campaigns that target the message to the right voters. But the idea offers a potential way for the Rhode Island GOP to pick the lock the Democrats have on the electorate.

2. Looking over the new Brown University poll, WPRI 12 political analyst ​Joe Fleming​ told me he was struck by how similar the results are to what we found in our big statewide survey last September. “It’s a mirror of our poll,” Fleming said. “There hasn’t been much movement for anybody. Voters’ opinions haven’t changed much.” That’s bad news for ​Lincoln Chafee​, who needs his numbers to improve before long if he wants to win re-election.

3. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s ​Justin Katz​ has noticed a curious trend at the General Assembly this year: a surprisingly large number of bills being filed that have to do with pets. One in particular seems to go against the Assembly’s stated 2013 mission of helping small businesses – H5398, which would impose new regulations on pet groomers, including a $100 annual licensing fee. (Sponsors: ​Joe Shekarchi, Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, Greg Costantino, Pat Serpa​ and ​Frank Ferri​.) Does the Assembly need to get involved here? Rhode Island already has more licensing rules than many other states. The state charges $25 to become a licensed tree trimmer, $75 to become a licensed barber and $150 to become a licensed upholsterer – but nothing to become a licensed bartender. What’s the guiding principle behind all this?

4. “For the first time since the New Deal, a majority of Americans are headed toward a retirement in which they will be financially worse off than their parents, jeopardizing a long era of improved living standards for the nation’s elderly,” The Washington Post reports.

5. House Speaker ​Gordon Fox has taken a number of steps to increase the Assembly’s transparency since he took office in 2010. As I reported this week, the legislature will soon start streaming its proceedings online – a welcome move even if Rhode Island is the last state to do it. And here’s another promising development: Fox announced at the Summit Neighborhood Association’s annual meeting that committee votes are going online, too. Spokesman ​Larry Berman​ tells me he expects that to be up and running within a month: “We are in the process of purchasing tablets for committees and they will vote on these tablets, with the voting results appearing on our website instantaneously.”

6. At the Summit gathering Fox was also asked about whether he’ll support Rep. ​Maria Cimini​’s bill to raise taxes on wealthy Rhode Islanders. “To be determined,” the speaker replied, acknowledging people wouldn’t like that answer. “It’s a complicated issue,” he said. “How do you balance tax-equity policy with competitiveness against other states? … I’m not sure where I’m going to go on that.” Fox said the Assembly is studying the issue, and tax revenue from Rhode Island’s high-earners is already on the rise. But the speaker indicated he’s more comfortable with Congress raising taxes on the rich than state lawmakers: “Redistribution theories are, I think, more appropriate on the federal level,” he said.

7. My colleagues ​Tim White​ and ​Dan McGowan​ combed through EBT data for Rhode Island’s welfare program and found more than $10,000 was withdrawn in December at liquor stores, smoke shops, bars and Twin River. Obviously many taxpayers will raise their eyebrows at that – though it’s less than 1% of the $3.1 million withdrawn that month – but it’s also bad for the families receiving benefits; as Dan and Tim point out, ATMs at those venues often charge high fees that take more from their monthly allowances. The payroll tax cut extension ​President Obama​ signed last year requires states to crack down on welfare money being used at those sorts of places (as well as establishments where “performers disrobe or perform in an unclothed state for entertainment.”) Rhode Island lawmakers are now considering legislation to ramp up enforcement before a report to the federal government is due next February.

8. ​Bob Woodward​ aside, there’s a certain inconsistency in the way Democrats have been talking about sequestration since it passed in August 2011. Rhode Island offers a good example. All four Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation voted for the law while making clear they didn’t like it and only did so to stop Republicans from forcing a federal default. Yet on the campaign trail last year, ​Sheldon Whitehouse​ and ​David Cicilline​ took credit for the law’s $2.2 trillion in spending cuts and cited them as a sign they were working to cut the deficit. Now, however, they’re once again blasting the cuts. In theory they can have it both ways – after all, they did vote for the law even if they’re unhappy with it. But taking credit for passing a policy that you oppose actually implementing is, at least, a little confusing.

9. If you’re fascinated, as I am, by the resignation of Benedict XVI and the process that will lead to choosing a new pope, I highly recommend reading the writing and reporting of ​John L. Allen Jr.​, the Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter. He’s been on the beat a long time, and it shows. You can read his stories here and follow him on Twitter.

10. Word came this week that ​Michael Fascitelli, a 1978 URI grad, is resigning as CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, one of the nation’s biggest owners of office and retail property. The 56-year-old North Providence native will probably have a comfortable retirement: his total compensation last year was $64 million.

11. As expected, Royal Bank of Scotland confirmed Thursday plans to sell about 25% of its stake in RBS Citizens Financial, based here in Providence. If you missed it Wednesday night, check out my analysis of what a Citizens IPO could mean for Rhode Island. The big news since then: TD Bank’s CEO flatly ruled out buying Citizens and said he’s exasperated that it’s still being suggested.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Providence Mayor ​Angel Taveras​ and ​Tim White​ tour the city’s rundown homes. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – the Brookings Institution’s ​Bruce Katz​ and Treasurer ​Gina Raimondo​, plus ​Thomas Lyons​ on our failing law schools. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Few things are more perplexing than the near-total lack of debate in Rhode Island about how the state should take advantage of rock-bottom post-crisis interest rates. (​Governor Chafee’s​ budget chief ​Pete Marino is a rare exception; he wants lawmakers to move up $11.1 million in “shovel-ready” RICAP projects.​) Rhode Island already knows it’s going to spend huge sums on infrastructure over the coming years; as Evan Soltas argues, there’s a strong case for spending more now while borrowing costs are low and construction workers are idle. ​Rich Overmoyer​, whose Fourth Economy Consulting did this week’s economic report, recalls that in 2003 former Pennsylvania Gov. ​Ed Rendell​ kick-started the Keystone State’s economy with a $2.8 billion stimulus. “I have seen in a lot of states a stimulus can have a profound effect,” Overmoyer told me. He cited Massachusetts, Connecticut, Kansas and Michigan as taking thoughtful approaches: “There are some creative models out there also that become a little more palatable with the legislature, in terms of how to get at that and peg it to something that you’re not bankrupting the future.”

2. CVS Caremark, Rhode Island’s biggest private company and top for-profit employer, is on a hot streak as former chief ​Tom Ryan’s​ vision starts to pay dividends. The Woonsocket pharmacy giant surprised Wall Street with a $3.9 billion profit for 2012 on $123 billion in sales, sending CVS stock to a record high of $52.77 a share. “Obviously we’re very pleased,” CEO ​Larry Merlo​ crowed to investors. The company just made its first foray outside the United States, paying cash for Brazil’s 8th-biggest pharmacy chain. Its MinuteClinic franchise is already growing like gangbusters, and with Obamacare set to give 30 million more Americans health insurance, the outlook for CVS is rosy.

3. Should Rhode Island Republicans bother running a real campaign against ​Jack Reed​ next year? The case is often made that every elected official should face an opponent, for reasons of democratic accountability. But practically speaking it’s hard to see how the state’s beleaguered GOP would benefit from expending energy on a challenge to Reed. The last time a Rhode Island Republican who wasn’t named Chafee won a U.S. Senate race was 1930 – before the New Deal and the Bloodless Revolution. And Reed isn’t just any Democratic incumbent, either: he’s the most popular senator in the country, with a $1.9 million war chest and committee posts that make fundraising easy. Wouldn’t Republicans be better off focusing on state-level issues in competitive communities?

4. Last week’s item about the case against plastic-bag bans caused a bit of a stir. But a follow-up post by Wonkblog’s ​Brad Plumer​ says the original study is more inconclusive than ​Ramesh Ponnuru​ thinks. “The idea that widespread use of reusable bags may cause gastrointestinal infections if they are not regularly cleaned is plausible,” Tomás Aragón, San Francisco’s health officer, said in response. “However, the hypothesis that there is a significant increase in gastrointestinal foodborne illnesses and deaths due to reusable bags has not been tested, much less demonstrated in this study.”

5. Come by Brown University this afternoon for the Rhode Island Fiscal Summit, an event organized by the student group Common Sense Action. President Obama’s​ former “car czar” ​Steven Rattner​ will deliver the keynote, and I’ll be moderating a panel featuring former Congressman ​Bob Weygand​, Cranston Mayor ​Allan Fung​ and the Providence Chamber’s ​Laurie White. The fun starts at noon in Alumnae Hall.

6. There were many remembrances of the Station fire’s 10th anniversary this week, but I highly suggest you make room on your calendar for one more: ​Tim White’s​ Newsmakers special tonight at 7:30 on WPRI 12. It features a moving interview with Don Carcieri​ recalling that night and the days that followed, as well as other recollections plus stories from our colleagues. Tune in. … And speaking of the fire, ​Jim Langevin​ has reintroduced his bill to provide a tax break of up to $500,000 for small- and medium-sized properties that install automatic sprinklers. Republican ​Aaron Schock ​co-sponsored a similar bill with Langevin during the last session, but cost concerns have stymied the proposal so far.

7. The Providence Planning Department’s reputation already took a beating after my colleague ​Dan McGowan​ uncovered widespread financial issues in the PEDP loan program it oversaw. But apparently PEDP isn’t the only problem: this week Dan revealed that the Obama administration cut off federal funds for affordable housing in the city more than a year ago due to “program deficiencies.” Former planning chief ​Tom Deller​ left last year and this month was replaced by Rubén Flores-Marzán, who’ll have his work cut out for him.

8. Newly installed Central Falls Mayor ​James Diossa​ – who’s already up for re-election in September – signed a new city ethics ordinance this week. Could it have a real impact? Common Cause Rhode Island’s ​John Marion sees room for optimism: “Based on the problems we have seen at the municipal level in our state, Central Falls’ new pay-to-play provisions (which would have been a significant obstacle to Charles Moreau, as well as the practices of Buddy Cianci in Providence) are a watershed for our state. Likewise, the honorable service ordinance can stop practices that are really frustrating to citizens who see criminal and civil penalties imposed on corrupt public officials, but then watch those same public officials collect pension benefits. I really hope both of these new ordinances will act as an extra deterrent to practices that have been far too common in Rhode Island.”

