In 1980, Claudine Schneider did something no Republican had done in Rhode Island since FDR was president – she won a U.S. House seat. Schneider also did something no woman had ever done before and no woman has done since in the state – she won federal office.

Schneider, who left office in 1991 after losing a U.S. Senate race to Claiborne Pell, returned to Rhode Island this week to accept the YWCA Northern Rhode Island’s Isabelle Ahearn O’Neill Award, which is named after the state’s first female legislator.

Schneider visited WPRI 12 on Monday to share her thoughts about congressional polarization, the gender gap in politics and what Brendan Doherty should do. Here’s the video of our conversation:

On Saturday morning, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras will convene a meeting of the city’s retirees to ask them to accept reductions in their pension benefits to help the capital avoid filing for bankruptcy, as nearby Central Falls did last August. What happens if they don’t come to an agreement?

David Skeel is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia and a nationally known expert on bankruptcy and Chapter 9. We spoke on Thursday about what bankruptcy would mean for Providence’s pension system, how Central Falls has changed the legal landscape, and why he doesn’t buy the case for Rhode Island’s bondholders-first law. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

I was fascinated by the argument in your working paper that government employees’ and retirees’ property rights cover the pension fund but not the pension promises. Could you explain that?

The question is if a city or a state makes a pension promise, but does not fund the promises – which has been true in many states in recent years – what exactly is protected in the event of a default or of bankruptcy? A lot of people assume that what’s protected is the full promise, even if there’s no funding behind it.

Although this is certainly not free from doubt – this is unchartered territory in many respects – my view is that there’s a good argument that what’s protected is the amount of money that’s been set aside. Pension obligations are a form of what we refer to in the law as a property right, and other kinds of property rights are protected up to the value of the property that’s set aside for them. So if somebody has collateral for a transaction, we treat that promise as sacrosanct up to the value of the collateral.

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It’s not often you see Common Cause Rhode Island‘s John Marion sharing a podium with Governor Chafee, House Speaker Fox and Senate President Paiva Weed.

But that’s what happened Thursday afternoon as they and others gathered at the State House to throw their support behind new legislation that would beef up campaign-finance disclosure rules for outside groups like the much-talked-about Super PACs. (Paiva Weed even mentioned Stephen Colbert’s.) They want the requirements in place before the November election.

After the event, Marion sat down with me to explain what the proposed Transparency in Political Spending Act would and wouldn’t do. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Who is this bill going to impact? What will they have to do?

This bill is going to impact any group that decides to advocate for or against one of the items on the November ballot, such as the referendum about expanding gaming in the state. It will require those groups to disclose information about their spending in a more timely fashion then they current have to, and it will require for the first time disclosure of the underlying sources of funding to the group.

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As President-elect Obama’s team raced to salvage the economy in the winter of 2009, Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist and economic adviser Jared Bernstein was one of the experts frantically trying to craft a solution.

Bernstein left the administration last year and joined the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington as a senior fellow. He spoke with WPRI.com on Thursday about the economy, how Rhode Island can position itself for the recovery and whether the White House is like “The West Wing.” The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Let’s start with a parochial question. Have you ever been to Rhode Island?

Oh, yeah! Lots of times. I’ve been there in my professional career as an economist, but I was also there once as a musician on the QE2 – the QE2 once went up to Providence. I played the string bass.

You’re a man of many talents. I wanted to start with the news of the day. The economic recovery has been looking surprisingly solid lately, with new jobless claims down this week and other hopeful data. What’s your current take on how the economy is doing?

Things are definitely improving, but we’re not out of the woods. The job market is finally getting better in a way that could develop into a self-sustaining recovery, but we really haven’t seen that yet.

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By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Treasurer Gina Raimondo thinks the best way to fix the state’s 36 locally run pension plans is to move them into the state-run system. But making that happen will be easier said than done.

“I believe that, ultimately, the long-run answer is get everybody in MERS,” Raimondo told WPRI.com last week during a half-hour interview in her State House office, using the acronym for the state-run Municipal Employees Retirement System. “The question is, how exactly do you that?”

The 36 local plans have a combined unfunded liability of $2.1 billion, but about 40% of that shortfall is in one city: Providence, where Mayor Angel Taveras has clashed with Raimondo over whether the General Assembly should pass legislation giving communities the green light to freeze pension cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs).

