May 13th, 2013 at 3:42 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Engage Rhode Island’s fundraising slowed significantly in 2012 compared with the prior year, when the advocacy group provided crucial support for the pension law pushed through by Treasurer Gina Raimondo, WPRI.com has confirmed. Its union opponents said they spent $80,000 in 2011.
April 5th, 2013 at 6:02 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Edward “Ted” Siedle launched a blistering attack on Treasurer Gina Raimondo in a Forbes.com post Thursday that suggested her changes to Rhode Island’s $7 billion pension system are leading to a “Wall Street feeding frenzy.” Raimondo’s critics seized on Siedle’s broadside immediately, while others wanted to know more about his charges.
Raimondo responded to the Forbes piece Friday in an interview with WPRI.com, defending the State Investment Commission she chairs for moving aggressively to create and expand a portfolio of hedge funds. This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Let’s jump right to it. Did you read the article, and what was your reaction?
I did read it. It’s not an article – it’s an opinion blog, and obviously there’s a number of inaccuracies, and I disagree with the overall tone of the blog.
Did the author ever reach out to you or your office, do you know?
No.
So there was no effort to discuss it?
No.
Looking for a thesis in the article, Siedle writes: “There’s no prudent, disciplined investment program at work here – just a blatant Wall Street gorging, while simultaneously pruning state workers’ pension benefits.” I know you’ll disagree with that, but what’s your response?
March 18th, 2013 at 11:45 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Engage Rhode Island, the deep-pocketed advocacy group closely tied to Treasurer Gina Raimondo, released an unsigned three-page document [pdf] on Monday that makes the case for the legality of the 2011 pension law. Here’s the core of the argument:
If the Rhode Island Supreme Court affirms Judge Taft-Carter’s Decision, it will reverse its own precedent on the unmistakability doctrine, and create new constitutional law which will differ from federal court precedent and the precedent of the majority of state courts in this country. … If the judiciary can require a legislature to bind itself forever through one legislative act, which can never be revisited, the judiciary is thereby given too much power. Thus, it is important to hold from a separation of powers perspective that, unless the legislature’s intent to create contractual rights against the state is unmistakably clear, it should be free to amend its own legislation in the future.
Read the entire PDF here. For an alternative view, check out this from RWU Law’s Michael Yelnosky.
• Related: Mediation to continue in RI pension suit after judge gets update (Feb. 28)
December 5th, 2012 at 2:38 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Gina Raimondo is out of town, but her allies are still here to defend the pension law.
Engage Rhode Island, the deep-pocketed advocacy group that helped Raimondo pass the pension changes, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon criticizing Governor Chafee for talking with union leaders Tuesday about a potential settlement of their lawsuit challenging the law.
The unsigned statement said EngageRI is “concerned” by Chafee’s “apparent change of heart” on “a bill he signed into law just a year ago,” and is “saddened to hear of his desire to give away the retirement security of thousands of Rhode Islanders behind closed doors.”
EngageRI’s statement pushed back at the idea that unions weren’t given a chance to influence the process, and said it’s “unfortunate that Governor Chafee would want to subvert this open and public process by talking with union leadership behind closed doors.”
Raimondo released a statement shortly afterwards that, unlike EngageRI’s, only referenced the governor indirectly. “It is not the time for closed-door meetings. This is not a time for politics,” she said.
“If at some point the court asks the state to sit down to try and reach a settlement, we will do so in good faith,” Raimondo said. “In the meantime, Treasury will continue to work diligently to defend the important work done by the General Assembly.”
House Speaker Gordon Fox also weighed in against Chafee’s initiative. “It is not appropriate for me to negotiate legislation that was passed by the General Assembly and signed by the governor,” he said. “The time to negotiate was during the 30 hours of public hearings that were conducted by the legislature.”
In response, Chafee issued a statement of his own: “I have confidence in the state’s legal case. But a strong case does not guarantee a win.” The governor also said, “I have been disappointed that state leaders in a position to engage in reasonable discussions have chosen not to do so.”
Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, the last of the four principals in the pension drama, opted to stay out of the fray on Wednesday. “She is going to decline comment at this point in time,” Senate spokesman Greg Pare told WPRI.com.
Full statements from all parties after the jump.
• Related: Barro: RI came closer than most but didn’t fix pension problem (Dec. 4)
This post has been updated.
August 20th, 2012 at 1:09 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Engage Rhode Island’s leaders were serious about sticking around.
The deep-pocketed 501(c)4 advocacy group that helped pass last year’s pension overhaul sent out campaign fliers this month in three districts with closely contested Democratic primary races for General Assembly.