9. And speaking of Central Falls, the city’s amazing high-school chess team has once again qualified for a national competition. The team needs to raise $8,000 to attend April’s SuperNationals tournament in Nashville, but so far they have less than $1,000. Click here to make a donation and help them get to Tennessee.

10. Good old @tednesi has been nominated for Best Twitter Feed in this year’s Providence Phoenix Readers Poll. Do me a favor and cast your vote here! You can vote for WPRI as Best TV Station, too.

11. Rhode Island PBS was kind enough to include me on the panel for this week’s episode of “A Lively Experiment,” along with Common Cause’s ​John Marion​, URI’s ​Maureen Moakley​ and Brown’s ​Wendy Schiller. Topics include runoff elections, the looming federal budget cuts and yet another economic study. Watch tonight at 7 p.m. on WSBE Learn (Ch. 36.2), Sunday at noon on WSBE-TV (Ch. 36.1) or online at the RI PBS blog.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – ​Donald Carcieri, Brendan Doherty​ and others remember the Station nightclub fire. Watch Saturday at 7:30 p.m. on WPRI 12 or Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – ​an encore interview with Vibco’s ​Karl Wadensten. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Scituate’s police pension fiasco is a great illustration of why governments should pay for pension benefits when they’re earned, not when they’re collected. As Josh Barro has explained at length, pensions are a component of employee compensation, and therefore their cost should be covered when the worker is doing whatever job is earning him or her the future benefit. (Think about how your employer puts money into your 401k account with each paycheck.) For obvious reasons current taxpayers seem to prefer promising pensions now but sticking the bill with future taxpayers – it keeps taxes lower. That, however, is neither fair nor sustainable. As we’re seeing, current taxpayers don’t want to pay for promises that someone else made decades ago, especially if they’re dissatisfied with current services. And who can blame them? In addition, the principle of pre-funding is even more important if pensions are an unchangeable contract, as the unions argue in their current lawsuit. Barro thinks politicians just can’t be trusted with defined-benefit pensions, and therefore everyone should move to 401k-style systems. Others – including Dean Baker and, to a lesser extent, Gina Raimondo – say those defined-contribution systems are inadequate and unnecessarily expensive. Perhaps there’s a middle ground that pension traditionalists can get behind: if the law requires pension benefits to be paid in full, the law should require that pension contributions be made in full, too.

2. This will get people talking: Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jim Langevin, David Cicilline and Patrick Kennedy are co-hosting a breakfast fundraiser for Lincoln Chafee on Monday, Feb. 25 at Peck Madigan Jones, a lobbying firm in Washington. Longtime Clinton confidante Harold Ickes is among those on the host committee. The fact that the all-Democratic congressional delegation is raising money for the independent governor doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be joining their party; rather, it may mean he’s preparing to splinter the Democratic Party for a second election cycle in a row. I wonder what Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras think?

3. Speaking of Mayor Taveras, I talked with him a few days ago about his energetic use of Twitter to figure out which streets needed the most plowing after the blizzard. “I think people really appreciated it, to be honest with you,” he said. “They want to know that help is on the way, that their complaint has been heard and somebody’s going to do something about it.” Taveras demurred when I asked how much sleep he got during and after the storm: “It’s amazing what the human body can do when it needs to do some of these things.” Having a newborn baby was probably good preparation.

4. Rhode Island’s leaders have a new Public Enemy No. 1: plastic bags. Barrington has banned them, and now Providence Rep. Maria Cimini wants to do the same. But is this bit of feel-good policymaking actually bad for public health? That’s what National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru says, arguing the bag bans have inadvertently caused outbreaks of diarrhea, nausea and E. coli. “The best course for government,” he writes, “is probably to encourage people to recycle their plastic bags – or, maybe, just let people make their own decisions.”

5. I recently finished ​Matt Yglesias’​ urbanist manifesto “The Rent is Too Damn High,” and its lessons are highly applicable to Rhode Island, which is the second-densest state and plagued by high housing costs. Yglesias argues that places where land is expensive should be densely built “to ensure office and apartment rents stay reasonable.” He continues: “It’s absurd for many urban areas to suffer chronic shortfalls of affordable housing. Undistinguished structures should, if built on expensive land, be torn down and replaced by substantially taller ones, and vacant lots should be built up to as much density as the market can bear. If people have strong feelings about not wanting to live on the same block as a tall building, they can move or they can pay what it costs to make it worth a neighboring property owner’s while to avoid building taller. Using regulatory fiat to curb construction rather than bearing the cost directly doesn’t change the fact that there’s a price to be paid for using the land inefficiently. It merely pushes the costs elsewhere.” That, Rhode Islanders, is a big reason why your rents (and mortgages) are too damn high.

6. What went wrong at the polls last November? Common Cause Rhode Island’s John Marion tackles that question in an extensive new report that should be required reading for the Board of Elections and the General Assembly. The question, as always, is whether lawmakers really want to improve how the state runs its elections – since, by definition, they’re pleased with the results from last time.

7. “Life and Times: Episodes 1-4″ is a new “postmodern pop opera” that relates the “epic journey through the addled memory bank of a young woman growing up in middle-class Rhode Island.” How about that? It recently finished a run at New York’s Public Theatre, and I hope the seats are comfortable: the show is eight hours long. Who’ll perform it in Providence?

8. A loyal Saturday Morning Post reader points us to a new documentary called “The Last Gladiators,” which chronicles the career of famed pro-hockey enforcer Chris Nilan. Some of you may remember “Nuckles” Nilan making headlines locally about a decade ago when he was forced out of a part-time gig with Secretary of State Ed Inman for allegedly working less-than-regular hours. Matt Brown made Nilan into a campaign issue when he successfully challenged Inman in 2002.

9. Did you catch Tim White’s story Thursday night about testing anxiety in Rhode Island schools? Watch it here, and then read Dan McGowan’s stunning sidebar revealing that 40% of high-school juniors are in danger of failing to graduate.

10. The £400m fine Royal Bank of Scotland will pay for manipulating Libor has renewed speculation about whether the bank will sell its profitable Providence-based Citizens Financial division. Count New Statesman columnist Douglas Blakey among those who think the British government should “stop pussyfooting about” the much-debated decision and just pull the trigger. “RBS will, eventually, have to bow to the inevitable and cash in its Citizens chips,” Blakey wrote last week. “It is now time for the government, via UK Financial Investments Limited, the organisation set up immediately after the October 2008 bailouts of Lloyds and RBS, to bear its teeth. It could start by leaning heavily on RBS to focus on getting its domestic market in order and sell off Citizens.” What would that mean for Rhode Island?

11. My grandfather and namesake, retired Attleboro District Court Judge Edward A. Lee, died Thursday at the age of 92. He was a quintessential member of Brokaw’s Greatest Generation. Papa Ed grew up in Attleboro between the wars, the son of devout Irish Catholic immigrants without much money but with a strong belief in education. He signed a minor-league baseball contract with a Boston Braves affiliate in 1942, but World War II derailed that; Providence College actually moved his graduation up from June 1943 to December 1942 so he and his classmates could enter the military sooner. After serving in Europe under Lt. Gen. William Simpson, he got his law degree from Georgetown and then came back to Attleboro, got married and grew into a pillar of the community. Governor Foster Furcolo appointed him to the bench in 1957 (even though, being Irish, Papa Ed was a Kennedy man), which made him the court’s youngest judge at just 36. I associate my grandfather most with two beloved civic institutions: the Attleboro Public Library, which he led as president of the trustees from 1979 to 2012, and the Attleboro YMCA, where he exercised faithfully until he was nearly 90. Papa Ed was flawed, as all of us are, but he was devoted to his family and his community. Gentle and smart, a history buff, he was everlastingly supportive of his eldest grandson. I love him dearly, and I miss him already.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Education Commissioner Deborah Gist. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Providence Mutual Insurance CEO Sandra Parrillo. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. There’s an obvious winner in PPP’s new Rhode Island survey: the state’s political press, because the race for governor looks wide open 21 months from Election Day. (U.S. Senate, not so much.) The poll contains plenty to cheer both of the state’s leading Democrats. ​Gina Raimondo​ led the field in every ballot test, and she’s more popular with liberals and older voters than many believed; that said, she’s far from the untouchable territory of a ​Chris Christie​​. ​Angel Taveras tops the popularity contest with a 63% favorable rating, though he actually placed third in a four-way primary matchup, and his numbers with non-whites are so-so. Then there’s ​Lincoln Chafee​. A normal politician wouldn’t run for re-election with a 32% approval rating and 57% of voters asking him to retire – but Lincoln Chafee has never been a normal politician. His best bet is clearly to run as a Democrat: he has a positive approval rating with voters in the party, and he even tops Taveras in a potential primary. But how many more of his family’s millions is Chafee willing to pour into a long-shot bid for a second term – particularly if he acts as a spoiler, only to hurt his friend Taveras and help his nemesis Raimondo?

2. Then again, maybe ​the treasurer would be better off running next year in California. A new report on pension reform published in the Golden State rather poetically declares, “Gina Raimondo made her rebellion with heart, with mind, with soul – calm, determined, and triumphant.” Now that’s what I call Raimondomania.

3. We’re now in the season where trial balloons get floated by prospective candidates for 2014, so here’s a rule of thumb from Nesi’s Notes editor emeritus ​M. Charles Bakst:​ “People who are going to run for a top office like governor don’t THINK about running. They run.” Charlie would know: he’s been watching Rhode Island gubernatorial races since he interviewed first-time candidate ​John Chafee​ half a century ago as an undergraduate Brown Daily Herald scribe. (He still remembers Chafee’s 1962 answers correctly – I’ve checked!)

4. One of Rhode Island’s savviest exports, Warwick native ​Matt McDermott​, has a new gig in D.C. as field director for top Democratic pollster ​Celinda Lake. McDermott, a newly minted G.W. grad, worked the polls for Rep. ​Joe MacNamara​ way back in elementary school and grew up into wizard of cross-tabs. He credits his passion for the quantitative side of politics to Rhode Island’s bizarre Democratic coalition: “Until you experience it firsthand, there’s few that can understand the frustration that comes from living in such a microcosm of dysfunction – a state which has been dominated by one party for more than two generations but that still has a conservative core that’s been hard to break.” McDermott says he’d like to come back to Rhode Island down the road, and he hopes progressive successes in Providence are a harbinger of what’s to come on gay marriage and in next year’s gubernatorial primary. “I think it will ultimately be what breaks the stretch of conservative philosophy on abortion, taxes, a range of issues,” he says.