“I would be delighted to sit down with Providence if they would like any help,” Raimondo said. “I’ve offered. They say they have it under control. That’s great. I hope they do.”

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By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Treasurer Gina Raimondo acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that she may seek higher office in 2014, which will add to the heated speculation about her future plans.

Asked whether she would rule out a run for higher office in 2014, Raimondo told WPRI.com: ”As you know, I am obsessed with being a good treasurer and working as hard as I possibly can. But I’m not ruling anything out, no.”

Raimondo, 40, didn’t get more specific than that during a half-hour interview in her State House office, but speculation is widespread that she may run for governor in two years when independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee is up for reelection. She had $513,584 in her campaign war chest as of Sept. 30, more than any other politician at the state level in Rhode Island.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Raimondo said. “Pension reform was a huge step forward. I do think Rhode Island is being nationally recognized as a leader on one of the toughest issues the country faces, and saving $4 billion is a big nut – it’s big, no doubt about it – it’s big. But sure, there’s more to do.”

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By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Gov. Lincoln Chafee acknowledged Thursday he’s frustrated by his anemic approval ratings but said he remains confident good governance and an economic rebound will help him win over Rhode Islanders.

“We have to do a better job of communicating with the people – no question about that,” Chafee told WPRI.com in a telephone interview Thursday. “I’ve never seen, in my long career, those kinds of disapproval numbers.”

Chafee’s comments came hours after a new Brown University poll showed just 27% of voters think he’s doing a good or excellent job as governor, down from 32% in Brown’s March poll and the 36% share he took to win last year’s election. Two-thirds of voters gave him bad marks, with 41% saying he’s doing a poor job.

“It’s definitely of concern,” Chafee said. “I want to make sure we’re effectively communicating the good things we’re doing, which I think are very, very evident – Central Falls being one of them, and certainly Department of Motor Vehicles, my role in the pension reform – so we do have to do a better job on our communication.”

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If Gina Raimondo hadn’t come along, Tom Sgouros might be Rhode Island’s general treasurer today.

Sgouros, a liberal writer and performer, withdrew as a Democratic candidate for treasurer and endorsed Raimonodo in April 2010. But he continues to believe the current brouhaha over a pension crisis is overblown.

I spoke with Sgouros on Monday to get his take on the Raimondo-Chafee bill. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start with first principles. Do you think the pension funding issue is a serious problem right now, today, in 2011?

There is a pension funding problem. What makes it a crisis, though, is not the needs of the retirees or the agreements already set. What makes it into a crisis is the rules by which we are supposed to fund the pensions. And I’ve written a lot about how I think those rules are unwise, are insuring us against the wrong risks, and are just more expensive then what they need to be, and that’s what makes it a crisis.

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Raimondo on Election Night 2010

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Treasurer Gina Raimondo doesn’t sound thrilled about her growing national reputation as an anti-pension warrior aiming to smash Rhode Island’s public-sector unions.

“It’s odd to be a Democrat going after reducing pensions,” Raimondo told WPRI.com on Friday during a 40-minute interview in her first-floor Statehouse office. “I struggle with that. Absolutely, I struggle with that.”

Nevertheless, Raimondo is steadfast in her belief that the state must take radical steps to reduce its retirement liabilities. “I don’t think you can be a progressive and oppose pension reform,” she said.

The treasurer repeated the argument she’s been making for months, that pension costs are crowding out other spending priorities. She cited the recent protests over reductions in support for disabled residents as further evidence of that.

“A good Democrat wants to invest in the developmentally disabled, schools, higher education,” she said. “We’ve got to make some cuts so we can invest in the future.”

“It has to be done,” she said. “We’re in an unusual circumstance now where the average Rhode Islander is probably doing worse than the average public employee. … Obviously, I wish the problem weren’t so big, and I wish there were an easier answer.”

‘I don’t feel like I’m a politician’

It was nearly a year ago now that Raimondo, a 40-year-old mother of two, won a landslide victory in her first bid for public office after a career as a venture capitalist. The LaSalle Academy graduate with degrees from Harvard and Yale was the only candidate to net more than 200,000 votes, and says she feels “lucky” to serve.

