May 15th, 2013 at 3:46 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Legislation to create a regional water supply board in Rhode Island would pave the way for Providence – and several other communities – to lease their water supplies for a profit, Providence Water Supply Board Chairman Brett Smiley said Tuesday.
April 28th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
April 26th, 2013 at 4:29 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
After reading this story by Dan McGowan and yours truly about why the Rhode Island Senate shifted on same-sex marriage, Bloomberg View’s Josh Barro sees a lesson for proponents in other states (my emphasis):
This is similar to what happened in New York in 2011: passing gay marriage depended not only on four Republican state senators voting yes but also on Dean Skelos, the Senate’s Republican presiding officer, agreeing to let gay marriage come to the floor even though he opposed it. Rhode Island and New York are both examples of the “no fingerprints” strategy for gay-marriage opponents: letting it become law while taking as little credit or blame as possible.
If the Supreme Court doesn’t intervene, this will be a key political theme over the next 20 years: gay marriage opponents strategically acquiescing so they can stop fighting a fight they know is doomed and electorally costly. Rhode Island’s topsy-turvy politics mean that the officials making that calculation today are Democrats (all five Republicans in Rhode Island’s state Senate support marriage equality), but in most states, it will be Republicans who search for ways to lose gracefully on the issue.
April 25th, 2013 at 5:15 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – House Democrats led by Speaker Gordon Fox on Thursday proposed a complete overhaul of the state economic agencies as they unveiled a sweeping set of bills they say will “improve the coordination and quality” of Rhode Island’s troubled economy.
The Democrats’ other proposals include bringing back the tax credit for historic buildings, this time capped at $5 million per project and potentially $30 million in total; allowing employers to pay workers biweekly; considering curbs on the overuse of jobless benefits by seasonal employers; and creating a new tax credit for local employers who add jobs after making major capital investments.
April 24th, 2013 at 7:23 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The Rhode Island Senate voted 26-12 on Wednesday afternoon to approve a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, a historic victory for its supporters that almost certainly means gay nuptials will be allowed in the Ocean State starting Aug. 1.
• Related: Big campaign has RI gay-marriage backers near victory (April 24)
April 14th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
April 10th, 2013 at 2:22 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Tim White
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – A pair of bills at the R.I. State House would change the state’s public records law to ensure teacher evaluations would not be made public.
The bill would change the state’s Access to Public Records Act exempting “[a]ny individually identifiable evaluations of public school teachers and administrators” from public disclosure. The Senate bill is sponsored by Sen. Hanna Gallo, D-Cranston, and Rep. Jeremiah O’Grady, D-Lincoln, in the House.
April 9th, 2013 at 5:05 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Same-sex marriage supporters are predicting a heavy turnout Wednesday night at a fundraiser on Providence’s wealthy East Side that will benefit the advocacy group Rhode Islanders United for Marriage.
More than 90 people have RSVP’d to say they’re planning to attend the event at the Firglade Avenue home of Maryellen Butke, the prominent education activist and 2012 state Senate candidate, and her partner, Jo O’Connell. Suggested contributions start at $50.
The host committee for the event includes Democratic Congressman David Cicilline, Treasurer Gina Raimondo, House Speaker Gordon Fox and Pawtucket Sen. Donna Nesselbush, a lead sponsor of the marriage bill. Also on the list are real-estate developer Buff Chace and Xay Khamsyvoravong, who was former Treasurer Frank Caprio’s campaign manager.
April 1st, 2013 at 2:52 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
A new report says the General Assembly isn’t saving enough for a rainy day.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington think tank, argues Rhode Island and other states would have weathered the recession better if they’d had more money in reserve to cover budget shortfalls. “In many states, it was not just a lack of foresight but poor rainy-day fund design that led to this inadequate funding,” Elizabeth McNichol, a senior fellow at the center, writes in the report.
Rhode Island caps its rainy day fund at 5% of spending, an amount McNichol criticizes as “far too low.” She suggests Rhode Island should triple its rainy-day cap to 15% of spending, the level used in Massachusetts. Connecticut’s cap is 10%. ”Rainy day funds would have been even more effective in the most recent downturn if they had been larger,” she writes.