5. My colleague Tim White has been filing a series of reports on the troubled Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls after obtaining a state police report that found the jail’s chief of security may have destroyed video evidence of an assault on an officer. The next installment will air on WPRI 12 Sunday night (following some professional athletic event you may have heard about). It’s a fascinating interview with the officer who was attacked. This whistle-blower was ordered not to talk to Channel 12 but risked his losing his job by doing so anyway, saying he wants to shine a light on what he says are unsafe conditions at Wyatt. Be warned: there are some graphic photos in this one.

6. The Quonset Business Park posted another round of impressive numbers in 2012: total jobs topped 9,100 (up from 8,800), total companies passed 170 (up from 168), and total vehicles shipped out rose 15% to 215,300. What’s often forgotten is what a huge role the federal government – and especially U.S. Sen. ​Jack Reed​ – played over the past two decades in funding the freight rail line to allow growth at Quonset, at one point over the loud objections of New Jersey’s ​Frank Lautenberg​. Reed spokesman ​Chip Unruh​ puts the total federal investment in Quonset at more than $100 million since 1995. More evidence of why having an engaged and active congressional delegation matters to Rhode Island (and every state).

7. The best line in the various State of the Whatever speeches being given has to be a gem from the mayor of Rhode Island’s fourth-largest city: “This being Pawtucket, we also know how to have a good time,” ​Don Grebien​ declared in his address Tuesday.

8. If you missed it on Thursday, go read my colleague ​Dan McGowan’s ​jaw-dropping report about Providence students’ abysmal test scores. McGowan obtained a memo warning that two-thirds of high-school seniors are in danger of not graduating when new rules go into effect next year. Again: two out of three students might not get a diploma. And Education Commissioner ​Deborah Gist​ shows no signs of backing away from the tough standards, telling Dan: “I think the notion that giving a student a diploma when they’re not truly ready for what’s next is somehow helping them is really misguided.”

9. Should Rhode Island consider bringing Western Governors University here as a fourth state college?

10. Speaking of academics, Harvard Law Professor ​Charles Ogletree​ will speak at URI Tuesday at 7 as the school’s keynote speaker for Black History Month. Ogletree may not be a household name, but he’s famous in the legal community – and in the political world as a longtime confidante of his former students ​Barack​ and ​Michelle Obama. “Student Barack Obama was not materially different from the state Sen. Barack Obama, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama and President Barack Obama,” Ogletree told The Root last year.

11. Sorry, ambitious down-ballot Democrats: on Newsmakers this week Congressman Jim Langevin declared that he’s definitely running for an eighth term in the U.S. House next year.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Congressman Jim Langevin. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Rhode Island innovation fellows ​Allan Tear​ and ​Soren Ryherd​ discuss how they’re using their $300,000 grants. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

The statistics about the Quonset Business Park have been clarified.

1. Rhode Island’s flavor-of-the-week in economic development is brain science. On Thursday the Providence Chamber’s ​Laurie White​ pitched a public-private brain science research center to state senators, and ​Governor Chafee​ quickly embraced the idea. If the proposed center is going to be globally competitive, White and Chafee will need to come up with a lot of money: in recent month​s Columbia University secured $200 million to endow a new Mind Brain Behavior Institute, a UTexas-Baylor-MIT group is putting together $50 million for a Neurodegeneration Consortium, and Connecticut’s governor plans to invest $200 million in bioscience. Even with ​John Donoghue​, can Brown University and the Lifespan hospitals compete on that scale? And is it affordable or viable in an era when the “meds and eds” are facing unprecedented pressure to clamp down on costs? The answers to these questions may be yes, but it’s important they get asked. The 38 Studios debacle was the product of economic desperation and a lack of rigor; if a huge amount of money is about to be put on the line, Rhode Island should try to avoid making the same mistakes.

2. ​If you’ve never watched Executive Suite, this is the week to tune in: ​Aaron Renn’s​ interview (already online) will change how you think about economic development in Rhode Island – starting with the fact that you’ll no longer think about it happening “in Rhode Island.” Renn offers a great antidote to the platitudes that often pass for bold thinking locally; when you’re done watching the show, check out his articles about Providence, too.

3. Governor Chafee ​said on Newsmakers last week that he’s resistant to the push for higher income taxes in Rhode Island because he considers it more harmful to economic growth than the sales tax. A 2008 OECD paper [pdf] offers some support for Chafee, though the evidence is at the national level. “The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and property,” the paper found. “Property taxes, and particularly recurrent taxes on immovable property, seem to be the most growth-friendly, followed by consumption taxes and then by personal income taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to have the most negative effect on GDP per capita.” Does the same hold for state tax regimes? If so, it would suggest Rhode Island under Chafee is moving in a more growth-friendly direction than Massachusetts is under ​Deval Patrick.

4. Don’t miss this Slate story about Google’s data-driven approach to human resources. Fascinating.

5. As ​Barack Obama begins his second term this week, Brown University poli-sci professor Michael Tesler has become a go-to expert on the question of how racial attitudes have affected the nation’s first black president. Tesler, who came to Brown in 2011 from UCLA, co-authored the 2010 book “Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America.” His interesting, troubling work was featured in ​Ta-Nehisi Coates​’s Atlantic article “Fear of a Black President” last fall. “Racial attitudes had a significantly greater impact on health care opinions when framed as part of President Obama’s plan than they had when the exact same policies were attributed to President Clinton’s 1993 health care initiative,” Tesler argued in a recent paper [pdf].

6. Another Brown academic, ​Mark Blyth​, made a cameo in the Financial Times last week, as columnist ​Samuel Brittan highlighted Blyth’s Web video “Austerity.” Brittan wrote: “Ignore the political bile and partisanship – the author succeeds in demonstrating that austerity policies have mainly succeeded in making depressions and unemployment worse.” Blyth’s upcoming book, “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea,” is due out in April from Oxford University Press.

7. Governor Chafee’s​ third budget continues to be much more warmly received than his first two. The latest evidence came Thursday from Senate Finance Chairman ​Dan DaPonte​, who told his colleagues at a Senate economic conference: “The budget we’ve been presented with this year is certainly much better in a lot of ways than the last five years of what we’ve had to deal with.” But he also expressed concern that the state’s economic outlook actually got worse between last May and November, and urged his colleagues “to keep the discipline that we’ve had in sound practical and sensible budgeting.”

8. ​Sheldon Whitehouse​ and ​David Cicilline are going to be busy in the coming weeks. In exchange for agreeing to suspend the debt ceiling, House Republicans made Senate Democrats agree to pass a budget for the first time since 2009. That means a lot of work between now and April 15 for two committees: Patty Murray’s Senate Budget Committee, which Whitehouse serves on, and Paul Ryan’s House Budget Committee, which Cicilline just joined. The two local Democrats are liberals on fiscal policy who’ll likely try to impact the debate, particularly since they both just won re-election as staunch defenders of Social Security and Medicare.

9. And speaking of Whitehouse, I expected him to be disappointed with the Reid-McConnell filibuster compromise announced this week considering how much he criticized their last agreement. But in a statement, Whitehouse told me he thinks the changes will move the Senate closer to three things he wants: “talking filibusters,” no filibusters on motions to proceed, and a faster nomination process. “This new agreement stands a real chance of allowing us to achieve those goals,” he said. “It’s an important step in the right direction. If for some reason this proves not to achieve those goals, we can and should get back to work and make any necessary corrections.” For more, read ​Ezra Klein’s​ interview with Sen. ​Jeff Merkley.

10. I got a chance to see the new production of ​“Anne Boelyn” at Pawtucket’s ​Gamm Theatre the other night, and was amazed once again that a former police garage has been turned into a theatrical space with world-class theater, all on a budget of about $1.2 million a year. ​David Wax​ was recently named the new executive director at the Gamm, and it will be interesting to see where he takes it.

11. Five House lawmakers missed Thursday’s big vote on same-sex marriage, all Democrats: Spencer Dickinson, Deborah Fellela, Brian Patrick Kennedy, Peter Palumbo and Donna Walsh. Walsh was on a long-scheduled vacation and is a well-known supporter of gay marriage. My colleague ​Dan McGowan​, who covered the vote, reports Dickinson and Palumbo were at the State House Thursday but for some reason didn’t vote. But where were Fellela and Kennedy?

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – ​Brendan Doherty​, who’s not ruling out a 2014 run for governor. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Urbanophile.com’s ​Aaron Renn. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. It looks like Governor Chafee​ will indeed try for a second term next year. He was close to unequivocal about running during Friday’s taping of Newsmakers – but much less so when ​Tim White​ and I asked whether he’ll run as an independent or a Democrat. “I haven’t really crossed that threshold of what political affiliation,” Chafee said. “I’m really just focusing on what we’re talking about – getting the economy going, getting these unemployment numbers down.” The obvious question is, can he win? It’s possible: his approval rating in September was 29%, and last time around it only took 36% to elect him. A repeat performance as an independent would require another four-way race, but that looks increasingly likely with Moderate Party leader ​Ken Block​ pledging to field a candidate. Alternatively, if Chafee wants to run as a Democrat, there’s the ​Obama​ factor. The president is already easing the transition of former Florida Gov. ​Charlie Crist​, an ex-Republican, into the Democratic Party; could he do the same for Chafee?

2. After the State of the State I asked ​Gina Raimondo​ whether she’s going to run for governor next year. “Ted, I don’t know,” she said. “I’m thinking about it but I don’t know. I really don’t. I really don’t.” A little while later I found ​Angel Taveras​ and asked whether he’ll be making the State of the State speech in 2015. Taveras laughed and said, “I’m worried about 2013 right now, and what this budget’s going to say.” I didn’t get a chance to ask ​Allan Fung​ whether he’s going to run, but last time I did he made it clear he’s strongly considering it.

3. The economic forecast included in Chafee’s budget could be good news for his re-election prospects – or for his successor – if it turns out to be accurate. Moody’s Economy.com projects Rhode Island’s average unemployment rate will fall from 9.7% in the 2013-14 fiscal year to 7.9% in 2014-15, when the next election will be held. The pace of job growth in the state is projected to speed up, too, from 1.2% to 3%. And whoever wins the election is forecast to preside over four fiscal years of falling jobless rates, with the level down to 5.3% by 2017-18. Of course, sometimes these forecasts are way off – and 5.3% is still higher than the jobless rate in Rhode Island back in 2006-07. But an improving job market would make everything else easier for Rhode Island’s chief executive.