Two of the mailers attack incumbent Reps. Spencer Dickinson of South Kingstown and Rene Menard of Lincoln for voting against the law. Dickinson’s opponent is South Kingstown Councilwoman Kathleen Fogarty, who backed the law, and Menard’s is Cumberland Councilwoman Mia Ackerman, a staunch supporter of the changes whose website specifically links her candidacy with Treasurer Gina Raimondo’s policies.
(The two women use almost identical language on their respective campaign sites, telling voters they’ll work for “your interests” rather than “special interests.”)
April 30th, 2012 at 11:06 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Engage Rhode Island, the deep-pocketed group that successfully pushed passage of the new pension law, raised $12,650 for its new political action committee and made no contributions during the first three months of this year.
EngageRI PAC had $14,069 on hand as of March 31, according to a report filed with the R.I. Board of Elections. The group donated $6,000 to the General Assembly’s top six Democrats last year and organizers have said it will provide support for legislators who voted for the pension overhaul.
EngageRI PAC’s first-quarter donors included Bernard Buonanno Jr., a senior partner at Riparian Partners, which was purchased last year by Oppenheimer & Co.; Ted Long, a lawyer and former top aide to U.S. Sen. Jack Reed; Terrence Murray, the former chairman of FleetBoston bank; and a number of others who supported Engage RI’s original 501(c)4.
• Related: EngageRI donates $1,000 each to top six in General Assembly (Feb. 1)
An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the EngageRI PAC donor is Bernard Buonanno III, a managing director at private-equity firm Nautic Partners; his father, Bernard Buonanno Jr., is the donor.
April 6th, 2012 at 12:26 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Treasurer Raimondo met with the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board recently, and it seems they came away impressed – so much so they want President Obama’s former chief of staff to create an “Engage Illinois” group modeled on Engage Rhode Island.
“Governor Quinn, Mayor Emanuel: Engage Illinois,” the Trib wrote in an editorial Friday. (That would be recently elected Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama’s right-hand man.) ”For our part, we will keep trying to help.”
Illinois’ pension system is the worst-funded in the country and a big source of angst in the Land of Lincoln. At a Tribune forum on Wednesday, “Emanuel raised, and Quinn discussed, the best idea of the night: that Illinois consider pension changes that the similarly Democratic state of Rhode Island adopted in November,” the editorialists said.
Here’s the lesson the Trib took from Raimondo’s work last year:
March 19th, 2012 at 3:09 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Engage Rhode Island played a pivotal role in getting last November’s pension overhaul across the finish line, but it’s not clear whether the deep-pocketed advocacy group will put the same muscle behind the municipal-relief legislation Governor Chafee proposed last week.
“We appreciate Governor Chafee’s initiative on municipal pension reform,” Jon Duffy, a spokesman for EngageRI, told WPRI.com in a statement. “His experience as mayor of Warwick gives him a particularly deep understanding of the challenges faced by our cities and towns.”
However, Duffy stopped short of endorsing the far-reaching package the governor put forward on Thursday. EngageRI’s board members “look forward to reading his proposals and working with his administration to ensure that any pension reform measures proposed are comprehensive,” he said.
February 1st, 2012 at 12:19 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Engage Rhode Island, the deep-pocketed group that successfully pushed passage of the new pension law, donated $6,000 to the General Assembly’s top six Democrats late last year through its new political action committee.
EngageRI PAC contributed $1,000 each on Dec. 29 to the campaign war chests of House Speaker Gordon Fox, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, House Majority Leader Nick Mattiello, Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio and the two finance committee chairmen, Rep. Helio Melo and Sen. Dan DaPonte, according to campaign finance records reviewed by WPRI.com. The Providence Journal first reported the donations.
“EngageRI PAC gave to General Assembly leadership for their efforts and courage in the pension reform efforts leading to the passage of the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act of 2011,” Jon Duffy, EngageRI’s spokesman, told WPRI.com. The PAC is now “in a very active fundraising mode,” he said.
The six donations used up most of the $7,840 the EngageRI PAC raised in December from a group that included Duffy, Paul Choquette of Gilbane, Ed Cooney of Nortek, John Galvin of Collette Vacations and John Muggeridge of Fidelity Investments. The original 501(c)4 EngageRI has not said where it got its budget of more than $600,000.
EngageRI PAC did not make donations to Treasurer Gina Raimondo, the driving force behind the pension bill who inspired EngageRI, or Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who signed the bill into law. The group has said it will provide support for legislators who voted for the pension overhaul.
• Related: EngageRI forms PAC to fund pols; spent $617K for pension bill (Dec. 16)
December 18th, 2011 at 3:06 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
The nonprofit Crossroads Rhode Island has suffered dearly for signing on with Engage Rhode Island, the deep-pocketed advocacy group that successfully pushed the pension bill. Sunday’s Projo reports donations to Crossroads are down more than 50% from last year and it is receiving angry letters from public employees.