In addition, McNichol argues Rhode Island should ease its rules on how quickly the state must replenish the rainy-day fund, which doesn’t take into account the economic situation at the time. “Such rules have proven to create a disincentive to use the fund and place the rainy day fund in competition with other programs for scarce resources during an economic downturn,” she writes.
On the subject of rainy-day funds, the Center on Budget is actually in rare agreement with the Tax Foundation, its frequent nemesis among think-tanks.
A report last year by the Tax Foundation’s Joseph Henchman found that the size of most states’ budget reserves were inadequate during the recession, and cited research arguing that states should save 13% to 18% of revenue to cope with future downturns. “To achieve this during a typical period of economic expansion, states would need to save between 2.4% and 2.8% of each year’s revenues during good economic times,” Henchman wrote.
“Having a well-funded rainy day fund may not obviate the need for making difficult programmatic cuts during an economic downturn but it can cushion the fiscal system in the short-term,” he concluded. “Well-designed rainy day funds should have set rules for filling and withdrawing the funds, a targeted amount to save that takes into account the state’s historical revenue volatility, and good transparency to ensure that citizens are informed about how the fund operates and is used.”
• Related: How Keynes would manage Rhode Island’s budget (April 29, 2011)
March 24th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
March 20th, 2013 at 10:50 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Capitol TV aficionados, get ready to feast.
Rhode Island’s General Assembly has added a new website that offers live Web streaming of its sessions and hearings, as well as an archive with videos of past proceedings – becoming the last state in the nation to do so.
In addition to Capitol TV live Web channels that can stream up to four committee hearings simultaneously, the website features a Capitol TV Video on Demand site that offers an archive of floor proceedings, committee hearings and other footage.
“Currently, Capitol TV airs a live House session and tapes the Senate session to broadcast after,” the Assembly’s leaders explained in a statement. “Without web-streaming, the channel could only broadcast one live committee meeting at a time.”
The launch comes just in time to provide a Web broadcast of Thursday afternoon’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where the panel will consider legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. The bill has already passed the House, but top Senate Democrats are opposed to it.
WPRI.com reported last month that House Speaker Gordon Fox’s staff was in the final stages of adding streaming capability. The legislative video site is at rilin.state.ri.us/CapTV/default.aspx.
• Related: RI to stream legislative sessions online, joining other 49 states (Feb. 27)
March 19th, 2013 at 2:57 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The 26-year-old lawyer who helped House Speaker Gordon Fox survive a brutal re-election campaign last fall is now lobbying to secure millions of dollars in tax credits to turn Providence’s tallest building into apartments, WPRI.com has learned.
March 18th, 2013 at 2:57 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
An announcement this morning was probably welcome news for students at the University of Rhode Island: the college is freezing tuition for the 2013-14 school year, keeping the cost at $10,878 for in-state residents and $26,444 for out-of-staters. The decision is a victory for Governor Chafee, who’s proposed a $6 million increase in funding for state colleges but asked their presidents to freeze tuition as the quid pro quo.
URI’s financial documents show the school is taking much more money from students than it was a decade ago – $140 million more annually as of 2012. State lawmakers often get blamed for that, which has some validity: the state’s appropriation to URI has dropped by $26 million over the same period. Put another way, taxpayer dollars matched 84% of URI’s net student fees in 2002 but only 24% in 2012. Here’s a chart:
That said, it’s not an open-and-shut case that the General Assembly is totally to blame for the skyrocketing cost of attending URI – the increase in net student fees is more than five times larger than the decrease in the state appropriation, and the largest year-over-year hike was actually back in 2004, when net revenue from student fees jumped 17% even as the taxpayer subsidy stayed basically flat.
Update: A reader points out that the direct state appropriation to URI doesn’t reflect the university’s entire taxpayer subsidy because it excludes Rhode Island Capital Plan Funds and state-contributed capital. With those included, the state’s total appropriation to URI fell from $108 million in 2002 to $93 million in 2012, for a smaller cut of 14%, according to the school’s annual audits.