4. One final note on Chafee: when he’s watching the Patriots-Ravens AFC Championship game Sunday night on WPRI 12, he’ll be watching one of his high school classmates, ​Bill Belichick​, calling the plays. The governor and the coach were both members of the Class of 1971 at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and they’re known to keep in touch. Chafee laughed Friday when he recalled looking over during a Latin class with Ernie Adams​, Belichick’s football-savant best friend, and seeing Adams’ homework covered in X’s and O’s.

5. Interesting people in Rhode Island, part I: Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter and founder of Square, will give a talk at the RISD Career Center on Friday, Feb. 1 at 4 p.m. It’s called “Square: Making Commerce Easy,” and free tickets are still available.

6. Interesting people in Rhode Island, part II: Don Berwick, President Obama’s influential former Medicare/Medicaid chief, will headline Lifespan’s 6th Annual Patient Safety Symposium on Thursday, April 4 at 5 p.m. Berwick made headlines last week when he said he’s “strongly considering” a run for Massachusetts governor next year.

7. Congratulations to ​Clay Pell​, grandson of the late U.S. Sen. ​Claiborne​ Pell, who’s tying the knot today with Olympian ​Michelle Kwan​ at the First Unitarian Church of Providence on Benefit Street. Pell, a U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant, proposed to Kwan on Block Island over Labor Day weekend. An eagle-eyed reader notes Kwan has suggested she might run for office someday – perhaps she’ll jump into the Providence mayor’s race if ​Angel Taveras​ runs for governor? You heard it here first.

8. Charlestown Rep. ​Donna Walsh​ has renewed her 13-year battle to close the loophole that lets Rhode Island’s judges and senators appoint court magistrates without the Judicial Nominating Commission vetting them first. Magistrates “really are judges,” Walsh told the Projo’s ​Katie Mulvaney​ in 2010. “It’s a political-patronage system.” Among those who’ve received magistrate gigs over the years: former Senate President ​Joe Montalbano​ … ​John Harwood’s​ wife ​Patricia … Bill Murphy’s​ former aide ​Patrick Burke​ … ​Gordon Fox’s​ former counsel ​John Flynn​ … and former Portsmouth Sen. ​Charles Levesque​. Far from seeing this as a problem, most Senate Judiciary Committee members say they think it’s good that magistrate jobs go to so many people with Assembly ties. But attorney ​Keven McKenna argues one of the main reasons so many magistrates have been named since the Judicial Nominating Commission was put in place is because Democratic lawmakers wanted to hand out judicial jobs even though the party hasn’t controlled the governor’s office since 1994. McKenna thinks magistrates’ decisions are unconstitutional: “Magistrates do exercise judicial power. They’re not stenographers. They’re not sheriffs,” he said last year. “Chief judges and chief justices have no authority to appoint anyone to exercise judicial power. Only the governor can do that.”

9. Brown University alum ​Kate Cook​ is Mass. Gov. ​Deval Patrick’s​ new chief legal counsel, and the first woman who’s ever held the job.

10. A warm WPRI.com welcome to my newest colleague, Dan McGowan​, who joined the site this week as our second enterprise reporter. In his first week Dan published stories on 38 Studios’ unpaid taxes, a suspended Providence bus driver, the new unemployment numbers, a proposed fundraising ban, and city principals getting sacked. And he’s just getting started – follow Dan on Twitter, and catch all his stories on the Nesi’s Notes main page.

11. Every year state lawmakers add a hospital licensing fee to the state budget; this fiscal year it required all of Rhode Island’s community hospitals to pay an amount equal to 5.35% of their 2011 net patient revenue. Well, almost all of them: Governor Chafee’s budget proposal says “the license fee for all hospitals located in Washington County, Rhode Island shall be discounted 37%.” What’s up with that?

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Governor Lincoln Chafee. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence – and don’t miss the online-only bonus segment. This week on Executive Suite – RIPEC’s ​John Simmons​ on the Senate economic study and Dexter Credit Union’s ​Stephen Angell​. The show will air at a special time: Sunday at 5:30 p.m. on WPRI 12, right before the Patriots-Ravens game. You can also watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

​This post has been updated to clarify the process by which magistrates are appointed.

1. The outlook brightened a bit this week for advocates of same-sex marriage with the announcement of Senate President ​Teresa Paiva Weed’s​ picks for the 10-member Senate Judiciary Committee. Paiva Weed didn’t push the panel decisively in either direction, but she did give ​Ray Sullivan​ and his allies at Marriage Equality Rhode Island a path to get the bill out of committee and onto the Senate floor. They start with five likely yes votes (including ​Paul Jabour​, whose district will likely pressure him not to kill the bill in committee) and three likely no votes. That leaves two big question-marks: ​Leo Raptakis​ and ​Billy Conley. Raptakis would seem to be a definite no, but his support for a referendum on the issue make him sound squishier than expected. As for Conley, while he may have railed against same-sex marriage in the past, there’s a big difference between making a low-profile speech and casting the decisive vote. And then of course there’s the pressure leadership may put on Judiciary members based on any deals they strike with their House counterparts. Stay tuned.

2. The victorious Obama campaign had quite a few southern Massachusetts natives around and about. The president’s bruiser of a spokeswoman, ​Stephanie Cutter​, is from Raynham. His research guru ​David Simas​ is from Taunton. (Simas says Obama ran “a national presidential campaign the way you’d do a local ward campaign.”) Last but maybe most, White House photographer ​Pete Souza​ is from South Dartmouth, as I was recently informed by ace Fall River Herald News scribe ​Will Richmond​.

3. Campaigns & Elections’ list of Rhode Island’s best GOP operatives was a bit surprising. ​Cara Cromwell​ and ​Ian Prior​ are both talented and savvy, though they couldn’t win the 1st Congressional District for ​John Loughlin​ or ​Brendan Doherty​. But where is ​Patrick Sweeney​, who worked under former chairman ​Ken McKay​ and then ran ​Barry Hinckley’s​ energetic U.S. Senate campaign? Or activist ​Mike Napolitano​, who is influential with grass-roots conservatives? Who ran ​Anthony Giarrusso’s bid to succeed ​Bob Watson​ in House District 30, a very rare Republican success story in 2012? And when was the last time Boston Herald columnist ​Holly Robichaud​ worked on a campaign here? (Update: I’m informed Robichaud was a consultant on Michael Riley’s campaign.)

4. Boring but important: U.S. health care spending growth slowed to 3.9% in 2011, the third straight year it went up at that relatively modest pace. A lot is riding on whether that trend continues – including the solvency of many Rhode Island governments that are faced with massive unfunded retiree health liabilities.

5. U.S. Sen. ​Jack Reed​ is quickly emerging as the Obama administration’s leading Senate proponent of the ​Chuck Hagel​ nomination for defense secretary: he’s already been dispatched to defend Hagel to influential Washington columnists ​David Ignatius​ and ​Jerry Seib. Loyal Nesi’s Notes reader A. Kearney ​reminds me that Obama, Reed and Hagel share a unique bond: the three traveled together on a key 2008 trip to Iraq that helped burnish Obama’s foreign policy credentials. “They reflect, I think, a traditional bipartisan wisdom when it comes to foreign policy,” Obama said at the time. “Neither of them are ideologues but try to get the facts right and make a determination about what’s best for U.S. interests – and they’re good guys.”

6. With so much concern these days about gun violence and layoffs at the nonviolence institute, local leaders and concerned citizens should read a thoroughly thought-provoking 2011 article in Scientific American: “How New York Beat Crime.” Author ​Franklin Zimring​ argues – persuasively – that the massive drop in the Big Apple’s crime rate proves “many of modern America’s dominant assumptions concerning crime to be flat wrong,” and that the key is putting more cops on the streets. That’s noteworthy, considering ​Tim White‘s recent report that Providence has fewer officers per 1,000 residents than like-sized Northeast cities.

7. Check out this fascinating American Prospect article on how Oklahoma is leading the nation in expanding early education. Rhode Island started a pilot pre-kindergarten program in 2009, but it’s not universal. The new school-funding formula is supposed to add pre-K funding over time, and Senate President Paiva Weed says pre-K is one of her priorities for this year’s legislative session.

8. It’s not hyperbole to say the pension lawsuit is a big story nationally. “We have 49 sovereign states and a few territories all looking at what happens in Rhode Island,” Bill Brandt, chairman of the Illinois Finance Authority, told Bond Buyer last month.

9. From the late Washington columnist ​Drew ​Pearson’s​ March 31, 1966 dispatch: “If Gov. John Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, had known how much Sen. ​Claiborne Pell​, Democrat of Rhode Island, worried over the possibility that Chafee would run against him, Chafee would have run.” That’s an intriguing idea, since ’66 was a good year for Republicans and it’s conceivable Chafee could have won; instead Pell had a landslide victory over Lt. Col. ​Ruth Briggs​. Chafee finally did challenge Pell in 1972, and lost, then ran again in 1976 and beat wealthy car salesman ​Richard Lorber​. Chafee and Pell served together for the next 20 years.

10. PSY only made about $110,000 from digital and CD sales of “Gangnam Style” in South Korea.

11. Rhode Island PBS was kind enough to include me on the panel for this week’s episode of “A Lively Experiment,” along with Ian Donnis, Dave Scharfenberg and PBN’s Mark Murphy. Topics include the upcoming legislative session, same-sex marriage, pension reform and economic development. Watch tonight at 7 p.m. on WSBE Learn (Ch. 36.2), Sunday at noon on WSBE-TV (Ch. 36.1) or online at the RI PBS blog.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Central Falls Mayor ​James Diossa​ and Moderate Party founder ​Ken Block​ on the master lever. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Care Thread CEO Dr. ​Scott Guelich​ and AICU Rhode Island President ​Dan Egan​ on the Sawyer School. Watch Saturday at 10:30 p.m. or Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or Sunday at 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. It’s possible Rhode Island’s current U.S. Senate delegation will be in place for quite a while. Jack Reed​ will almost certainly win re-election next year to serve through 2020, when he’ll be 71 years old; considering how long many senators serve, it’s not inconceivable he could serve into the 2030s. ​Sheldon Whitehouse​ is about six years younger than Reed and just won a commanding victory; a few more of those would keep him in place into the 2030s, too. Those are hardly outlandish scenarios considering the long tenures of most recent Rhode Island senators – ​Claiborne Pell​ (36 years), ​John Pastore​ (26), ​T.F. Green​ (24) and ​John Chafee​ (23) – with only ​Lincoln Chafee​ lasting less than a decade. Then again, periods of Senate stability can end quickly: Massachusetts had the same delegation from 1985 through 2009, but looks set to have two brand-new senators by the end of this month.