Asked whether she’d still join EngageRI if she got the chance to do it all over, Crossroads chief Anne Nolan told the paper: “Honestly, I can’t answer that.”
What the Journal article doesn’t mention is that Crossroads has already disappeared from EngageRI’s website. The nonprofit is no longer listed among EngageRI’s coalition members on its home page, and Nolan herself has been deleted from EngageRI’s board of directors list.
Crossroads isn’t alone.
Another social services agency whose support for EngageRI drew a lot of attention – Family Service of Rhode Island – has also been removed from the coalition list, and the name of its CEO, Margaret Holland McDuff, has been deleted from the board, where she’d been listed as EngageRI’s co-chairperson. McDuff and Nortek executive Ed Cooney were the original driving forces behind EngageRI.
• Related: EngageRI forms PAC to fund pols; spent $617K for pension bill (Dec. 16)
December 16th, 2011 at 6:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Engage Rhode Island, the deep-pocketed advocacy group that successfully pushed passage of the new pension law, spent more than $617,000 over two months to promote the legislation and has now formed a political action committee to support lawmakers who voted for it.
EngageRI shelled out $93,327 in November after spending $524,657 in October on two months’ worth of lobbying, advertising, campaign materials and other expenses in support of the pension bill, according to a lobbying report the organization filed Thursday with the secretary of state’s office.
On Nov. 17, the day the pension bill passed the House and Senate, Engage Rhode Island formed an offshoot organization called Engage RI PAC that will be able to support individual candidates. Engage Rhode Island, the original group, is organized as a 501(c)4 nonprofit and thus barred from advocating for individual politicians.
“We’ve said all along that we would support candidates that supported pension reform, and the PAC gives us the vehicle to do that in a direct way,” EngageRI spokesman Jon Duffy told WPRI.com.
November 10th, 2011 at 4:27 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
Engage Rhode Island, the new advocacy group pushing passage of the Raimondo-Chafee pension bill, has raised more than $500,000 and plans to spend some of it in next year’s election to support lawmakers who back the bill, WPRI.com has learned.
The 501(c)4 nonprofit’s fundraising haul was confirmed by two people familiar with its finances. EngageRI spokesman Jon Duffy declined to provide a specific dollar amount, but reiterated that the organization has raised “six figures.”
Union leaders – who successfully defeated a number of incumbents in 2010 – have made clear they’ll target vulnerable state lawmakers when they’re up for reelection in 2012 if they support the bill. But Duffy suggested EngageRI will have sufficient funds to counter organized labor during next year’s campaign.
“We have kept money in reserve because we think EngageRI needs to stick around,” he said. “There’s some legislators that are going to need support going forward. We will be there.”
October 30th, 2011 at 8:22 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
There’s a reason many companies avoid getting involved in politics – they don’t want to alienate potential customers on any side of an issue. Pawtucket-based travel agency Collette Vacations is the latest to learn that lesson.
The National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, ended its relationship with Collette over the weekend thanks to the company’s support for Engage Rhode Island, the deep-pocketed new advocacy group pushing the General Assembly to enact the Raimondo-Chafee pension bill.
NEA’s Member Benefits Corp. subsidiary had a deal with Collette that provided 5% travel discounts and other perks to NEA’s 3.2 million members when they booked their trips through the Pawtucket agency.
October 23rd, 2011 at 7:07 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
Engage Rhode Island won’t have the radio dial to itself for long.
The Rhode Island Retirement Security Coalition, an ad hoc group of state unions, is launching a new radio advertisement defending government workers’ current pension plan and slamming the Raimondo-Chafee overhaul bill now before lawmakers.
Politicians bailed out banks and cut taxes on the wealthy, it says, and now “these same politicians want to change Rhode Island’s pension system again for the fourth time in seven years. So are they finally asking the rich to pay their fair share? Of course not.”
“We have a pension problem, but Governor Chafee’s solution is not only unfair – it may be illegal,” the ad says.
No word on whether the union coalition will also buy newspaper and television ads, as EngageRI has done. (“You’re asking Bill Belichick to tell you what the game plan is?” AFL-CIO President George Nee said last week when asked about their strategy.) You can listen to the full advertisement after the jump.
• Related: Labor balks at RI pension overhaul bill (Oct. 19)
October 23rd, 2011 at 6:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
Raimondo and the reps last month
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Treasurer Gina Raimondo is warning state lawmakers they’re likely to be defeated in next year’s election if they vote against her pension overhaul plan as she calls on organized labor to drop its opposition to the proposal.