• Related: RI higher-ed funding #42 in US (Jan. 23) | 44% from RI at URI, RIC; 2nd-lowest (Oct. 20, 2011)
March 14th, 2013 at 2:57 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Common Cause Rhode Island just issued a statement in response to last night’s WPRI.com article explaining how House Speaker Gordon Fox’s lawyers defend nullifying Tuesday’s votes on the ethics bill:
The leadership of the House Judiciary Committee nullified the valid votes of members of the General Assembly last night, and both democracy and the people of Rhode Island are the poorer for it.
In the words of the House Majority Leader’s legal counsel, “the rules matter,” but that is only if the rules are followed – in nullifying votes, they were not. We believe this decision, that House Leadership has itself labeled unprecedented, to erase the votes of democratically elected representatives disenfranchises the constituents of Representatives Almeida, Ajello, Blazejewski, Costa, Craven, Martin and Walsh.
The House leadership’s justification for this unprecedented action contorts a plain reading of their own rules. Their belief that a motion cannot be made on a resolution that has been held for further study, in our view, is simply wrong. It represents a hastily formulated post hoc justification for eviscerating legitimately cast committee votes.
Even if there is ambiguity in the rules, which we believe there is not, Common Cause believes that the committee leadership should have erred on not taking this unprecedented step to nullify the vote. The resolution should have been sent to the floor and House leadership should have attempted to recommit the bill to the Judiciary Committee. In other words, they should have erred on the side of democracy, not dictatorship.
The House of Representatives’ current rules are in this PDF. Rule 12(f) is the main subject of the dispute.
Ironically, House Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Edie Ajello – the Providence Democrat who formally nullified Tuesday’s ethics vote – earned the highest score in the entire General Assembly on Common Cause’s legislative scorecard, a fact that Ajello touts on her own website.
Update: House spokesman Larry Berman has quickly fired back, telling WPRI.com in an email:
If Common Cause is concerned about open and transparent government, then how would they feel if a committee held a bill for further study at the beginning of a hearing and then reconsidered it for passage after all the witnesses and some of the committee members had gone home? In this case, 13 members voted to hold it for further study at the beginning of the meeting. After five of them had departed, the bill was reconsidered hours later.
Common Cause is taking the sentence in the rule out of context. You have to read the rule in its totality to understand the full meaning of the rule, along with the rule preceding it, and you also have to understand why the rule was established in the first place. There would be chaos in the committees if bills that were held for further study were continually subject to calls for reconsideration. The only bills that are allowed to be reconsidered on a motion from a member are those that have already been passed by the committee to go to the floor. The reference to “in the possession of the committee” refers to the two-week period or less that committees retain the bills before the committee-passed bills before they are posted for a floor vote.
Asked to release the results of the Judiciary Committee votes on the ethics bill, Berman said in an email:
While the vote technically no longer exists because it was voided, here are the eight people who voted in favor of H 5498: Chairwoman Ajello, Martin, Almeida, Blazejewski, Craven, Costa, O’Neill and Walsh. Absent were DeSimone, Lally, Lima, Marcello and Shekarchi.
However, Berman did not immediately release the results of the crucial vote that immediately preceded that one, which was a vote on Rep. O’Neill’s surprise motion to reconsider the bill. Neither vote has been posted on the Assembly’s website, and lawyers for House leadership argued they don’t have to be.
Common Cause’s John Marion, who attended Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing, said his recollection is that Ajello was the only committee member who voted against O’Neill’s motion to reconsider. But Marion cautioned that he has not reviewed the video of the hearing yet.
Update #2: Berman says O’Neill’s motion to reconsider was a voice vote, “so there is no record of that.”
Update #3: Common Cause asked a lawyer to take a look and he isn’t buying the legal rationale put forward by Speaker Fox’s lawyers and spokesman. Here’s how the lawyer interprets the rules around the ethics vote:
Rule 12(e) addresses the process of posting a hearing on a bill or resolution within 30 days and then talks about postponing hearings. It talks about “considering” the bill in committee. It then defines consideration as majority vote of the committee on any one of the five motions that follow in sub paragraphs (i) through (v).
Rule 12(f) then addresses what happens once a bill comes out of committee, saying that it must bring the report of the committee to the floor no later than two weeks after the committee vote on the bill. Then 12(f) says that the two-week reporting deadline does not apply to bills held for further study under Rule 12(e)(v). What that means is that the committee does not have to report the committee vote to hold a bill for further study within the two-week deadline. THAT IS ALL IT MEANS.