2. Rhode Island’s U.S. House delegation is another story – there’s almost no way the state will avoid losing one of its two congressional seats after the next census, and if it happens there’s no way ​Jim Langevin​ and ​David Cicilline will both be serving in the House come 2023. In interviews this week they acknowledged it’s a real possibility the delegation will be downsized. “Of course, you know, they’ve said that the last two times as well, and each time it hasn’t happened,” Langevin told me. “But eventually there will be a day when, as a result of the census and population shifts and growth in other areas, Rhode Island very likely will lose a seat. It’s always a loss of clout, I believe; it’s better to have more members than less. And again, the more senior you become the more important that seniority is and you have increased responsibility. So we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” For now, though, change is unlikely: Langevin says he’s running in 2014.

3. If you missed them earlier in the week, check out my new interviews with ​Elizabeth Warren​, ​Jack Reed​ and ​David Cicilline​. And keep an eye out next week for my interviews with ​Joe Kennedy, ​Sheldon Whitehouse​ and ​Jim Langevin​. All my DC coverage is collected here.

4. As I was leaving Senator-elect Warren’s makeshift office Thursday morning, I ran into a familiar face: ​Mindy Myers​, who managed Warren’s campaign after masterminding Whitehouse’s in 2006 and Connecticut Sen. ​Richard Blumenthal​’s​ in 2010. Myers has signed on as Warren’s first chief of staff, playing the same role for the former Harvard Law professor that she did for Whitehouse when he joined the Senate back in 2007. “I love startups,” Myers told me. One job Myers definitely won’t be taking: campaign manager for ​Ed Markey​ or one of the other Democrats vying to win ​John Kerry’s​ seat.

5. This video of ​Joe Biden​ working the crowd at Thursday’s Senate swearing-in ceremonies is hilarious. Don’t miss the moment around the 22-second mark when he spies Molly Whitehouse, the senator’s daughter, and declares: “I want you next to me!” (Twice, actually.)

6. A number of bold-faced names showed up Thursday afternoon at ​Whitehouse’s swearing-in party, held in a Senate hearing room in the Dirksen building. Among them were Senate Majority Leader ​Harry Reid​, who told the crowd Whitehouse is “a great senator, and getting better every day.” Other visitors included Minnesota Sen. ​Al Franken and Whitehouse colleagues Jack Reed and David Cicilline. Also spotted: James Diossa, Rick McAuliffe and Jeff Taylor, Jimmy Riley, Tony Simon, Peter Baptista, ​Brett Smiley​, ​David Preston​, ​Alex Swartsel​, Gabe Amo and ​​Nancy Langrall.

7. Could Providence native ​Tom Donilon​, currently President Obama’s national security adviser, become the next White House chief of staff? He’s widely seen as a contender for the job if the current chief, ​Jacob Lew​, gets the nod as treasury secretary. Donilon wouldn’t be the only one in the family with that title: his wife, ​Cathy Russell​, is chief of staff to ​Jill Biden​.

8. Jack Reed reiterated this week – for the umpteenth time – that he is not going to be the next defense secretary. When I mentioned my own skepticism about the perennial speculation that he could take over at the Pentagon, Reed replied: “It’s a very difficult job. It’s a very important job. And my interest is serving in the Senate. I’ve been very clear to everybody: that is my interest.” Reed may still wind up with considerable sway over the Defense Department, though, if he succeeds Carl Levin as chairman of Senate Armed Services.

9. Reed and Elizabeth Warren both say they’re looking forward to working together on one of his other committees, Senate Banking. “I’m a huge fan of Jack Reed,” Warren told me. “He’s terrific.” As for Reed, actions speak louder than words: he worked behind the scenes to get Warren on the committee despite Wall Street opposition.

10. ​Ian Prior​, who acquitted himself well managing ​Brendan Doherty’s​ congressional campaign in a tough year for Republicans, is leaving Rhode Island. He and his wife (who are expecting their first child) are moving to Washington so he can take a new job as the National Republican Congressional Committee’s communications director for candidates out west. While Republicans will surely congratulate Prior, they’ve got to be a little disappointed to lose a young operative with local experience.

11. It’s interesting that Deepwater Wind, which first came on Rhode Island’s radar screen as a pet project of ​Donald Carcieri’s​ in 2008, has now become something strongly supported by the state’s congressional delegation. Whitehouse and Langevin both mentioned to me this week that one of their reasons for backing the fiscal cliff compromise was its extension of the tax credit for wind farms, which would keep the Deepwater project on track. Democrats greeted Deepwater with some skepticism when Republican Carcieri first presented it, but the company and its project have been more widely embraced in the years since – not a huge surprise, perhaps, since alternative energy is usually one of their party’s priorities.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Providence Public Safety Commissioner ​Steven Pare​, plus my report from Washington on the first week of Congress. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. I’m fascinated, as a writer and a nerd, by the future of the printed word. Newspapers’ struggles are well-documented, but lately my thoughts have turned to the changing book industry and the Kindle-powered rise of e-books. For a long time I wondered if people would be willing to pay $10 for the digital text of a book with no physical copy to show for their money afterwards. But recently I read two books on my Kindle - ​Robert Caro’s​ new LBJ biography and Politico’s final look at the presidential race – and the experience got me thinking about the potential for a change in consumer psychology. Perhaps reading with your Kindle is less like buying a traditional book and more like buying a movie ticket – you pay $10 or so for an immersive cultural experience, and you don’t expect to have something physical afterwards. Better yet, maybe that lower price point (compared with a hardcover) will get people to buy more books than they do now. Of course, if too much of the industry moves to e-books it might be bad news for independent bookstores. We’ll see.

2. I’m pleased to announce that my friend ​Dan McGowan​ will be joining WPRI.com next month as our second digital reporter, part of WPRI 12′s continued expansion of our newsroom and our online team. Dan will be covering Rhode Island’s political scene and whatever else is interesting. He first came on my radar screen in 2010, when he was blogging about the Providence mayoral race and related topics for Rhode Island’s Future; since then he’s earned a journalism degree from Boston University and done great original reporting for GoLocalProv. (When McGowan accepted the job, I said to ​Tim White​: “Good. Now he can’t scoop us anymore!”)

3. Should Providence consider switching to a two-tier property tax, with a higher tax rate for land and a lower tax rate for the value of buildings? It worked for Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, apparently, when they wanted to revitalize their city redevelopment.

4. Color me skeptical about the odds that ​Gina Raimondo​ will run for governor as an independent (let alone as a Republican) if for no other reason than it would sharply reduce her chances of eventually joining the state’s congressional delegation, which could be down to three people by the end of a hypothetical Governor Raimondo’s second term. That said, there’s recent precedent for a center-left independent and former governor winning a U.S. Senate seat: ​Angus King​, who did precisely that in Maine last month. If Raimondo was a popular and successful independent governor, she might have a shot as an independent. But King was running for an open seat vacated by a Republican (​Olympia Snowe​) in a state without a deep Democratic bench; a congressional vacancy in Rhode Island would almost certainly be left by a Democrat, and there’s never a shortage of those eying higher office. Of course, if Raimondo has her eye on the White House, she’s best-off staying in one of the two parties.

5. Speaking of Rhode Island’s most powerful women, a number of observers have pointed out to me that January marks the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Senate president’s office, put in place by a 1994 constitutional amendment which removed the lieutenant governor as presiding officer of the upper chamber. There have been three Senate presidents so far – ​William Irons​ (2003-04), ​Joseph Montalbano​ (2004-09) and ​Teresa Paiva Weed​ (2009-present) – and the post has become a power center of its own right in Rhode Island government – maybe more of one than those who backed the amendment had expected.

6. In Massachusetts, Matt Murphy​ of State House News Service offers this list of the state’s top 10 political stories of 2012, as ranked by the Beacon Hill press corps. Closer to home, RIPR’s ​Ian Donnis​ answers Rhode Island’s 12 big political questions of 2012.

7. Pope Benedict is tweeting. Episcopal Bishop ​Nicholas Kinsely​ is tweeting. But don’t expect ​Bishop Tobin​ to start tweeting anytime soon, spokesman ​Mike Guilfoyle​ tells me: “The Bishop has no plans to begin using a personal Facebook page or tweeting in the immediate future.” However, Guilfoyle and his diocesan communications team do keep up a Facebook page for the bishop and another for Rhode Island Catholic, as well as an @RICatholic Twitter account.

8. Is 2013 the year we should embrace the power of negative thinking?

9. Friday saw a veritable stampede by leading Democrats to anoint veteran ​Congressman ​Ed Markey​ as the consensus candidate to succeed ​John Kerry​ in the U.S. Senate, no doubt in a bid to avoid once again handing ​Scott Brown what should be a safe Democratic seat. That makes it seem less and less likely that a long-shot candidate with local ties will get the nod: state Sen. Ben Downing of Pittsfield. Downing graduated from Providence College in 2003 with a political science degree, one of a number of PC alums who’ve gone on to careers in public service. The best bet for Downing (or Congressman ​Steve Lynch​) to pull off an upset would be for Congressman ​Mike Capuano​ to jump into the race against Markey, helping to split the liberal and regional votes, according to Boston Phoenix scribe ​David Bernstein​.

10. Monday is the last day of the year, which means a lot of people are giving to charity, and there’s no lack of advice available. ​Felix Salmon​ says you’re probably doing it wrong. ​Dylan Matthews​ says your best bet may be GiveDirectly, which does just that. A few years ago ​Ezra Klein​ said you should donate to a nonprofit that does policy advocacy.

11. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – former Republican gubernatorial candidate ​John Robitaille​ and Providence Phoenix news editor ​David Scharfenberg​. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Swipely CEO ​Angus Davis on his growing company and Rhode Island’s startup scene. Watch Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or 6 a.m. on Fox).

