June 26th, 2012 at 3:00 pm by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
By Ted Nesi
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - The R.I. Economic Development Corporation has hired a special counsel, Max Wistow, to examine whether taxpayers have legal avenues to claw back some of the tens of millions of dollars they’re poised to lose after the collapse of Curt Schilling’s video game company, 38 Studios.
November 22nd, 2011 at 6:00 am by Ted Nesi under Nesi's Notes
Rhode Island’s Democratic-dominated House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly last Thursday to pass the pension bill basically unchanged from the finance committee’s version, with 57 votes in favor, 15 against and three no-shows (Grace Diaz, Robert Flaherty and John McCauley).
With three out of four House lawmakers voting for the bill, the outside observer might think the legislation agreed to by Governor Chafee, Treasurer Raimondo and legislative leaders sailed to passage. But that’s not really true, because the actual fight didn’t come at the end – it was over a handful of amendments that could have torpedoed the enterprise.
An examination of four crucial votes – three on amendments, and the final up-or-down vote to pass it – shows 40 lawmakers broke with House Speaker Gordon Fox and his team on at least one of them. That means a majority of the House’s 75 legislators voted against the pension bill that was originally hammered out by the state’s leaders.
Five of the 40 rebel lawmakers – Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, Karen MacBeth, John Savage, Teresa Tanzi and Donna Walsh – voted for all three so-called “poison pill” amendments, yet supported the bill on the final vote. They can tell their constituents they backed the full Raimondo-Chafee pension law, even though they voted to change it significantly.