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By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Governor Chafee says many of the cuts in aid for developmentally disabled Rhode Islanders that drew thousands of protesters to the Statehouse this week would have been avoided if lawmakers had approved his original budget proposal.

“It was a bold budget, but it did a lot of good,” Chafee told WPRI.com during a 30-minute interview in his Statehouse corner office. In addition to tackling locally run pensions and a transportation funding backlog, he said, the plan “didn’t make the deep cuts that now we have 2,000 people out here with legitimate, legitimate concerns about their children and what’s happening to them.”

The House and Senate balked at major portions of Chafee’s initial $7.7 billion tax-and-spending plan, particularly the complicated sales tax hike that led to an outcry from the business community. Lawmakers chose instead to rely less on additional revenue and more on cuts in spending. Chafee signed the budget in June.

The governor said human services are the only part of the budget left where major cuts can be ordered, because sharp reductions have already been made in municipal aid and other departments while safety-net spending continues to rise, particularly on health care.

“We want to address it, but it’s a tough area,” Chafee said. “You’ve got needy, expensive human beings that are going to be affected by these cuts. We’re always looking for efficiencies, but there are going to be ramifications here. And I’m willing to take some - that’s where we focused it.”

“These are the questions you’ve got to wrestle with,” he said.

New sales tax plan mulled

That’s one reason why next year Chafee may once again propose lowering Rhode Island’s sales tax rate while broadening its reach, two moves largely rejected by lawmakers last spring. The governor’s plan would have dropped the rate from 7% to 6%.

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By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – State leaders’ much-anticipated pension proposal probably won’t be released until next week in part because it’s taking extra time to deal with the 36 municipal pension plans that aren’t run by the state, Governor Chafee said Wednesday.

“A lot of work was put into the state-run plans, and we’re catching up with the municipals,” Chafee told WPRI.com on Wednesday during a 30-minute interview in his Statehouse corner office. “It’s accurate to say the advisory committee and others didn’t really focus on this area, so we’re making sure that we’re covering all our bases as we include them in the proposal.”

Behind the scenes, intensive talks to finalize the pension bill are taking place between Chafee, Treasurer Gina Raimondo, House Speaker Gordon Fox, Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, House Finance Committee Chairman Helio Melo, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Dan DaPonte and lobbyists from organized labor.

There is an “appetite for everybody to do this, so we don’t have to come back, in a comprehensive way – and that includes legislative leaders, because they’ve nibbled at this issue,” Chafee said. “All the people that are major interested parties – treasurer, House, Senate – [believe] we’ve really got to tackle this once and for all,” particularly after the Retirement Board approved a more conservative estimate of the $7.3 billion shortfall set to cost more than $100 million next year alone.

Dismisses ‘quibble’ with Walsh

Labor leaders, notably Chafee’s 2010 ally Bob Walsh of the teachers union NEA Rhode Island, have accused Chafee of breaking his promise to protect the pension benefits of current retirees and long-serving workers. But the governor said that was a “preference” rather than a “promise.”

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The fight over the federal debt ceiling has already done permanent damage to the country’s reputation, and even his own party’s preferred spending cuts will hurt the economy, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed warned Friday.

“I’m disappointed,” Reed told WPRI.com. “The stakes are so high. … Even if it can be resolved, there’ll still be this sort of lingering question about the future and the ability of the country to make tough decisions in a timely way.”

“I think there’s been some damage done,” he said. “No party up until this point – up until the Republicans, particularly in the House – has ever tried to use the credit of the Untied States as a point of leverage for policy.”

The House is expected to vote this evening on Speaker John Boehner’s bill to increase the debt ceiling for roughly six months and cut federal spending by $917 billion.

Reed said that plan is a nonstarter for him and his party, and the Senate will reject it this evening and instead send Majority Leader Harry Reid’s alternative proposal to the House. That will also force Senate Republicans to cast a vote saying where they stand, Reed said.

Enacting Reid’s Democratic alternative to Boehner’s plan will still weaken the economy by further reducing demand, Reed said – a particular concern in light of the anemic GDP numbers that were released this morning.

“When you make cuts and lower demand in a fragile economy, that translates not into growth but into what we’ve seen, which is very modest growth,” he said. ”We’re trying to be responsible, and we’re trying to make the best of two very bad options.”

The senator also said he hopes a resolution to the debt ceiling fight will bolster confidence among businesses and consumers, which could give the economy a boost.