12. Happy New Year to you and yours! I hope you have a safe and happy holiday. See you back here next weekend, for the first Saturday Morning Post of 2013.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Democrats may rue the day they supported the appointment of John Kerry as secretary of state. A special election will be held within 160 days once Kerry’s U.S. Senate seat becomes vacant, and Republican Scott Brown could be tough to beat. Polls show Brown is still popular with voters despite their decision to replace him with Elizabeth Warren; a special election would allow them to make amends and vote him back in. Democrats will have trouble repeating their argument that a vote for Brown risks giving the GOP Senate control, since Democrats would still have a 54-seat majority after a Kerry-Brown swap. A special election also has its own dynamics. The Democratic candidate won’t benefit from presidential coattails and a national narrative the way Warren did (and Martha Coakley didn’t). Voter turnout will likely be lower and less liberal, and interest could be limited, especially if voters fatigued from this year’s contest default back to Brown. It’s not clear any of the Democratic hopefuls have the right appeal in those circumstances. If Brown wins and then holds the seat in 2014, before long he could provide the crucial vote that gives Republicans control of the Senate, because the midterm elections are going to be especially tough for Senate Democrats.

2. Minnesota Sen. ​Al Franken​ once again organized a Secret Santa gift swap ($10 limit) for his colleagues, and members of the world’s greatest deliberative body exchanged their presents Tuesday on the Senate floor. Rhode Island’s ​Sheldon Whitehouse​ didn’t take part in the swap, but ​Jack Reed​ did. He got Alaska Sen. ​Lisa Murkowski, and Reed’s office reports he gave her an Alex and Ani “Hope” bracelet. (Murkowski is also the ranking Republican member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, which Reed chairs.) Reed’s Secret Santa was New York Sen. ​Kirsten Gillibrand​, who serves with him on the Armed Services Committee. Appropriately, she gave him a West Point ornament and a copy of ​Tom Ricks​’ recent book “The Generals.”

3. Spare some sympathy for Central Falls Mayor-elect James Diossa. Fresh off his special-election victory this month, Diossa is just months away from having to hit the campaign trail again. His current mandate is only to finish out Charles Moreau’s current term, which ends next year. That means another nonpartisan primary for mayor will be held in Central Falls on Sept. 13, 2013, just nine months from now, with a general election to follow Nov. 13. The winner will serve a three-year term, with the next election in 2016; after that mayoral tenures will return to four years. The idea is to get mayoral elections timed to coincide with high-turnout presidential ones.

4. And speaking of Diossa, a supporter notes he’s not the only politician his age trying to turn around a declining city. Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl took the helm in that city in September 2006, when he was 26. Rhode Island’s leaders have looked to Pittsburgh as a model for turning around a former industrial economy, with Governor Chafee, Mayor Taveras and Brown President Ruth Simmons traveling there last year on a fact-finding mission. Diossa is planning to reach out to Ravenstahl for advice about the task he faces. He can also call someone closer to home: Joe Paolino was only 29 when he became mayor of Providence in 1984.

5. ​Eileen Farrell’s​ version of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” has to be one of the prettiest Christmas records ever made.

6. John Robitaille’s decision to bow out of the 2014 governor’s race isn’t a huge surprise. While Robitaille hasn’t left politics completely behind – he played Sheldon Whitehouse in Barry Hinckley’s debate prep sessions, and will appear on Newsmakers next week – the former Carcieri aide has kept a low public profile since his narrow loss two years ago. His announcement means the most likely Republican candidates are Allan Fung and Brendan Doherty, both of whom sound inclined to run. Then there’s the possibility of another Carcieri capturing the GOP nomination by surprise – a political outsider from the private sector. By definition, such a name isn’t on everyone’s lips at this juncture. Some have pointed to Karl Wadensten, the dynamic CEO of manufacturer Vibco who was the lone “no” vote on the 38 Studios deal as an EDC board member. Wadensten played down the idea on Executive Suite a few months ago, but he did sound intrigued. Who else?

7. The loss of manufacturing jobs in Rhode Island was a hot topic on the campaign trail this year, which makes “The Insourcing Boom,” ​Charles Fishman’s new Atlantic article, a timely read. Fishman argues the factors that have been driving industry to move operations overseas for decades are going into reverse. Are Rhode Island’s leaders aware of this trend? Have they thought about how the state can capitalize on it? (And speaking of Fishman, his book “The Wal-Mart Effect” is a must-read.)

8. ​Henry Kinch Jr.​ says it’s “extremely unlikely” that he’ll seek a rematch against Pawtucket Mayor ​Don Grebien​ in 2014, but unlikely doesn’t mean impossible. Kinch, who was the endorsed Democratic candidate two years ago, is seen as someone who’d like to get back in the game and still thinks he’d do a better job running Pawtucket – but he’s probably too practical to run if he doesn’t have a shot.

9. Could the Engage Rhode Island donor list become ​Gina Raimondo’s​ version of​ Mitt Romney’s​ tax returns? The situations aren’t the same, but they rhyme – a former investment professional with a technocratic streak and a reputation for competence is dogged by a refusal to make sensitive financial information public. There will be a drumbeat to disclose. EngageRI says Texas trader John Arnold and his wife donated less than $333,000 of the nearly $1 million the group has raised so far, but that leaves more than $600,000 in mystery money. Perhaps the donors’ names wouldn’t be controversial – but as long as they remain a secret, they’ll remain the subject of innuendo from Raimondo’s adversaries.

10. An interesting point from ​Matt K. Lewis, writing for The Week about what he terms “an epidemic of demoralization” among working-class Americans: “Rick Santorum has popularized the notion that being married before having kids — and then staying married — is good for the pocketbook. When we mock social conservatives for their ‘family values,’ we ought to remember the practical reason these values caught on.”

11. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – U.S. Sen. Jack Reed​ and Congressman ​David Cicilline​ discuss gun control. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – an encore interview with Alex & Ani CEO Giovanni Feroce. Watch Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or 6 a.m. on Fox).

12. Merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope you have a safe and happy holiday. See you back here next Saturday morning, for the last Saturday Morning Post of 2012.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. After a major tragedy, there’s often a tension between the urge to temporarily suspend normal life and the urge not to allow the perpetrators to make the impact they desired. All of us must decide for ourselves how to resolve that tension. For me, it’s too soon to publish a normal breezy column just 24 hours after more than a dozen innocent children, ages 5 to 10, were executed in their classrooms two hours south of here. My thoughts and prayers are with their loved ones, as I’m sure yours are, amid such unimaginable grief.

2. President Obama: “We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And each time I learn the news I react not as a President, but as anybody else would — as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there’s not a parent in America who doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do. The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own. Among the fallen were also teachers — men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams. So our hearts are broken today — for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children, and for the families of the adults who were lost. Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain.”

3. Governor Chafee: “The word ‘tragedy’ is used often these days, but it is difficult to think of a more truly tragic turn of events than what occurred in Newtown, Conn., earlier today. … We are taught, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’ As the families of today’s many innocent victims mourn this senseless loss of life, the thoughts and prayers of the people of Rhode Island and the people of our nation are with them – and will remain with them.”

4. Bob Schieffer joined CBS News in 1969. “I’ve been around a long time,” he said during live coverage Friday. “I’ve covered a lot of stories and a lot of tragedies – everything from plane crashes to car wrecks to all the things one runs into on the police beat. I have never heard or seen anything that comes up to what we’re seeing unfold here today. I think we are going to see some change. I think we are going to say, this may be as far as we’re willing to go. We’ll find out in the days to come. But I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”

5. It was striking on Friday how quickly the discussion on social media turned to public policy: gun rights, mental health, school preparedness. On reflection, though, it seems like an understandable response – when you see something unimaginable like this, you wonder whether there is something more that could be done to prevent the next tragedy. ”We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics,” the president said. It remains to be seen what, if any, change in federal policy will be proposed after this event. For now I can point you to two thought-provoking articles about firearms: “The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control),” by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, and “Battleground America,” by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker. ProPublica has much more.

6. This week on Newsmakers – newly elected freshman lawmakers Ryan Pearson of Cumberland and John Lombardi of Providence, plus Joe Fleming discusses 2014. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Cox Communications GM John Wolfe and Blooming Blossoms owner Pam Hargraves. Watch Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Which side is going to win the pension lawsuit? Who knows? Both sides have plausible arguments. On the state side, David Boies​ says pension benefits aren’t a contract right since they’re codified in statute – and even if there is a contract right, as Judge ​Sarah Taft-Carter​ has already ruled, Rhode Island’s fiscal situation required changes. On the union side, ​Bob Walsh​ says the unions have already won a key victory on the contract question, and Rhode Island’s situation isn’t so dire that breaking the contract in this way was necessary. It’s hard to imagine Taft-Carter will have the final word on all this, whatever she decides, which means it will wind up coming down to the jurisprudence of ​Supreme Court Chief Justice ​Paul Suttell​ and his four associate justices: ​Maureen McKenna Goldberg​, ​Francis Flaherty​, ​William Robinson​ and ​Gilbert Indeglia​. Are they ready to set a major precedent by upholding the pension law? And will they hand down a decision before Nov. 4, 2014?

2. Speaking of Taft-Carter, there was a funny courtroom moment Friday amid the otherwise painfully awkward period when counsel ​John Tarantino​ was arguing to Taft-Carter’s face why she’d ruled incorrectly on recusing herself and can’t stay on the case because of her family’s stake in the pension system. At one point Tarantino put forward a hypothetical, suggesting that by Taft-Carter’s reasoning she wouldn’t have to recuse herself even if her husband was a plaintiff in the pension case. “Which he’s not!” the judge interjected, laughing nervously. “I want to get that out there.” Considering she made the front page of The New York Times this week, who can blame her?

3. By now you’ve heard all about David Boies​, the super lawyer of Bush vs. Gore fame whom ​Gina Raimondo​ has brought on to buttress Rhode Island’s defense. What you may not know is his opposing lead counsel, ​Lynette Labinger​ of Providence law firm Roney and Labinger, has won some well-known cases too – most famously, a six-year battle with Brown University over its violations of Title IX.

4. I never miss Mary Meeker’s annual PowerPoint presentation on the state of the digital world, and you shouldn’t either. The whole deck is available free here – a great read (click?) for anyone with an interest in technology and commerce.