Rule 12(f) then goes on to say that a committee member voting in the majority may move consideration of ANY vote still in the possession of the committee. No deadline is set. The fact that the same committee meeting was going on the same day as posted removes any argument that it had to be re-posted.
Update #4: House spokesman Larry Berman responds to Common Cause’s lawyer:
Common Cause has completely misinterpreted this rule. Again, you cannot split the sentences of the rule out.
The point of Rule 12(f) is to set the procedure to govern a bill once the bill is reported out under 12(e) i-iv. It specifically excludes bills held for further study under 12(e)v. The point of Rule 12(f) is to give the committee the ability to, in essence, recall a bill through a vote for reconsideration before it passes to the floor. The point of that procedure is to allow the committee to consider important information on a bill that was learned about by the committee after the bill was passed by the committee, but before it gets to the floor. As an example, if it were believed the bill had no fiscal impact at the time of the committee vote to pass, but subsequently it came to light that the fiscal impact was millions of dollars, the committee could reconsider the bill before it gets to the floor. The two-week reporting requirement has NOTHING to do with saying that bills held for further study don’t need to be reported in two weeks.
• Related: House Dems nullify vote on ethics bill, arguing rules require it (March 13)
March 14th, 2013 at 2:28 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Dan McGowan
State Representative J. Patrick O’Neill isn’t taking his punishment from House Speaker Gordon Fox quietly.
The former House Majority Whip called Fox’s decision to remove him from the House Judiciary Committee “immature and shortsighted” and charged that members of the speaker’s leadership team have developed a habit of doing whatever they want without explaining themselves to rank-and-file lawmakers in recent years.
“I understand political retribution, but this is a complete lack of professionalism,” O’Neill told WPRI.com. “Loyalty is a two-way street, but it appears with this speaker, it’s a one-way street.”
March 13th, 2013 at 8:00 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
• Update: Common Cause blasts House Dems over ethics nullification (March 14)
That’s how lawyers for House Democratic leadership kicked off their explanation for why Ajello nullified the vote on Wednesday afternoon when her committee reconvened.
The lawyers say Tuesday night’s surprise vote – which was orchestrated by rebel Democratic Rep. Patrick O’Neill – wasn’t allowed under the House rules [pdf] but Ajello didn’t realize that, so she voted along with the rest of the committee to pass the bill. “They did it in error,” House spokesman Larry Berman told WPRI.com.
Richard Raspallo, legal counsel to House Majority Leader Nick Mattiello, also said the votes taken by the committee Tuesday night will never be posted on the General Assembly’s website because the House rules don’t require committee votes to be recorded there unless the underlying bills are getting a floor vote.
March 12th, 2013 at 9:31 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Rep. J. Patrick O’Neill got a taste of revenge on Tuesday night.
During what was looking to be an uneventful hearing, the Pawtucket Democrat apparently surprised House Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Edie Ajello and managed to get the 13-member panel to pass a proposed constitutional amendment [pdf] that would restore the R.I. Ethics Commission’s power to police state lawmakers. Rep. Doreen Costa, R-North Kingstown, seconded O’Neill’s motion.
A spokesman for House Speaker Gordon Fox wasn’t immediately available for comment, and the vote hasn’t been posted online yet. John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island and a longtime proponent of the ethics amendment, was shocked and elated by the sudden turn of events.
“They were intending to hold this bill for further study before Rep. O’Neill made a motion to reconsider,” Marion told WPRI.com. “We were caught off-guard, but we’re delighted because now the whole House of Representatives is going to have to vote on the resolution.”
March 12th, 2013 at 5:32 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – A coalition of political progressives and labor leaders renewed their uphill battle to raise affluent Rhode Islanders’ taxes on Tuesday – but they ran into immediate opposition from Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed.
March 12th, 2013 at 4:32 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Senate leaders led by Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed unveiled a wide-ranging package of 25 legislative proposals on Tuesday that the Newport Democrat and her colleagues argue will improve Rhode Island’s anemic economy.
• Related: Paiva Weed offers her take on turning around the RI economy (Jan. 15)
March 7th, 2013 at 12:01 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
The number of poor Rhode Islanders receiving federal welfare benefits dropped sharply during the Great Recession despite record-high unemployment and a weak recovery, according to a new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program’s total Rhode Island caseload fell from 10,929 in 2007 to 7,784 in 2009 and 6,668 in 2011, a drop of 39%, the Washington-based organization found. Rhode Island’s jobless rate jumped from 6% to 11% over the same period.
By contrast, the TANF caseload increased 10% nationwide from 2007 to 2011. The 39% drop in Rhode Island’s welfare rolls was the third-biggest in the nation, behind only Arizona’s (54%) and Indiana’s (51%). Nevada, which like Rhode Island has struggled to bring down its unemployment rate, said its TANF recipients increased by 37%.
That’s not the whole story, however – because Rhode Island went into the recession with the most far-reaching welfare program in the country.
March 5th, 2013 at 4:09 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Dan McGowan and Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – City officials are asking Rhode Island lawmakers to approve tens of millions of dollars in state tax credits to help a private developer convert Providence’s iconic “Superman building” into apartments, WPRI.com has learned.
WPRI.com has also confirmed that James Bennett, the mayor’s director of economic development, has approached 4ward Planning, a Manhattan consulting firm, about conducting an economic analysis of the Superman building and its future potential.
February 27th, 2013 at 1:02 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
In 49 of the 50 states, citizens interested in their state lawmakers’ work can go to the legislature’s official website and watch what’s happening live online.
The one state where that’s not possible? Rhode Island.
The General Assembly is the country’s only state legislature that doesn’t offer live audio or video webcasts of its floor proceedings, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of them offer even more than that, including live webcasts of committee hearings and archived videos of older business.
But that’s about to change, according to House Speaker Gordon Fox’s spokesman Larry Berman.
February 13th, 2013 at 4:54 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
The House Fiscal Office crunched the numbers on how much state aid Governor Chafee wants to give the cities and towns in his proposed 2013-14 budget: $80.3 million, up from a proposed $71.4 million this year (excluding K-12). That’s a healthy bump, but it’s still way less than municipalities were getting in 2006-07:
In theory the cities and towns could have made up for all the money they lost when the General Assembly axed the car tax reimbursement by immediately hiking drivers’ tax bills, but in practice that probably would have caused a mass revolt, so this was where the rubber met the road when a huge economic downturn collided with a requirement that governments balance their budgets.
In nominal dollars, House Fiscal says lawmakers hiked non-school aid to municipalities from $35 million in 1989-90 to $106 million in 1999-2000 and $202 million in 2004-05, then slashed it to $60 million in 2010-11. What the General Assembly giveth, the General Assembly taketh away.
Update: State aid to school districts, on the other hand, has climbed steadily over the past two decades except for a dip during 2008-09 and 2009-10 (with the much-discussed new funding formula taking effect in 2011-12):
February 5th, 2013 at 4:17 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – City officials have asked the General Assembly to increase municipal aid to Providence by between $4 and $5 million to help cover the city’s remaining structural deficit, Director of Administration Michael D’Amico said Monday.
January 24th, 2013 at 9:46 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The Democrats who lead Rhode Island’s Senate say they’re in no rush to take up a bill legalizing same-sex marriage despite Thursday’s overwhelming vote in favor by the House of Representatives.
• Related: Poll: Only Republicans have majority against gay marriage in RI (Jan. 24)
January 21st, 2013 at 10:10 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Dan DaPonte caused a stir last week when he told me he was “quite honestly confused at the liberal opinion that the 2010 personal income tax reform was a big giveaway to high-income earners.” Samuel Bell, Rhode Island coordinator for the Progressive Democrats of America, e-mailed this response to the chairman’s comments:
There is a very simple reason Senator Dan DaPonte says he is “confused at the liberal opinion that the 2010 personal income tax reform was a big giveaway to high-income earners.” That is not the liberal opinion. DaPonte is confusing the 2010 reform with the 2006 tax cuts for the wealthy – the flat tax – which were indeed a big giveaway to the rich.
As a package of technocratic changes, the 2010 reform had a fairly minor effect on the overall income tax code. The details are dull and unimportant: instead of allowing the top rate to fall from 6% in 2010 to 5.5% in 2011, as it would have under the law at the time, the 2010 reform froze the top rate at 6%. (Technically, the rate fell by 0.01 points to 5.99%.) So relative to the proposed 5.5% flat tax rate for 2011, the 2010 reform actually raised income tax rates on the wealthy extremely mildly. On the other hand, relative to 2010 policy, the changes represented a minuscule decrease in effective nominal tax rates for the wealthy (due to the complexities of the marginal rate structure). In short, it was a bureaucratic reform of little significance. If progressives opposed the 2010 changes, it was because they did not address the deeply unfair 2006 tax cuts for the wealthy.
Few red states have slashed taxes for the rich as deeply as Rhode Island did in 2006. When state lawmakers dropped the top rate from 9.9% to 5.99%, the General Assembly claimed they were creating jobs. What followed was a clear demonstration of the failure of Republican economics. There is only one difference between what happened in Rhode Island and what the national Republican party would like to do to America: in Rhode Island, many of the Republicans have Ds after their names.
The economic devastation we are facing does not call for the laughably tiny tweaks Chafee and the General Assembly are proposing. What we need is a jobs bill, one we can easily fund by rolling back the 2006 giveaways to the rich. So let’s not waste our time discussing the bureaucratic baby steps Smith Hill loves. Let’s actually fix the economy.
• Related: DaPonte: RI progressives are wrong about income tax changes (Jan. 18)
January 18th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Dan DaPonte has had it with liberal critics of the income tax law he helped shepherd through the General Assembly in 2010.
DaPonte, D-East Providence, and his colleagues are under renewed pressure this legislative session from Rhode Islanders for Tax Equity, a coalition of progressive activists and unions leaders who want taxes hiked on upper-income residents. This year’s top rate is 5.99% on income above $133,250.
DaPonte, the Senate’s top budget-writer and a key lieutenant to Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, told me on Wednesday he doesn’t want to revisit the issue:
I think the 2010 changes that are in place are appropriate. I think when you look at the increased revenues that we’ve gotten – I’m anxiously awaiting the revenue report that’s published in March, to show which income brackets paid what taxes.
I’m still quite honestly confused at the liberal opinion that the 2010 personal income tax reform was a big giveaway to high-income earners. From everyone that I’ve heard from, particularly tax professionals who do this stuff for a living – they have a completely opposing opinion, that that is not, in fact, what we did do.
That was testified to during the process. There are going to be winners and losers, but we needed a simpler, fairer tax formula, and that’s what we have now.
• Related: Paiva Weed stays vague on whether she’d OK income tax hike (Jan. 16)
January 17th, 2013 at 5:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Dan McGowan and Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The reaction to Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s budget proposal Wednesday night was very different from the response to his first two. Here’s a roundup of reactions from Fox, Paiva Weed, Raimondo, Taveras, Fung, Melo, DaPonte, Newberry and Tanzi.
• Related: Chafee seeks lower corporate tax rate, more school funding (Jan. 16)
January 16th, 2013 at 7:01 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
• Overview: No tax hikes in Chafee budget
In March 2011, a newly inaugurated Gov. Lincoln Chafee proposed an ambitious restructuring of Rhode Island’s sales tax to boost revenue. House Speaker Gordon Fox killed the idea just a month later amid a huge outcry.
Last year Chafee tried a different tack, proposing an increase in the meals tax and trying to win support by earmarking the money for education. But the dining industry protested, putting signs on restaurant tables from Woonsocket to Westerly, and lawmakers ignored the governor’s big idea on revenue once again.
Chafee may be stubborn, but he’s not insane: his first two budgets taught him that proposing high-profile tax hikes is political suicide. So the message in Chafee’s proposed 2013-14 budget is unequivocal: read my lips, no new taxes.
“Governor Chafee’s revenue plan was very simple – taxpayers have already shouldered enough of the cost of government, and the delicate recovery we are in today should not be derailed by any tax increases,” the budget document declares. “Therefore, Governor Chafee’s FY 2014 Proposed Budget does not include any increases in taxes, fees or charges.” (They underlined it in the original.)
January 16th, 2013 at 10:28 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes, On the Main Site
By Dan McGowan
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – State lawmakers would be prohibited from accepting campaign contributions during the General Assembly session under legislation introduced by State Rep. Spencer Dickinson.