During my January trip to Washington to cover the State of the Union, Senator Reed and I sat down for a half-hour interview inside the Capitol. I didn’t get around to writing up most of his comments at the time, but our discussion of polarization seemed timely this week amid the deadlock over the debt ceiling. Enjoy.

WASHINGTON – There’s no doubt in U.S. Sen. Jack Reed’s mind that Capitol Hill is a more toxic place than it was when he arrived here two decades ago as a freshman congressman.

“Over the last 20 years, everything has been much more bitterly debated – not just how to do things, but what is the proper role of government,” Reed said.

The senior senator cited a number of reasons for the Beltway’s increased polarization, including a 24/7 media environment, a shift to nonstop campaigning and a breakdown of the ideological consensus that prevailed in the postwar era.

Reed – a West Point graduate – also thinks it matters that far fewer current members of Congress served in the military than was the case with previous generations.

Those former soldiers “had a certain camaraderie, in that you had a common experience in the government that was successful,” he said. “So the notion that government doesn’t work, that there’s nothing government can do, was not as prevalent.”

Reed was unapologetic about the legislation passed during President Obama’s first two years in office, including health care reform, the Dodd-Frank finance reform law, Race to the Top and changes to the federal student loan program. Many of those laws would have been a big deal in normal times, he said, but they were “totally overshadowed” by the financial crisis.

With so many issues on Washington’s plate, though, there is a risk that a problem brewing under the radar doesn’t get the attention it deserves. ”There’s an issue of capacity with every government,” Reed said.

“One of the reasons, frankly, President Bush spoke about being blindsided by the economic collapse, is because he was obsessed with getting it right on foreign policy and the War on Terror,” he said. “That was his focus.”

“That’s what makes it so challenging for the president,” Reed continued. “It’s hard for us, but more so for the president. You not only have to deal with the crisis at the moment, but you’ve also got to have a sensitivity to what’s happening out there.”

Reed described President Obama as possessing “a remarkable personality, because he has the ability to maintain a focus and a demeanor in the worst circumstances that is truly incredible.” But the president has faced the same challenges as his predecessors.

“He’s learned a lot,” Reed said. “It’s the toughest job in the world, and it’s a job that – as well prepared as you may be – you’ve got a learning curve. You’ve got to learn a lot quickly.”

For a Rhode Island leader, no issue is more pressing than the weak economy and the state’s ongoing jobs crisis. Reed said he’s focused on maintaining the state’s defense sector and directing federal resources here, citing Quonset Point as a success story. “Infrastructure is so important,” he said.

Reed and Gov. Lincoln Chafee, another infrastructure proponent, have discussed ways they can work together on projects like the expansion of passenger rail service. ”He understands,” said Reed, who served with Chafee in the Senate. “He has a very collaborative personality. He wants to get some things done. We do, too.”

Reed also said it’s important that the state’s remaining manufacturing firms receive support. “The manufacturers in Rhode Island that have been able to hold on are terrific,” he said. “We have to expand that.”

Such a comment may not sound controversial today, but prior to the financial crisis the idea that industrial firms would continue to play an important role in the American economy wasn’t as common. Many people thought the nation could get by with financial products and leave manufacturing to other nations.

“I think one of the things that we recognized over the last decade or more is that, frankly, a country is what it produces – tangibly produces – and sells to the world,” Reed said.

“We have to recognize that there are still an extraordinary amount of talented Americans whose talents are mechanical,” he added. “If they don’t have a job, it’s not because they’re not talented; it’s because their skills aren’t in abstract thinking and computer programming. … That’s reality.”

Epilogue: Reed issued a statement last night warning of the consequences of default if the U.S. debt ceiling isn’t raised. “A federal default would be a self-inflicted wound that could exacerbate Rhode Island’s fiscal and unemployment woes at a time when the state is still coping with the recession,” he said.

“It could have a profound impact on people’s retirement savings and result in higher interest rates for families, businesses, and local governments,” he continued. “It would also increase the deficit itself because it is estimated that every 1% increase in interest rates will raise the deficit by $1.3 trillion over ten years. So simply put, we cannot afford to default – it’s bad for jobs and it’s bad for taxpayers.”

Is an increase in the sales tax a dagger aimed at the heart of Rhode Island’s economy? A prudent way to raise tax revenue and pay for other priorities? Neither? Both? How much would a $165 million tax increase actually affect the state’s $45 billion economy?

To get some answers, I gave a call to Andres Carbacho-Burgos, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com who has been tracking Rhode Island’s economy for years and whose forecasts are used by state budget officials. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

I know it’s not your job to recommend specific policies, but it is your job to understand them. So I wanted to ask, what sort of economic impact would your models expect from a $165 million increase in state sales tax revenue? How big a deal would it be?

You need to look at more dimensions than just simply the volume of revenue received.

The theory behind Governor Chafee’s plan and some other proposals is that you try to lower the overall sales tax rate but you make up for the lower rate by broadening the base, by including services and possibly some Internet sales as well. So everything depends — well, I wouldn’t say everything — but a lot depends on how exactly you increase sales tax revenues.

I would say for Rhode Island households at the median income or below, something which substantially reduces sales tax rates would of course be beneficial to them. It would leave them with somewhat larger real income, and so that would help them out. The overall effect on total spending depends on the overall redistribution of the sales tax burden over the entire population of households in Rhode Island.

Now, have you done any modeling, or were you asked by the state to do anything, at Moody’s Economy.com on how this would impact our somewhat slow recovery here in Rhode Island?

No, we have not been asked by the state of Rhode Island to do any modeling on alternative sales tax proposals. What we do for them is we provide a semiannual estimate of income growth based on no major changes to tax policy.

I was reading your chief economist Mark Zandi recently explaining how in some cases cutting spending is worse than raising taxes because the multiplier on spending does more for the economy than the lower tax rates do. How should people be looking at that – the question of weighing those alternatives – in terms of the economy?

That’s a complicated question, but a brief shorthand is whenever you raise taxes or cut spending, you should look at the multiplier effect, in terms of figuring out who bears the brunt of those higher taxes or reduced spending and what is their tendency to spend over the economy.

The theory is that if you raise taxes on, say, the top 1% of income earners – either at the national level or at the state level – the impact on the economy will be less because the top 1% spend a much smaller share of their total income, and they save and invest the rest. So by raising taxes on the top 1%, the theory is you would cut more into savings, which don’t matter immediately in the short term, but you would cut less into private spending.

When you’re looking at the different ways for increasing tax revenue, though, the sales tax is actually fairly regressive, and it hits households across the board. What about that aspect of it?

Other things being equal, if you raise the effective sales tax rate – and by effective I mean not just the nominal sales tax rate, but the fraction of sales tax payments out of total personal income – then, because it’s regressive, that will have a more serious effect on spending than if you raised income taxes on the top income brackets.

And, just to be clear, that is what was going to happen here, although the politics is in flux. Although the nominal rate was going down, the governor wanted to add a 1% tax and more items at the standard rate to net $165 million more in revenue out of the sales tax. So would he be talking about taking more out of spending then?

Yeah, but again – just to hedge my position here – a lot of that depends on where the additional broadening of the sales tax base would take place – if it would be a broadening into services which the average household never uses. For example, if you impose a sales tax on large-scale financial services, then the burden on spending for that particular broadening would be very small as far as households in Rhode Island are concerned.

So yes, it’s true that other things being equal, an increase in the effective sales tax rate is more regressive and therefore hits spending harder than income tax rates. But you also have to be careful to look at what the structure of the change in the sales tax looks like.

So it sounds like the bottom line is it’s very important to look at the domino effect and the way all these ideas impact each other. You can’t just say raising the sales tax is bad or raising the sales tax is good – you have to look at which sales tax and who it’s on and who’s paying and all that.

In other words, you have to look at what economists look at – the incidence of the sales tax – and what changes.

Anything else I should ask you on this to help people understand the sales tax debate?

That’s about it. One thing I would add – there has been a lot of talk about competitiveness. In terms of sales taxes, Rhode Island already had rough parity and maybe even a slight advantage compared to Massachusetts and Connecticut because even though the current state sales tax rate is higher for Rhode Island than for Massachusetts and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Connecticut generally tend to have higher local sales taxes, and so overall the effective rates even out.

So if you can get a lowering of the nominal tax rate by broadening the base, then that might actually help Rhode Island’s competitiveness and might actually draw in some shoppers from Massachusetts and Connecticut. So it’s also another issue to consider.

On that point, though, I’ve heard a lot of skepticism here – understandably, people aren’t economists, and they wonder, would having Rhode Island at 6% versus Massachusetts at 6.25% really have that big an impact on consumer habits and where people go to spend their money?

If you look at just the state sales tax rates, no. What you have to remember is that most Massachusetts counties add a lot of additional sales tax rates, more than Rhode Island does. So once you add together the state and local tax rates, a reduction in the Rhode Island state rate to 6% would have a significant difference, assuming of course that local governments in Rhode Island didn’t raise their own rates.

Correction: Andres writes in to note that commenter Mario is correct in pointing out Massachusetts and Connecticut do not have local sales taxes.

(photo: Seeking Alpha)

WPRI.com intern Claire Peracchio contributed research.

Now that all three articles based on my interview Monday with Governor Chafee have been posted, a reader suggested it would be fun to see a word cloud based on the transcript. Great idea!

For the uninitiated, The New York Times offers a good definition of a word cloud: “It uses the text you type (or copy and paste) into a basic dialog box to create a poster-worthy, weighted visual representation — meaning the more a word is used, the bigger it appears on the page.”

So here’s a word cloud based off the transcription of my Chafee interview, creating using Wordle, a free service. This only includes the governor’s answers, not my questions, so these are his words:

This is the first in a series of articles based on my interview with Governor Chafee.

The Providence Journal is “hurting Rhode Island” with its barrage of negative editorials, advertisements and articles about the Chafee administration’s sales tax proposal, the governor told WPRI.com on Monday.

Governor Chafee offered a robust, spirited critique of the Projo and other state leaders during a 45-minute interview in his office. He defended his budget proposal as responsible and measured while accusing the paper of lambasting it because he proposes to end the newspaper’s decades-old exemption from the state’s sales tax.

“There’s so much negativity that outsiders reading this must think, ‘What a bleak picture is this’ – inaccurate – ‘portrayal of the Chafee tax plan; it’s going to just turn out the lights and drive a stake in the heart of Rhode Island’s economy,’ ” the governor said.

Chafee repeatedly emphasized that he entered office facing a large budget deficit – now estimated at $331 million – for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The Journal and his other critics have offered “not a syllable of constructive alternative to the deep hole that I did not create, I inherited,” he said.

Chafee pointed to other examples of tax increases that did not derail nascent economic recoveries, noting that Massachusetts raised its sales tax from 5% to 6.25% in August 2009 but has nevertheless weathered the recession better than Rhode Island, and that Bill Clinton signed a law in 1993 that included tax increases even as the boom of the 1990s was just getting going.

Chafee also tempered his suggestion that there was nothing left to cut in state government after former Gov. Don Carcieri’s efforts. “I guess I would rephrase that,” he said. “The easiest cuts have been done.”

Proposed ideas for savings ‘bizarre’

During the interview, Chafee walked over to his desk and fished out a copy of the editorial page in Sunday’s Journal, which included three suggestions for closing the deficit – renegotiating union contracts as Providence Mayor Angel Taveras has done; repealing unfunded mandates on cities and towns; and eliminating the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC).

The governor then critiqued them one by one.

Chafee said the first suggestion – renegotiating contracts – is nearly impossible because of a two-year ban on state worker layoffs agreed to by Carcieri in late 2009. “Mayor Taveras is not saddled with a no-layoff contract,” Chafee said. “He can go to his union and say there will be layoffs – and they know that there will be layoffs. I can’t do that.”

Asked whether he had approached Council 94 and other unions about concessions anyway, Chafee said he didn’t see the point when he could not threaten layoffs and might just add to the existing unhappiness about previous furloughs and his proposed hike in employee pension contributions.

“I’ll look for savings, but I don’t want to go into a meeting with no cards in my hand,” he said.

The editorial board’s next suggestion – repealing unfunded municipal mandates – is unlikely to lead to significant savings if it even passes, according to Chafee, and he thinks the latter outcome is unlikely considering how long the idea has been on the table. “I’m not going to budget huge savings on the thin hopes” that the General Assembly finally acts on those proposals, he said.

Chafee saved his harshest criticism for The Journal’s proposal to eliminate the CRMC, which has a $10.2 million budget and 30 full-time employees this year. He described the suggestion as “bizarre,” because the ban on layoffs would require him to move those workers elsewhere and possibly continue paying to lease the agency’s office.

“It’s just so irresponsible – it’s almost farcical,” Chafee said. “And they’re our established, statewide paper.”

“I want constructive dialogue,” he added. “We’re in a crisis. This isn’t a time for just temper-tantrums.”

‘I don’t like any taxes’

The governor defended his overall sales tax proposal – which would lower the rate from 7% to 6% while exempting fewer items, some of which would be taxed at a new 1% rate instead of 6% – as part of his broader plan to stabilize Rhode Island’s shaky finances.

Asked whether he would reconsider, for example, his particularly unpopular proposal to tax home heating oil, Chafee said: “Let’s make it clear: I don’t like any taxes. Any taxes. This has not been a good year, and none of these decisions has been easy.” He went on to say he was willing to listen to alternatives on that and other issues.

Chafee described the increased sales tax revenue as necessary to pay for other priorities. Those include ending the practice of borrowing to fund transportation projects – which he said will force the state to spend an “outrageous” $40 million on DOT’s interest payments this year – and his proposed new Municipal Accountability, Stability and Transparency (MAST) Fund.

Chafee also said it was important to him that the sales tax rate be brought down to 6%, and he had originally pushed to get it even further down to 5.75%. “I wanted to get lower and really send a message: This is the place to shop,” he said.

“These are tough decisions,” Chafee said. “But in order to have my children not paying for DOT interest and not paying for Coventry’s police and fire pension system down the road, I’m willing to take some hits on this tax.”

Still, Chafee left the door open to a compromise or a different plan, saying he was open to other ways of closing the $331 million deficit and funding his various priorities. “Absolutely, I’ll be open-minded,” he said.

Keep checking back during the week for more from the interview – including why Chafee is hesitant to endorse President Obama next year and whether he’s really open to reducing promised pension benefits.

(photo: Ted Nesi/WPRI)

“Local boy makes good.” In the news business, few Rhode Island natives fit that hoary headline better than Joe Nocera.

Nocera grew up in Providence, graduating from Classical High in 1970 before attending Boston University. This month, the veteran business journalist added another achievement to his lengthy résumé, which includes GQ, Newsweek and Esquire bylines: op-ed columnist for The New York Times.

Nocera was back in Rhode Island over the weekend to accept a Distinguished Alumni Award from Classical – and to visit his large extended family. I sat down with him to talk about his new job, Providence then and now, The Times’ new paywall, executive pay at CVS – and whether The Providence Journal will survive. (The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

You’re here to get an award from Classical.

I’m very excited.

What are your most vivid memories from your time there?

I don’t think I can say that.

(Laughs.) Your G-rated memories, then.

Really, playing against Marvin Barnes‘ Central [High] team, and losing by about 40 points.

Central and Classical always used to play. Marvin Barnes was a senior that year, and everybody knew he was going to Providence College next year; they were the fifth or sixth-ranked team in the country. We weren’t even in the same division, but because we were across the street from each other we always had an annual game. So playing that game and seeing what it’s like to play against the big boys – that’s a vivid memory.

But obviously, a wonderful education, memorable teachers, and as I said to the students [at an assembly] today – I came out of Classical thinking I was going to be a math major, and I realized once I got to college that I was never going to be good enough in that. But I was able to switch to journalism because I had this foundation – so much of what you do at Classical is based around writing – and I had this foundation, so it wasn’t this impossible thing for me to switch. I owe them a lot.

When you come back to Providence, what do you notice about the city thinking back to your years growing up here?

(more…)

Turnabout is fair play.

Last week, I interviewed my pal Tim White about the big Mafia bust for a WPRI.com video. This morning, Tim turned the tables and interviewed me about my State of the Union trip.

Check it out – Tim added clips from the speech and some of the photos I took for your viewing pleasure:

Maybe next week the two of us will debate each other. We just need a topic.

And speaking of videos, keep an eye out for this week’s “Newsmakers” featuring EDC Executive Director Keith Stokes followed by a spirited debate about the estate tax between OSPRI chief Bill Felkner and progressive economist Tom Sgourous. The full episode will be posted online here and will air at 10 a.m. Sunday on Fox Providence.