5. Out and about this week at URI and the Providence Athenaeum to talk politics (thanks for having me!) there were a lot of questions about President Obama and the 2014 governor’s race. I’d argue, though, we should all be spending less time thinking about the people in the executive branch, and the legislative branch for that matter, and more time on the actual policies they enact. ​Ezra Klein​ made the point well last year when he described “a weakness that afflicts much punditry about the presidency: it is very surefooted in its reporting on personalities and the process by which decisions were made, and very vague when it comes to assessing the policy that was under consideration and judging whether the final approach performed better or worse than the alternative proposals.”

6. Outgoing Rhode Island GOP Chairman ​Mark Zaccaria ​thinks ​Mitt Romney​ could play a helpful role in the Republican Party going forward: by raising a lot of money. “To the extent he would be willing to lend his name to national Republican fundraising efforts, he’d obviously be a prime draw for things like that,” Zaccaria told The Wall Street Journal last week. Perhaps another event in Newport?

7. With ​Sheldon Whitehouse​’s​ former chief of staff ​Mindy Myers taking the same job with ​Elizabeth Warren,​ the senator didn’t have to look far to find Myers’ replacement: ​Sam Goodstein​, who took over when Myers left to manage Warren’s campaign. Goodstein, who has a low profile compared with Myers, was previously Whitehouse’s legislative director and his chief counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Before that Goodstein worked for then-U.S. Sen. ​Ken Salazar​ (who is now President Obama’s secretary of the interior).

8. Chris Hughes​, the 29-year-old Facebook multimillionaire who recently bought The New Republic, is also a generous supporter of groups pushing to legalize gay marriage. Generous may be an understatement: Hughes gave $250,000 to New York’s Freedom to Marry and at least $125,000 to other groups. Considering that Hughes’ husband ​Sean Eldridge​ has Rhode Island ties – he graduated from Brown University in 2009 – it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if the pair eventually offered financial support for advocates in Rhode Island, too.

9. During her Washington-Chicago-New York swing this week, Gina Raimondo made an appearance on the WTTW-TV show “Chicago Tonight” to discuss pensions. Raimondo said she’s discussed the issue with Chicago Mayor ​Rahm Emanuel​, President Obama’s famously foul-mouthed former chief of staff. “We’ve had discussions, and he I think is doing a very noble and challenging job of trying to right the ship here in Chicago,” Raimondo said. “We’ve spent a lot of time with him and his staff.”

10. With the election over, U.S. House lawmakers are turning their minds to something that really matters – who gets the best office space. ​Tim White​ asked Congressman ​David Cicilline​ whether he’d be packing up for greener pastures now that he’s no longer a freshman, but Cicilline replied (via Twitter) that he chose to stay in Canon House Office Building Room 128. “Same floor & building as Jim” Langevin, the junior congressman explained. “Very convenient for visiting Rhode Islanders.” As someone who’s spent more than one Washington afternoon racing to try and get interviews with all four members of the delegation, I thank him.

11. And speaking of the delegation, ​Jack Reed​ watch continues: this week South Dakota U.S. Sen. ​Tim Johnson​ signaled he may not run for re-election, which would elevate Reed to the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee – unless Michigan U.S. Sen. ​Carl Levin​ retires, too, which would probably mean Reed takes the Senate Armed Services gavel. Levin says he hasn’t made up his mind yet.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Providence Mayor Angel Taveras talks pensions and 2014. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Daniele Foods’ ​Stefano​ and ​Davide Duckevich​ discuss the pleasures of prosciutto from Pascoag. Watch Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. Oy Christmas tree. Governor Chafee’s noble impulse to respect all Rhode Islanders regardless of their faith certainly reflects the state’s long history of religious tolerance, as well as his interpretation of church-state separation. Still, a large lighted indoor spruce festooned with ornaments in December is a Christmas tree, whether the governor calls it a holiday tree or a hippopotamus; the same will be true if he calls a menorah a “holiday candelabra.” And as Bishop Tobin pointed out to my colleague Steve Nielsen, “It’s not just about the name of the tree; it’s about American culture and traditions that are very important to a lot of people.” Moreover, this is a governor whose approval rating has never topped 38%. Every time he fights one of these principled but Quixotic battles – whether it’s the holiday tree or Jason Pleau – he uses up political capital he doesn’t have to spare. Pleau is life and death; the holiday tree is not. The media undoubtedly fanned the flames this week, but that’s no surprise, and an effective governor deals with the media environment he has, not the one he wishes he had. Does Chafee lack the discipline to do that?

2. Gov. Philip Noel created the R.I. Department of Economic Development in 1974. William Parsons went to work there the following year. During the subsequent four decades Rhode Island has gone through multiple economic crises, and the department itself has been remade into the quasi-public R.I. Economic Development Corporation. And through it all – recessions, reprimands, rebukes, reorganizations – Parsons has remained. On Thursday the governor named him to succeed Keith Stokes as its executive director – what luck that the most qualified person in the country to lead the EDC had already been working there for 37 years.

3. Via Tim Britton, Fangraphs has a fascinating side-by-side comparison of all 30 Major League Baseball teams’ TV contracts. The value of the Dodgers’ new deal could reach $7 billion.

4. New York Times Magazine chief political correspondent Matt Bai was in Rhode Island this week preparing a story on the 38 Studios fiasco, but it’s not his first time zeroing in on the state or its chief executive; back in 2003 Bai wrote a terrific, tough profile of then-Senator Lincoln Chafee. An excerpt: “Two theories took hold and are often repeated: either the younger Chafee is a few votes short of a quorum or he’s actually cagier than anyone realizes and enjoys being inscrutable. In fact, after you spend some time with Chafee, neither analysis seems right. He’s not dim, nor does he have much capacity for guile or irony. He is, instead, a slow starter who learned early in life to ask questions, persevere and wait his turn. ‘He’s not a giver-upper,’ is how his mother described him to me.”

5. Speaking of the United States Senate, the 2014 elections could have a major impact on U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, and not just because he’s up for re-election. National Journal reports it’s possible both Michigan’s Carl Levin and South Dakota’s Tim Johnson could retire rather than run for another term. Levin chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Johnson chairs the Senate Banking Committee; Reed is second in seniority on both panels, meaning he’s next in line for both chairmanships. Since he can’t have both jobs, Reed would probably take the gavel of the powerful Armed Services Committee should both senators step aside.

6. And speaking of Reed, he has a fan in Anne-Imelda Radice, who now heads the American Folk Art Museum in New York but was formerly the director of the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under President Bush and President Obama. “He was very helpful,” Radice told me. “Senator Reed is really the hero of libraries. The arts need a hero like Senator Reed. He is a tremendous person.” She added, “You’re very fortunate to have him as one of your senators.”

7. Tim White’s stories this week about the looming early release of convicted “thrill kill” murder Alfred Brissette – which is off for now due to Tim’s reports – could lead many to take a closer look at how the Rhode Island Parole Board does business. “They’re making what should be a well-established, standardized, transparent process seem willy-nilly and opaque,” Wakefield lawyer Jon Pincince tweeted.

8. Last week I offered two optimistic takes on the future of the American economy. This week, a more sober view from famed investor Jeremy Grantham: “On the Road to Zero Growth” [pdf]. Grantham, by the way, is also a key financial supporter of URI’s Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting.

9. This week U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse renewed his call for Congress to pass his Paying a Fair Share Act, better known as the “Buffett Rule” bill, and his timing coincided with a New York Times op-ed from Warren Buffett himself urging a 30% minimum tax on millionaires. However, The Washington Post’s Dylan Matthews pointed out a little-discussed effect of Whitehouse’s bill: it would send marginal tax rates on capital gains income sharply higher from $500,000 to $1 million. “Ideally, you don’t want the capital gains tax to deter investment,” Matthews writes. “But there’s no good reason why we should encourage investments for earners making under $200,000 or so but discourage them for earners making above that. It makes sense on progressivity grounds, but not as a growth policy.”

10. If the Providence police union approves the negotiated pension settlement and remaining nonprofit holdout Providence College agrees to make larger payments in lieu of taxes, Mayor Angel Taveras will have secured basically everything he sought to close the $110 million structural deficit left behind by the Cicilline administration.

11. Providence Phoenix scribe Dave Scharfenberg has Rhode Island’s chattering class talking about his big story on what The Providence Journal should do next, an illuminating read. Also on Fountain Street, longtime Washington reporter John Mulligan is leaving the paper, while longtime State House reporter Kathy Gregg has been making her presence felt on Twitter.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Central Falls mayoral candidate Joseph Moran and RIFuture.org’s Bob Plain on his “Homeless Like Me” project. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Shawmut Design and Construction’s Ron Simoneau and the R.I. Christmas Tree Growers Association’s Eric Watne. Watch Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or 6 a.m. on Fox). Most importantly, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” airs Tuesday at 8 p.m. on WPRI 12. See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. What makes a great mayor? Looks can be deceiving. If roads, services and job growth are all solid the natural inclination is to think the current mayor is doing a good job. But check under the hood. Nobody would buy a car, or even assume it’s in good condition, just because it has a fresh coat of paint and clean interiors – we’d kick the tires, check the mileage and survey the parts as well. It’s the same way with cities, and in Rhode Island particularly so with unfunded retirement liabilities. I’m betting there were decades past when some Rhode Island cities had great services, a contented citizenry and a happy municipal work force – all to the benefit of their mayors. But if part of that work force’s pay was in the form of deferred compensation – pensions and lifetime health care – the contented citizens were effectively borrowing money from taxpayers of the future to afford the level of services they enjoyed at the time. A truly great mayor is one who provides good services without leaving behind large hidden debts to handcuff his successors.

3. How long is it going to take for the Rhode Island judicial system to render a final decision on the 2011 pension law? Seems like it could take a while, considering the Superior Court is still grappling with procedural questions such as whether Judge Taft-Carter can stay on the case. The long-term fiscal outlook for all levels of Rhode Island government will remain a question-mark until the law’s future is decided. Bob Walsh of teachers union NEARI argues that uncertainty is unnecessary – state leaders could resolve the question once and for all by negotiating a resolution with organized labor. But Treasurer Raimondo‘s allies dismiss that idea, saying the unions had their shot during the back-room bargaining last fall and maintaining that the law’s sweeping changes are legal. And it seems unlikely Governor Chafee, House Speaker Fox or Senate President Paiva Weed would move to open negotiations if the treasurer objects.