“If you don’t vote for pension reform you have to go to your constituents and explain why you voted for property tax increases, state income tax increases, a lack of funding for public education,” Raimondo told WPRI.com on Friday during a 40-minute interview in her first-floor Statehouse office. “That’s what will happen.”
Woonsocket City Council President John Ward, who also works as Lincoln’s finance director, warned at a forum Friday that “Lincoln will be extremely inconvenienced” but Woonsocket “will be devastated” if their pension costs soar because the Raimondo-Chafee bill doesn’t pass.
Raimondo cited Ward to back up her warning to lawmakers. “A legislator who votes against this has to explain to their constituents why they voted to devastate certain communities in Rhode Island,” she said, adding that she thinks the pension bill is “politically popular.”
‘They just don’t like this one’
Members of the General Assembly aren’t the only ones in the treasurer’s crosshairs. She also suggested labor leaders are being disingenuous with their rank and file.
October 6th, 2011 at 3:33 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
I asked Benenson Strategy Group to send me the demographic breakdown for the 450 likely voters who were interviewed for Engage Rhode Island’s pension poll so I could get WPRI 12 political analyst (and pollster) Joe Fleming’s take on whether the Washington-based firm captured the local voting population accurately.
“They look good,” Fleming told me in an email after giving the screening questions a look, though he said the number of union households and college graduates surveyed might be a little high.
Pensions aside, the most interesting statistics to me in the demographic breakdown were the questions about where the 450 likely voters surveyed get their Rhode Island political and government news.
The top online source was local broadcast TV news websites like WPRI.com at 29%, followed by none (28%), local newspapers sites like Projo.com or national news sites (tied at 26%), or search-engine portals like Google News and Yahoo! News (17%).
The top source in general for political and government news was television (37%), newspapers or magazines (27%), followed by the Internet and radio (tied at 14%). That mirrors the findings of national studies by the Pew Research Center.
You can check out the demographics for yourself by downloading the PDF from WPRI.com.
October 6th, 2011 at 10:27 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
The National Education Association Rhode Island’s Robert Walsh isn’t surprised that a new poll commissioned by a group that supports Treasurer Gina Raimondo shows many Rhode Islanders have noticed the pension debate.
“It’s been a hotly discussed topic for the entire summer in Rhode Island,” Walsh told WPRI 12′s Tim White on Thursday morning. “John Hazen White has billboards up. So it’s not surprising people are focused on pension reform in Rhode Island.”
Walsh said he hadn’t seen the Engage Rhode Island poll results yet but dismissed its finding that 87% of likely voters believe the state’s $7 billion unfunded pension liability is “a major problem.”
“That’s a loaded question,” he said. “Consider the source.”
October 6th, 2011 at 9:30 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
Nearly two-thirds of Rhode Islanders want to see “a complete overhaul” of the state pension system, according to a newly released poll commissioned by a nonprofit that supports Treasurer Gina Raimondo’s approach to the issue.
The survey of 450 likely voters paid for by Engage Rhode Island found 73% would strongly or somewhat support pension legislation that raises the retirement age to 67; cuts the benefit earned for each year of service; freezes cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs); and reduces future COLAs at times when the pension fund “is in financial danger.”
That list captures some of the suggestions Raimondo has floated lately, including last month on WPRI 12′s “Newsmakers,” though it does not include reamortization, which would increase the number of years the state takes – and the amount of money it pays – to make up the pension fund’s current shortfall, and does not mention the possible switch to a 401k-style “hybrid” plan.
The poll showed a high level of awareness about the debate, with the vast majority of those surveyed – 84% – saying they had “heard or read about Rhode Island’s pension system recently.”
September 29th, 2011 at 3:44 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – A newly formed advocacy group launched its public campaign Thursday for the forthcoming Raimondo-Chafee pension bill, trumpeting a list of well-connected supporters and deep pockets to match.
Engage Rhode Island placed advertisements in Thursday’s Providence Journal and on the radio to mark the unveiling of its website, EngageRI.org, which was registered Sept. 6. The 501(c)4 nonprofit has no paid staff but has hired a team of consultants led by Providence public-relations agency Duffy & Shanley, said Jon Duffy, the firm’s president.
Engage Rhode Island has a six-figure budget to tap into during the coming weeks as the General Assembly debates the Raimondo-Chafee bill in the special session set for October, Duffy said. He declined to reveal the group’s list of contributors, noting that federal rules for 501(c)4 organizations don’t require them to do so.
“We want to see an up-or-down vote on the pension plan as it is submitted by the governor and the treasurer,” Duffy said. “We want comprehensive pension reform. We don’t want watered-down pension reform.”
• Related: Final hearing clears stage for Raimondo-Chafee pension bill (Sept. 28)