4. Ron Brownstein of National Journal has a very good column dividing the 2012 electorate into two groups: the Democrats’ Coalition of Transformation and the Republicans’ Coalition of Restoration. “To the extent [Republicans'] longing means restoring the political dominance of married, churchgoing white families,” he writes, “the most important message of 2012 is that those days are gone.”

5. Speaking of Republicans, Nesi’s Notes editor emeritus M. Charles Bakst writes in:

Seeing the results of the 2012 national elections, in which Republicans did so poorly among women and minorities, doesn’t it seem, um, stupid that 97 House GOPers would come out against President Obama’s prospective nomination of Susan Rice as Secretary of State? Especially in that it is only senators who actually vote on confirmation of cabinet appointees?

I don’t claim this to be any original insight on my part. But it does remind me of something. For most of my career covering Rhode Island politics, the state’s congressional delegation included a Republican senator – John Chafee and then his son, Lincoln – and for many of those years at least one GOP U.S. representative or even two (Claudine Schneider, Ron Machtley).

For a journalist, it was always great to be able to tap Republican as well as Democratic delegation members for comment on what their parties or the other parties were up to.

With partisan Democratic appeals so prominent and powerful in Sheldon Whitehouse’s ouster of Lincoln Chafee in 2006 and in David Cicilline’s reelection in 2012, I’m not holding my breath waiting for Rhode Islanders to send a Republican to Congress again. On the merits, I’m not saying they should, just that as a journalist it’s always useful to be able to talk to someone on either side of the aisle and to ask, say, “What in the world are your people thinking?”

6. At the suggestion of Common Cause Rhode Island’s John Marion and WPRO’s Andrew Gobeil, I’m slowly but surely making my way through Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of Lyndon Johnson. Right now I’m on the third volume, “Master of the Senate,” which chronicles Johnson’s years as Senate majority leader, when he passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act in a tour de force of legislative skill. What I didn’t know until reading Caro was the crucial role played in that fight by U.S. Sen. John Pastore, the diminutive Democrat who represented Rhode Island in the chamber from 1950 to 1976. (Pastore, who never lost an election, died in 2000 at age 93.) Johnson used Pastore, a noted orator, to give a crucial speech supporting an amendment that allowed the act to pass. “The impact of Pastore’s performance was profound,” the historian Robert Mann wrote. “He played the role of an earnest, undecided senator. But he had actually led his colleagues through a crafty, subtle argument for the amendment.” It was the rare Senate floor speech that actually changed votes.

7. Will the indignities never stop for Rhode Island Republicans? A sharp-eyed reader discovered that when you click the picture of House Minority Leader Brian Newberry on the redesigned House website, you’re brought to the page for … Majority Leader Nick Mattiello. “Newberry suffered lost membership in this past election and can’t even get a solid link to his own profile,” remarks my correspondent.

8. How’d you like to come work with my colleagues and me? WPRI 12 is looking for a new Digital Content Producer to join the team that produces WPRI.com’s daily news coverage. It’s a hybrid reporter/editor/multimedia gig. Full information on how to apply is here.

9. One hallmark of Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed’s approach to leadership – and perhaps one key to her success – is that she holds her cards close to the vest, rarely saying more to the press than she needs to. In that respect she’s the Bill Belichick of Rhode Island politics. Governor Chafee’s nomination of George Caruolo to lead the new R.I. Board of Education is no exception; asked for Paiva Weed’s thoughts on the pick, her spokesman Greg Pare replied concisely: “As with any appointment, when it is received by the Senate it will be referred to the appropriate committee, which will do its due diligence.”

10. Rhode Island PBS was kind enough to include me on the panel for this week’s episode of “A Lively Experiment,” along with Ian Donnis, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung and Bob Walsh. Topics include the pension challenge and next year’s legislative session. Watch tonight at 7 p.m. on WSBE Learn (Ch. 36.2), Sunday at noon on WSBE-TV (Ch. 36.1) or online at the RI PBS blog.

11. I hope all of you had a safe and happy Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for all of you who read Nesi’s Notes and have given me the chance to do a job I love. Thank you for your loyalty, your ideas, your criticisms, your tips, your corrections, and your good humor.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – Brown University President Christina Paxson. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – a look at Pawtucket with Providence Yarn Company’s Terry Schuster and Foolproof Brewing Company’s Nick Garrison. Watch Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi

1. The General Assembly approved Rhode Island’s landmark pension overhaul one year ago today, and the storyline since then bears more than a passing resemblance to what transpired with President Obama’s health care law. As with Obamacare, the pension law’s constitutionality is being challenged in the courts and there are significant doubts about whether it will survive, but it’s being implemented based on the assumption it will be upheld. Meanwhile, Treasurer Raimondo’s allies are troubled by an emerging narrative that suggests she should have followed Mayor Taveras’s approach and negotiated a pension resolution with union officials. Their argument: the two Democrats used appropriate approaches for their respective jurisdictions, since state pensions are statutory and city pensions are contractual. Be that as it may, the stakes in the pension suit are extremely high: paying the full tab for the old system, if the courts bring it back, will cost Rhode Islanders about $300 million more this year alone. Perhaps that will be what finally wins progressives their long-sought income-tax hike.

2. If Rhode Islanders ever decide to name something after Governor Chafee, I think they should change the name of the intermodal hub at T.F. Green Airport from InterLink to InterLinc. Get it? He loves transportation and he was mayor of Warwick – makes sense.

3. Whither the Rhode Island Republican Party? One option: start small, and build up the party from the places where it’s strongest. Admittedly there aren’t many of those, but they do exist. Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama in three of Rhode Island’s 39 communities: Scituate, West Greenwich and East Greenwich. Focus on building up the party in those places, and keep doing so on down the list where Obama ran weakest. Win local races, then govern well. Put together a story you can tell the rest of Rhode Island. And forget federal races for now. By all means the GOP should take a gamble on a federal race if a great political talent comes along (and Brendan Doherty, Barry Hinckley and Michael Riley were not great political talents) or if a candidate has a strong geographic base, as Scott Avedisian and Allan Fung do. Indeed, the two mayors show the potential of the strategy: they’re seen as contenders in large part because of their achievements and popularity in Rhode Island’s second- and third-largest cities.

4. Here’s some food for thought. Brendan Doherty received 83,737 votes in the 1st Congressional District last week; if John Loughlin had drawn the same level of support in 2010, he’d have defeated David Cicilline with nearly 2,500 votes to spare. But Doherty, like other Republicans from coast to coast, miscalculated this year in projecting an electorate more like 2010′s than 2008′s. In the end the number of votes cast in the 1st District barely changed, dipping from 211,702 in 2008 to 205,115 in 2012. That suggests roughly 32,000 votes shifted from the Democratic candidate in 2008 (Patrick Kennedy) to Doherty in 2012. Considering the district got more Democratic over that time period, Doherty and the GOP improved their performance significantly over four years – just not enough to win.

5. Your homework for the weekend: read Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen’s essential New York Times op-ed on “the capitalist’s dilemma.” Pay particular attention to the distinction he makes between “empowering” innovations, “sustaining” innovations and “efficiency” innovations.

6. Three years after a merger with its Connecticut sibling, watch for Rhode Island’s Planned Parenthood chapter to raise its profile over the coming year under the leadership of new state director Paula Hodges, a Missouri native. The group had a good election season, giving crucial support to victorious state legislative candidates including Marvin Abney, Linda Finn, Adam Satchell and Catherine Cool-Rumsey. Planned Parenthood will need all the help it can get at the State House; NARAL Pro-Choice America gave Rhode Island a D+ on its annual scorecard, and anti-abortion politicians such as Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed wield considerable power on Smith Hill. Hodges and her allies will push the Assembly to expand Medicaid eligibility for family planning programs – they say it will save the state $4.7 million.

7. This week the Financial Times decided to move its blogs outside the FT.com paywall, tacitly acknowledging the cost to newspapers in walling themselves off from the open Web in 2012. Nobody should underestimate the difficulties facing legacy print media. On the one hand, giving everything away free has undercut their main source of revenue (print); on the other, walling content off from the rest of the Web – and particularly from the social-media conversation – means a massive missed opportunity to expand audience, sell advertising and attract the younger readers vital to the industry’s future. A tough row to hoe.

8. Boston Magazine has a wonderful new feature story on a young Catholic seminarian who represents the future of the Church as it rebuilds in the wake of the pedophilia scandal. It piqued my interest about seminarians in the Diocese of Providence, so I sought out an update from diocesan spokesman Michael Guilfoyle. Right now the Rhode Island diocese has 22 men on the path to the priesthood, including nine theology students at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Mass. (which is the subject of the Boston Magazine article), the Pontifical North American College in Rome and Blessed John XXIII Seminary in Weston, Mass. Here in Rhode Island, Our Lady of Providence is at maximum capacity with 26 seminarians: 10 from the Diocese of Providence, and 16 others from the Dioceses of Portland, Burlington, Boston, Fall River, Manchester and Baltimore.

9. Friend-of-Nesi’s Notes Robert Atkinson, the former chief of the R.I. Economic Policy Council, is out with a new book called “Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage” that argues the United States needs to enact new policies to raise its level of innovation if it wants to maintain its economic leadership in the world. Atkinson defines innovation broadly, as everything from scientific breakthroughs and iPad Minis to faster production processes, and argues for closer collaboration between government and business.

10. One more must-read on economic development: The Economist’s Ryan Avent argues “the recent remaking of the Northeast corridor is just a continuation of the long interaction between industry, technology, and geography that has characterized rich economies since the earliest days of the industrial revolution” – something he sees as “broadly positive.”

11. Heresy? Slate’s Bret Asbury says you should love the Star Wars prequels – and even look forward to Disney’s coming sequel.

12. Set your DVRs: This week on Newsmakers – the R.I. Board of Elections’ Robert Kando and Common Cause Rhode Island’s John Marion. Watch Sunday at 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. This week on Executive Suite – Benny’s owner Arnold Bromberg on the store’s 88th Christmas shopping season. Watch Sunday at 6 p.m. on myRITV (or 6 a.m. on Fox). See you back here next Saturday morning.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi’s Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi