The fine folks over at Bloomberg View asked me to write a short op-ed for them about the outlook for Rhode Island’s 2014 gubernatorial race, focusing on Treasurer Gina Raimondo’s high profile after the pension fight and how it will impact the campaign. Here’s how I kicked off the piece:

Rhode Island General Treasurer Gina Raimondo has experienced a meteoric rise to fame that most politicians can only envy.

Raimondo, a 41-year-old former venture capitalist, was virtually unknown in 2010 when she coasted to victory as a Democratic candidate in a deep-blue state. Soon the new treasurer surprised almost everyone by engineering the most sweeping overhaul of a public-pension system ever enacted. By the time her reforms became law in November 2011 she was one of the most popular politicians in Rhode Island, and the subject of adulatory coverage in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Even before the pension process was over, there was growing speculation that Raimondo might run for governor in 2014, in no small part because the incumbent who signed the pension law — independent ex-Republican Lincoln Chafee — has had an approval rating in the 20s for most of his term in office. It has become clear in recent months that the treasurer is likely to throw her hat into the ring.

Read the rest on Bloomberg.com.

Ted Nesi is on assignment.

By Jason P. Becker

At the center of Woonsocket’s spiral into fiscal uncertainty is a massive deficit at its public schools that seemingly emerged from the ether this winter. The school system wound up short almost $10 million over the last two years despite having a business manager repeatedly declare that the schools were running a surplus.

Faced with a massive deficit and the demise of a supplemental tax increase at the hands of the city’s legislative delegation, an already underfunded school system is looking to cut even further. Some in Woonsocket have been asserting that a lack of state support for the Woonsocket Public Schools has led to its precarious budget situation. Indeed, the city has joined Pawtucket in a lawsuit seeking to force the state to accelerate the planned funding increases to Woonsocket as part of a new education aid funding formula enacted in June 2010.

Is it true that Woonsocket schools can blame a lack of state support for its insufficient revenues?

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Ted Nesi is traveling on assignment.

By Carroll Andrew Morse

If you are interested in understanding the eternal wisdom of the conservative viewpoint towards government, here are two questions to ask yourself: Do we really think that people are smarter now than they were in medieval times? Are we really sure we know more about governing ourselves than did our ancestors?

Governments of the medieval past were headed by kings, nobles and/or local warlords. The common folk didn’t have much say in who the leaders were who might demand taxes from them or start a war with the neighboring clan. Rulers ruled, they didn’t change often, and everyone else obeyed. People went along with this system because – well, truth be told, we can’t be fully sure why people went along with this system. There were theoretical justifications, like the king having a direct connection to God that allowed him to know best, but we don’t know the degree to which the medieval man-on-the-street bought into this versus just going along with the governing system that was there, because that was the easiest thing to do.

Fast-forward to the present. At least in this part of the world, kings (with real power) aren’t around anymore. Representative democracy has taken their place. People get an opportunity to select their leaders. Instead of kings and warlords, we have presidents, governors and mayors; instead of royal courts, we have legislatures.

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Ted Nesi is off. He’ll return on Friday.

By Samuel G. Howard

A reading of an old newspaper article (or a history book) can often provide insight into present circumstances. It’s enlightening, and a bit frustrating, to discover that the same battles tend to be fought decade after decade. So it is with Rhode Island. Take this accounting of Rhode Island’s problems:

• Unemployment is high, at 11%.
• State investment in education isn’t pretty; the governor balked at raising URI faculty pay by 3% while costs are increasing. Their union said most of the raise would pay health insurance premiums.
• Highways aren’t much better: Rhode Island has the fourth-highest rate of structurally deficient bridges in the United States.
• Income taxes are down; the highest bracket pays 5.99% on earnings over $129,900. The other tax brackets are 4.75% for earnings more than $57,150 and 3.75% on the rest of wage-earners [pdf]. Combined, state and local taxes take 11.9% from the 20% of taxpayers with the lowest incomes while reducing the incomes of the top 1% by a mere 5.6% [pdf].
• Observers are suggesting that the state should essentially fail to pay the loan guarantee it made for 38 Studios by fulfilling only the moral obligation. It might take a hit on its borrowing costs, but it’d be better than paying roughly $100 million to bondholders.

In contrast, a 2002 article by Brian Jones in the Providence Phoenix said that under former Gov. Lincoln Almond the following happened:

• Unemployment down to 4% from 7% in 1995.
• Half a billion dollars invested in construction at state colleges, while health insurance was increasing among Rhode Islanders.
• Roads improved while the interest rates on state bonds fell.
• Taxes down 10%.

Well, at least taxes are down even more since 2002. That’ll come as a relief to the 11% of Rhode Islanders still unemployed, and the others who are underemployed or simply aren’t counted because they’ve given up looking for jobs.

It’s incredible how a decade can make a difference. Lincoln Almond seems like the most competent administrator in the entirety of Rhode Island’s history. And this was a man portrayed on the front page of The Journal in 2002 as chronically asleep.

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Ted Nesi is off. He’ll return on Friday.

By Maryellen Butke

“Education has to be the one issue that we put politics and ideology aside.”

Famous words spoken by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan during the 2010 elections and certainly words that ring true in Rhode Island today. When I became the executive director of RI-CAN: The Rhode Island Campaign for Achievement Now, I had just left an eight-year tenure as a school administrator at The Met School in Providence. Known for its progressive approach to learning, The Met is where I first began my work in education. Before that, I was a parent and a professional whose daughter was struggling in her public school. When I walked my daughter into the Paul Cuffee Public Charter School in Providence, my passion for education reform was born.

I have never considered my views on education liberal or conservative. Though a lifelong progressive, it never occurred to me that teaching and learning in public schools was a partisan issue. At its core, education reform is about improving educational outcomes for kids. How could anyone – Democrat or Republican – disagree with that?

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A new column on WPRI.com from Tim White takes a look at last night’s “60 Minutes”:

On Sunday, “60 Minutes” aired their second installment in an investigative series focusing on stem cell scams. They profiled Dr. Eckland and described his method of treatment as “21st-century snake oil being peddled to desperate people.” …

Pelley’s report relied heavily on a hidden-camera interview he conducted with Eckland in that hotel suite. “60 Minutes Overtime,” the Web supplement for their televised newsmagazine, went in-depth on the technical steps it took to wire up the hotel room for the interview.

If you have a few minutes, watch it. Even those who don’t work in news will find the peel-back-the-curtain view of how it all went down fascinating. And having done a few hidden-camera reports myself, I was intrigued at how the “60 Minutes” team handled the situation, and what it says about using the technique.

Read the rest here.

By John Marion

Common Cause’s founder John Gardner once said, “Everybody’s organized but the people. Now it’s the citizens’ turn.” We have followed that mandate for the last four decades in an effort to serve the public’s interest. One of the key principles we promote is transparency in government, and that’s what Ted asked me to write a little bit about today.

If you’ve followed Ted’s pension reform coverage, then you should appreciate the important relationship between good journalism and transparency in government. Whether it’s public records and open meetings or campaign finance and lobbyist disclosures, some of the biggest beneficiaries of transparency are members of the media.

Now, I don’t think John Gardner founded Common Cause to help the media do its job. But we can’t all follow the behavior of public officials and public bodies, so we rely on the media – as well as groups like Common Cause – to do that on our behalf. And when reporters need to find out what the government is doing, they rely on the reforms we advocate for every day.

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By Patrick Laverty

Fairness.

If there is one point that Cumberland Mayor Dan McKee tries to get across in an interview, it’s that he’s just looking for fairness. It’s an issue that he’s been trying to get across to the General Assembly for some time now. We’ve heard in recent years about the fair-funding formulas for our cities and towns, but a major problem exists: the towns have differing reimbursement rates. And McKee feels those rates are not “fair.”

In 1998, the General Assembly passed a law that would phase out the motor vehicle excise tax over seven years, meaning Rhode Islanders would no longer be paying taxes on automobiles by 2005.

In 2002, the economy was turned upside down and the Assembly extended the length of the phase-out. A few years later, it was suspended indefinitely. Since then, most of us have felt the pain of more recent legislation that cut the exemption in many towns from $6,000 to $500.

That cut in the minimum exemption means fewer dollars for cities and towns, because they “are paid by the state for the lost taxes due to the exemptions” [pdf]. When state officials reduced the amount they will pay the cities and towns, the municipalities lost a great deal of revenue.

Why did the General Assembly do this? The answer is simple and has never been denied: to balance the state budget.

As much as some may disagree with balancing the state’s budget using local money, let’s deem that acceptable for now. But are the towns even being reimbursed fairly and equally? When you look at the numbers, it would appear not.

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By David Segal

The Geeks are ascendant in the halls of Capitol Hill. After a decade or two of know-nothing dominance of political dialogue, people who, you know, know things, are finally having their piece. During a hearing last week on the far-reaching, technically complex Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Congressman Jason Chaffetz admonished his colleagues to “bring the nerds in and get this right.”

The grassroots activist group Demand Progress – which I helped start about a year ago and has since grown to nearly a million members – has helped lead the fight against SOPA, moving hundreds of thousands of constituent contacts to Congress, organizing activists and techies to fight the bill, and meeting with legislators and folks in the White House to express our members’ concerns.

SOPA would give the government new powers to shut down websites that are accused of facilitating copyright infringement. All of the Web’s best sites – especially the social networks that rely on user-generated content and make the Web fun and politically relevant – could fall victim to such claims.

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By Maureen Martin

With the year’s end fast approaching, it’s a good time to look back on events in and around the labor union community in Rhode Island. In my reflections on the labor activities in 2011 what stands out most clearly is the mobilization and engagement of union members in the community, at their workplaces and on behalf of other union workers.

Rhode Island, like most every state in the union, was still reeling from the devastating economic near collapse of our country throughout 2011. We were, and still are, suffering from one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, particularly in the building trades, where about half of workers were without a job. Rhode Island was disproportionately affected by home foreclosures and teachers, firefighters, police and other state and municipal public employees were being laid off because of budget woes. Workers remaining on the job were dealing with how to provide quality services with fewer workers.

But none of this slowed down the union members who knew that by working together we could improve both the quality of the services we provide and the communities where we work and live. As they have done for years, Rhode Island union members worked together on various projects and campaigns to make life a little better for those in need.

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By Gary Morse

Nearly two years ago, the Bristol County Water Authority moved to get a 12% hike in local water rates. The implications of this fateful request are still reverberating in the East Bay, and the path that led from a utility increase to the threat of a lawsuit against four ratepayers has now become a news story of its own.

In early 2010, BCWA went to the Barrington Town Council to explain the need for such a steep rate increase. (The BCWA Board of Directors is made up of nine directors, with the town councils of Barrington, Bristol and Warren appointing three members each.) By the end of the meeting, Councilor Jeff Brenner was moved to remark: “Yogi Berra has nothing on some of the explanations given here tonight.”

Four East Bay residents – now known as the “East Bay Four” – decided to take the lead and began trying to find out what was really going on. Along with myself, the rest of the East Bay Four are Jeff and Janice Black of Barrington, and Bristol resident Marina Peterson of the East Bay Patriots.

To say that BCWA was not receptive to ratepayer involvement is a gross understatement. Over the course of our two-year quest, certain BCWA representatives were known for yelling at ratepayers who dared to ask questions, in an effort to scare them off and ensure no one would dare come back. BCWA was also paying its attorney handsomely to run interference against the public.

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By Tim White

A case of a police department apparently cooking the books is being obscured from view thanks to a sloppy translation of Rhode Island’s public records laws.

In October, The Providence Journal’s Amanda Milkovits ran a superbly reported story on police misconduct complaints in Cranston that were essentially tucked away, seemingly to do nothing more than collect dust. The report points out the previous police chief, Col. Stephen McGrath, had touted a sharp decline in police complaints in a 2007 annual report. But that might have been nothing more than a sleight of hand, according to an internal investigation.

Here are the findings from Milkovits’ article in a nutshell:

… according to an audit ordered by current Police Chief Marco Palombo Jr., the real reason the number of complaints dropped was that instead of logging all of the complaints, the department’s internal-affairs unit was diverting some into a “file report,” where they vanished from the log-book, statistics, and, apparently, investigations.

Milkovits wrote four excruciating paragraphs detailing why everyone and their lawyers couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain why data on officer complaints vanished into a virtual drawer.

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Former Rhode Island Gov. Bruce Sundlun, who died this afternoon at the age of 91, led the state for four dramatic years. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse was the first of many politicians to issue a statement of remembrance, calling his “beloved friend and mentor … one of the most remarkable and accomplished Rhode Islanders in our history.”

Few journalists knew Sundlun better than M. Charles Bakst, who retired three years ago as The Providence Journal’s political columnist after more than three decades at the paper. I asked Bakst to share his memories of Sundlun; here’s what he had to say:

Bruce Sundlun towered over the landscape, driven, impassioned, combative, charming, and impatient. He was one of the most colorful politicians I knew – and, importantly – accomplished. And accomplished on so many fronts. Many pols never really had a life outside of politics. Sundlun was a war hero, lawyer, businessman, and media mogul. But then he wanted to be governor and he was willing to put millions of his own dollars into his campaigns, and then when he did take office endured an incredible amount of adversity.

His two two-year terms were high drama, from the credit-union and fiscal crises to the near-death of his wife Marjorie, to the emergence of Kara, the daughter no one knew he had, to his shooting raccoons on his property in Newport.

He got things into his head – like the need for a new airport terminal – and worked round the clock to make them a reality.

He spouted rules, like his dictum that you should spend one-third of your life learning, one-third earning, and one-third serving.

During his governorship, my title at The Journal was Government Affairs Editor. I wrote a Sunday column and oversaw the State House Bureau. Sundlun regularly peppered me with letters and phone calls complaining about something I wrote, or the reporters wrote, or we didn’t cover – whatever. On the other hand, he liked to schmooze, could be quick with a compliment, and, always, for all the decades I knew him, even until recently, was a terrific raconteur.

He was not one for introspection. He said he was a “who-what-where” guy, not a “why” guy. When I asked him in late 1994 why Democratic primary voters rejected his bid for a third term, he replied, “I don’t really care and I don’t know.” But he said he was not bitter, sad or angry, and that it was an honor to have held the office.

He was a bundle of nervous energy and, you might say, an open book. I think back to a 1992 letter in which he apologized for calling one day and yelling. But he also defended folks who yell. He wrote, “These cool, laid-back types who keep everything inside and under control do not impress me very much, and most of them end up with ulcers, alcoholic problems, or other emotional disturbances…. I will defend people who raise their voices when they are angry. I might even see raising your voice as not good manners, and I think manners are very important, but I think that honest emotions and free expression are just as important.”

That was Sundlun.

For more, here is our WPRI 12 obituary for the former governor:

(photo: Rhode Island Secretary of State’s office)

[I'm back from vacation, but here's one more guest post.]

By Eric Hyers

Cara Cromwell, John Loughlin’s former campaign manager, last week posted a rather spot-on assessment here of why a Republican winning Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District will be a nearly impossible feat. I’d like to join in agreement.

2010 was a brutal year for Democrats across the country. Democrats suffered record congressional losses, undoing the electoral gains of the 2006 and 2008 cycles. And next door in Massachusetts, the political world was astounded by Scott Brown’s Senate victory in a reliably blue state, replacing the liberal lion Ted Kennedy.

And yet, even after a bruising four-way primary and vicious attacks by a third-party group in the general election, David Cicilline was able to win by a comfortable margin of victory. He went to Washington as one of only nine new Democratic members out of a freshman class of 94.

He will win again in 2012.

Congressman Cicilline has been in office for just six months. During that time, he has had his Make It In America Block Grant included in the national Democrats’ jobs plan. He has led 44 of his colleagues, including two Republicans, in sending a letter to President Obama calling for an accelerated time table for bringing our troops home from Afghanistan. Recently, he sponsored an amendment that would end the spending of $475 billion to build bridges, roads and schools in Afghanistan in order to spend that money on our own people. And just this week, he joined Senator Whitehouse in sponsoring a bill to help revitalize our manufacturing base by ending tax breaks for American companies that ship our jobs overseas.

His district office so far has handled over 500 constituency service cases, the type of work that doesn’t usually make headlines but represents the real-world impact a representative can have on people’s lives. He holds frequent meetings with constituents, from community dinners and town halls to regular “In the District with David” events in order to ensure he remains responsive to the needs of the 1st District. In short, Congressman Cicilline is in tune with the needs of the district and fighting every day to improve its residents’ lives.

In stark contrast, Washington Republicans are currently refusing to budge on eliminating tax breaks on corporate jets – that’s right, corporate jets – but passed a budget to end Medicare for future retirees. They are fighting hard to maintain subsides for Big Oil but insist that cuts in Social Security benefits must be on the table. They are demanding that tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires be extended but are unwilling to close tax loopholes for companies that send American jobs overseas. It’s outrageous, and Rhode Island voters aren’t going to be in any hurry to add to their ranks.

RI-1 is perhaps the textbook definition of a Democratic district. And by “Democratic district,” I don’t just mean that there are more Democrats than Republicans – I mean that the people of this district largely believe in the ideals of the Democratic Party. As polling, research and past election results prove, voters here believe in the social safety-net provided by Social Security and Medicare, believe the government should play a role in protecting the environment and women’s rights, and believe that government should support the middle class, not provide additional tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

The Republican Party’s message – especially these days, with its focus on far-right social issues and protecting the super-rich – finds little support here. While Rhode Island will, on occasion, elect a Republican governor, I do not believe voters in the 1st District will send a representative to Washington who will vote in line with Speaker Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan. Federal and state-level elections cannot be viewed through the same lens.

As of now, the Republican nominee will either be John Loughlin or Brendan Doherty. Loughlin, in the best Republican year in decades, couldn’t break 45% of the vote. He was a hard-working candidate who ran a feisty campaign, but his politics were just too extreme for Rhode Island voters. He called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. He doubts manmade global warming. He thinks Paul Ryan should be “applauded” for crafting a budget that ends Medicare. And he is likely the Republicans’ best chance.

So far Brendan Doherty is a relatively unknown candidate, although he did raise eyebrows by switching his abortion stance from pro-choice to anti-choice within weeks of announcing his bid; it will be interesting to see if this extends to supporting the national Republicans’ efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. He has called the Republican budget that ends Medicare a prudent approach. And he has alienated many Latinos, an important 1st District voting constituency, with his extreme stances on immigration.

These are incredibly tough economic times and I believe voters are going to demand a representative who they can count on to vote for their interests. I could go through an endless set of scenarios to show that a Republican can’t win in RI-1 because of electoral math. I could reiterate what Cara wrote; that there simply aren’t enough votes in the conservative-leaning areas of the district to overcome the voter registration advantage Democrats enjoy in the highly populated areas of Providence, Pawtucket and East Providence. I’m a numbers nerd and I’d be happy to do that all day.

But the truth is that David Cicilline will win in 2012 because he shares the values of the people of this district, understands their problems, and works incredibly hard to make their lives better.

Eric Hyers is executive director of the Connecticut Democratic Party and served as David Cicilline’s campaign manager in 2010.

the original gerrymander

By John Marion

The common refrain heard in the State House early morning on July 1 was “have a nice summer.” Normally the end of June brings a six-month break from the politics of the General Assembly. But not this year – this will be the summer of redistricting.

Nothing sets a political junkie’s heart a-twitter quite like redistricting. It’s all about the most fundamental element of politics – power. But this struggle for power has far-reaching consequences for the type of representation we receive. Redistricting appeals to the basest political instincts and impacts our highest democratic ideals.

Because we primarily use single-member districts in our republican form of government in the United States, we’re faced with the need to ensure that each district contains roughly the same number of people, and to adjust accordingly after each census. In fact the actual commission that will oversee the process in Rhode Island has “reapportionment” in its name – that is the primary goal. That is because the U.S. Supreme Court interprets the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to guarantee the right of “one man, one vote.”

Equal population is something we take for granted in the redistricting process today. But it has only been in the last half-century, since the advent of the so-called “reapportionment revolution,” that this basic concept has been in place. Prior to the 1960s, it was accepted practice for rural districts to be drastically under-populated compared to urban districts.

Rhode Island was at the head of the class when it came to malapportionment, too. As Scott McKay wrote in a retrospective piece about Rhode Island political history, a century ago,

The foundation of Republican control in the state rested on perhaps the most malapportioned General Assembly in America: Providence, with 30,000 voters, had one senator, as did Little Compton, which once elected a state senator with 78 votes.

The result was that 7.5% of Rhode Island’s population once controlled the legislature. That would be like having just the senators from Cranston controlling an entire legislative chamber. (Insert a funny joke at the expense of the people of Cranston here.)

The reapportionment part of redistricting isn’t very difficult. If you want to see how malapportioned things have become in the last decade because of populations shifts in Rhode Island, check out these nifty maps created by The Providence Journal and these maps by the Prov Plan.

The only malapportionment controversy left involves prisoners – yes, prisoners. A movement is afoot to count prisoners at their last known address rather than where they are incarcerated. In fact, according the Prison Policy Initiative, Rhode Island has the most malapportioned state legislative districts in the nation because its ACI is located on one campus.

Supporters of this movement, including Common Cause, believe that you should be counted where you chose to live and not where you are being held. Opponents say that prisoners use community resources and therefore should be counted in Cranston – or at least they said that until a prisoner at the ACI tried to register his child in the Cranston schools.

But reapportionment is not even half the story of redistricting. It’s essentially a simple math problem. The really interesting part involves where the lines are drawn. He (or she) who controls the lines, controls the power.

The commission that is being formed to draw those lines in Rhode Island is 100% controlled by the legislature itself. In other lines of work that is called an “inside job.” Again, we’re in dubious company; one political scientist labels our process for drawing the maps as among the most partisan with among the fewest standards in the United States.

We’re among the most partisan because we allow the majority party to control the process through its appointments to the commission. We have the fewest standards because the constitutional and statutory language on the subject in Rhode Island is few and far between. In Rhode Island, those who draw the lines are required to make compact and contiguous districts that follow historical boundaries, and to the best they can, nest House districts into Senate districts. Notably absent is any standard that prevents the commission from considering political factors such as partisan turnout or incumbent home address. (See “Job, Inside,” above.)

So what do we get for such a system? Well, we get elections that are less competitive. And many a dissertation has been written showing the electoral competitiveness changes all sorts of things, such as the quality of the person in office, and the type of public policy they create when they get there.

So that is why we need to beware, beware the gerrymander. You can still go to the beach this summer, but when you get back don’t be surprised if the next election has already been decided.

John Marion is executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island.

(drawing via Commentarama)

By Neeta P. Fogg and Paul E. Harrington

The recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-09 that began in June 2009 has seen the nation’s level of economic output rebound back to its pre-recession peak, rising from $12.8 trillion at the trough of the recession to $13.4 trillion by the first quarter of this year. But there has been no such recovery in the job market.

At the beginning of the recession the nation had 137.9 million jobs. That fell to just 130.9 million through the second quarter of 2009, as GDP declined. But since the GDP recovery, the nation has been unable to create any new jobs. By the first quarter of this year, nonfarm payroll employment stood at 130.5 million – slightly lower than when GDP bottomed in mid-2009.

Our colleague Andy Sum found [pdf] that most of the rise in output and income in the nation since the recession ended went to business profits – with no job creation or pay increases that could help American workers.

Last year at this time, Georgetown University released a report suggesting that very large college graduate labor shortages could develop between now and 2020. This man-bites-dog report caught the media’s attention thanks to its argument that a shortage was imminent, even in the face of high unemployment, because of postsecondary institutions graduating too few students.

A year later, with the national unemployment rate at 9.1%, the labor force underutilization rate hovering at the 15% to 17% range, and the number of officially unemployed workers outnumbering available job openings by more than 4.5 to 1, Georgetown has doubled down on its forecast of labor shortages, this time extending the shortage period through 2025.

We recently analyzed the employment experiences of young people who have earned a college degree to gain some insight into the supposed college graduate shortage. Young college graduates experience problems in the labor market in a variety of ways.

Poor job prospects cause some new grads – those who can afford the expense – to withdraw from the labor market and enroll in graduate and professional programs. Others simply become unemployed. But a third option in the face of slack labor demand conditions is for the new graduate to choose “mal-employment” over unemployment.

Mal-employment simply means college graduates take jobs that don’t use the knowledge, skills and abilities that are thought to be developed in college; examples would be a nursing graduate taking a job as a retail clerk at a shopping mall, or a political science graduate working as an orderly in a nursing home.

This mal-employment means that college graduates can’t find work in professional, technical, managerial and high-level sales occupations that are organized to take advantage of the abilities developed in college – and this means sharp earnings losses. If nurses work as retail clerks they earn mall wages, and thus lose much of the economic benefit of a college degree. Our analysis revealed that by 2010, only 61% of employed recent college graduates were able to find work in a college labor market occupation, down from more than 70% in 2000.

An equally severe problem associated with mal-employment is the displacement that takes place in the labor market for high school graduates. With lots of young college grads trying to avoid unemployment and settling for high school labor market jobs, young high school graduates experience a sharp increase in joblessness as employers opt to hire better-educated workers. Such behavior is commonplace; during the Great Depression of the 1930s, elevator operators in Manhattan’s finest buildings were required to have a college degree.

We spoke with one of the most respected observers of American labor markets to get his views of the projected labor shortage. In his 40 years of experience, he told us, he’s learned that “those who project don’t know, and those who don’t know project.”

Projecting college labor shortages when the nation is now two years into a jobless recovery strikes us as an unhelpful diversion from the real problem of an American economy unable to create new jobs. We need educators, elected officials and business leaders focused on the real challenges of today’s job market, and not on fanciful and – we think – deeply flawed speculation about 2025.

Neeta P. Fogg is a senior economist at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Paul E. Harrington is director of the Center for Labor Markets and Policy at Drexel University.

By Cara Cromwell

Are you waiting for the punch line?

When Ted called me about writing a guest post for his blog and he suggested this topic, my response was: “If I knew, I wouldn’t be writing this, Ted.” (Cue nervous laughter.)

Jokes aside, after managing John Loughlin’s campaign during the exciting and competitive 2010 cycle – and having almost recovered from the experience – I have a few observations to share on how a Republican candidate can mount a competitive campaign in RI-1. I’m not so addled as to think I have the keys to the kingdom, but here are my scraps of wisdom (strong word) for any current or future candidates that are thinking about embarking on the quest for the grail that is RI-1.

While there are currently two GOP candidates who plan to run for the seat in 2012, the first thing to note is that we are almost a year away from the filing deadline and it is far too early to assume that the field is in place. With Congressman Cicilline appearing weak, additional candidates on both sides of the aisle may emerge and others may drop out. A quick check of Anthony Gemma’s Facebook page seems to indicate that he’s still in the hunt. This race is fluid.

So whether you’re undeclared, in a foreign land or “in it to win it,” the vast stretch of time between now and when the race heats up next spring should be about getting your campaign up and running and perfecting your “why I should be your next member of Congress” stump speech. Know the issues, but articulate a larger vision. There’s no point in spending a lot of time sparring with a sitting member of Congress – we have talk radio for that. You need to define yourself and your priorities and not look around at the rest of the field right now.

Most importantly, you need to focus on raising money. And right after that, you need to raise money. Oh, and then you need to raise money. And when you’re not raising money, you should make sure that you’re familiar with the key issues before Congress.* Then go raise more money.

How much? The answer is easy – $1 million is a good goal for a competitive seat. It’s the equation that’s hard to solve.

Rhode Island has one media market, and it’s on the lower end of expensive for television airtime. We’re a cheap date compared to most other seats but because the district has been so reliably Democratic, “D.C. money” is less likely to find its way here. D.C. money includes not only contributions from the National Republican Campaign Committee, but the many political action committees that tend to give to GOP candidates.

Their logic is sound: Why spend the money in RI-1 – which, with the exception of Ron Machtley’s six years, has been a safe Democratic seat since the 1930s – when there are 82 freshman House Republicans to protect in 2012? The other complicating factor is that D.C. money doesn’t appear in a hotly contested GOP primary at all, so whatever you plan to spend in the primary, plan to do it with money you have or money you have raised locally. And while Rhode Island Republicans are generous, there just aren’t very many of them, and this is where the real challenge lies.

It’s a tough pill to swallow, but an election is a numbers game, not a popularity contest. During the course of a campaign, you might meet 1,000 people a day who say they’re going to vote for you (most will live in RI-2 or nearby Connecticut). But unless you can crack the code on getting the so-called unaffiliated voters to vote for a Republican, you’re right where you started – not in Congress.

In 2010, RI-1 was rated a D +13 district, meaning that statistically the Democrat should beat the Republican candidate by a margin of 13 points. Although the margin was about half that in 2010, the simple truth is that whoever the GOP candidate is in 2012, he or she is going to have to find many more votes than the 10,000 or so by which Loughlin lost. With President Obama up in 2012, voter turnout will be higher than 2012 – and those voters aren’t voting GOP.

Where will those votes come from? In 2010, Cicilline’s margin of 10,000 included about 7,500 from Providence. Without a significant (read: expensive) turnout effort, the 2012 candidate will face the same numbers challenge that Loughlin did: despite winning in the outlying communities, huge losses in the urban areas put him under.

I’m not a “mathemagician” so I don’t have a solution to this one other than to say that making significant inroads in the cities will be crucial unless you can get 5,000 or 6,000 people to move from Providence to Portsmouth and vote GOP. There are also the unknowns – whether voters will blame Cicilline for Providence’s fiscal demise and whether a bloody Democratic primary will leave those voters divided and unhappy enough to stay home in November. If Obama is cruising to re-election, his followers may be complacent, creating an opportunity of “hope and change” for the GOP candidates in Rhode Island.

* And by the way, the rare exception to “don’t look at the rest of the field” is that you should know what’s happening on the Hill and use your mental file cabinet (and well as hard copy) to understand the issues and know where Congressman Cicilline stands. You can bet that he’ll say he is “protecting seniors and working families.” Maybe you should too? Feel free to anticipate what he will say are his accomplishments and work on your responses.

But only do that in your head, while you’re raising money.

Cara Cromwell is a political consultant who lives in Bristol.

By Tim White

You can pretty much set your watch to it.

Anytime I file a report on organized crime, minutes later my phone will ring or an email will appear in my inbox.

“You know,” says the grumpy caller on the other end, “the streets were safer when ‘he’ ran the show.”

Click.

“He” can stand for pretty much any accused wiseguy or big-name mob figure (see: James J. “Whitey” Bulger) featured in one of my reports.

I’m also often accused of picking on a certain nationality – Italians if it’s a La Cosa Nostra (LCN) story, the Irish if it’s, say, the Winter Hill Gang. But inevitably, the caller is one of the “Robin Hood” believers: someone who not only felt the reputed mobster protected the neighborhood from outside criminal elements, but blocked drugs from permeating the streets.

Don’t buy it, says Jeffrey Sallet, who runs the FBI’s organized crime unit for the New England region.

“If you look at the rationale, mob guys banned dealing narcotics because of strict sentencing – that was their concern,” Sallet said. “It wasn’t that these guys were ‘Robin Hood’ and trying to be good and had some code of ethics for dealing.”

And history shows that even with the risk of hefty prison terms, the lucrative drug trade was just too alluring for many to pass up.

There’s the famous “Pizza Connection” case: a mafia-driven scheme to distribute heroin using New York pizza parlors. Locally, reputed Patriarca family capo regime Matthew Guiglielmetti sits in a federal prison for protecting a shipment of cocaine. And even the poster child for the so-called Robin Hood bad guys, “Whitey” Bulger, is accused of cashing in on drugs; one of the charges against him is “narcotics distribution,” though it’s overshadowed by the 19 counts of murder.

“Where there is money being made, there are organized criminals,” Sallet said.

In the post-9/11 world, however, wiseguys have moved to the back burner of the federal stovetop, edged out by international terrorists, Mexican drug cartels and other ethnic organized crime factions.

“If you go to mob guys, they ask you why we aren’t getting terrorists,” Sallet said.

But around here, the feds say the traditional mobster still reigns supreme.

In fact, Sallet said the FBI identifies LCN as the number one “threat assessment” for organized crime in New England. In other parts of the country the feds focus on the Russian mob or Asian or African criminal enterprises, but not in New England. Apparently, around here it’s still mobsters and lobsters.

My work voicemail isn’t the only place where you’ll hear vocal detractors of law enforcement’s continued zeal when it comes to investigating and cracking down on defendants who have vowel-heavy surnames.

“They keep chasing old men in diapers,” Rhode Island defense attorney Raymond Mansolillo told The Associated Press’ Laura Crimaldi recently. “I think it’s a waste of taxpayer resources.”

Mansolillo, a former DEA agent who at one time represented reputed former mob boss Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio, has made similar comments before – in 2009, he told me the mob was “defunct” in New England.

Bolstering Mansolillo’s point are recent arrest logs for organized crime busts, which look more like the sign-up sheet at bingo night: Luigi Manocchio, 83; James Bulger, 81; John “Sonny” Franzese, 93; Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent, 70.

Veteran Rhode Island prosecutor Deputy Attorney General Gerald Coyne says, so what?

“These people have lived their entire lives in contempt of the law and do not deserve to live out their golden years in the same way law abiding citizens do,” Coyne said. “It’s not like you hit a certain age and get a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Organized crime investigators also point out that just because these men could be in a Depends ad doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous. Young soldiers or “wannabes” might be looking to impress the frail Mafia don by acting on orders to kill, run rackets, move drugs – or all of the above.

“Because somebody is not a young man doesn’t mean they are not dangerous and cannot order acts of violence,” Sallet told the AP.

True. Remember, Whitey had a good chunk of Boston’s FBI office in his back pocket as a man in his mid-60s, when he was also allegedly running a lucrative and ruthless criminal organization that’s accused of committing heinous murders – murders, it should be pointed out, that often happened on the very streets some still believe he kept clean.

Bulger was a high-level criminal informant for the FBI during much of his reign of terror – successfully knocking off his competition by diming them out or killing them, court records have revealed. The FBI has never been the same: In 2003, a congressional committee described the Bulger-FBI affair as “one of the greatest failures in the history of federal law enforcement.”

Personally, I like to think of the feds as being divided up into two eras: Pre-Whitey and Post-Whitey.

The new and improved Post-Whitey G-Men successfully tracked him down in a (rent-controlled) Oceanside waterfront apartment. Inside, according to The Boston Globe, was a false wall concealing more than 30 firearms, $800,000 in cash and enough ammunition to make John Gotti shudder.

Not bad for an old guy.

Over the years I’ve interviewed scores of investigators and prosecutors about organized crime. They all agree that, thanks to the federal RICO Act and an aging Mafioso population, the organized crime families we grew up with in the Northeast are shells of their former selves. But they also point out that the good guys have to stay on top of organized crime. It’s like weeding a garden in order to let the good stuff flourish.

“It’s critical,” Coyne said. “There is no question that organized crime has been and remains very active in the drug trade, but they also remain active in many other criminal activities that have genuine victims.”

Was Whitey on the street corner dealing himself?

No.

But there is strong evidence he cashed in on a drug trade that pumped a serious amount of dope into the very neighborhoods some vehemently claim he protected.

I always welcome your calls and (strongly-worded) emails. But just know up front: I don’t – and won’t – buy into the Robin Hood myth.

Tim White is the Emmy-winning investigative reporter at WPRI 12.

By Jef Nickerson

In the corners of Providence’s dark bistros, coffeehouses and martini bars, there is a whisper: “What about this streetcar business? Does it make any sense?”

I make my reputation writing about urban issues in Providence, so it is a fair question for me – except the question is often asked in hushed tones with averted eyes, as if I will have some secret, surprising answer; as if the questioner is letting me know it is safe for me to share my true secret feelings on the topic. I suspect that those askers are secretly hoping I will say, shaking my head sadly, “It costs too much.”

The projected $100 million cost of a streetcar line in Providence is not insignificant – and coincidentally, it is about the same as the projected cost of replacing the Pawtucket River Bridge (which as you may know has been limited for the last five years due to deferred maintenance).

It may indeed be possible that we could run buses along the same route and move the same amount of people for a smaller initial investment. Nevertheless, I’m all for bringing streetcars back to Providence.

My reasons for wanting streetcars are pragmatic, not romantic. While streetcars are a means of transportation, and will move people from one point to another, their biggest benefit will be as a spur to economic development and a tool for RIPTA, the city and the state to prove that they are committed to a robust transit system for the metropolitan area.

From Portland to Salt Lake City to New Orleans to Washington, cities across the country either already have streetcar systems or are planning to build or expand them. These cities are realizing the fiscal value of public transportation as an economic development tool and a means of improving their urban centers, and are making a commitment to 21st-century development.

Businesses and, perhaps more importantly, the talent they are looking to attract are looking for well-built cities that are easy to navigate. Employees want to avoid spending the bulk of their annual salaries on gas and parking and all their free time on a horrendous commute, and employers are looking for the same.

Providence’s proposed streetcar route will traverse the Jewelry District and the land made available by the removal of the old Interstate 195 – land that we can’t let sit fallow; land that we need to quickly develop to boost the economy.

Time and again, rail tracks on the roadbed have proven to be a strong draw for development. The Pearl District in Portland, Ore., is an example analogous to our Jewelry District – a rundown warehouse and factory district on the edge of downtown was transformed by the development that followed the streetcar tracks.

With alternate means of transportation in place, the city will be able to reduce or eliminate parking minimums for new developments. Reduced parking minimums mean fewer surface lots and more buildings with productive uses for us, the citizens of Providence. For the developer, it means spending less of their money storing cars, leaving more to be spent on amenities for people – because we all know that cars don’t spend money, people spend money.

Streetcar infrastructure signals a commitment to transit, a long-term commitment that buses cannot convey. While bus routes can come and go at the whim of a transit director or the first sign of a budget crunch, the infrastructure that comes with streetcars is much harder to abandon.

While rising gas prices are already sending commuters to RIPTA, there is still a stigma attached to public transit, particularly buses. People who do not ordinarily utilize public transit are more willing to hop on a streetcar; they often see them as better, fancier, more elegant. When these riders find that RIPTA is operating a well run streetcar that’s easy, enjoyable and convenient to ride, they may become more willing to commit to other forms of transit.

As RIPTA continues to work internally and with the General Assembly to figure out the best source of reliable funding for the agency, it will need more “friends” to speak in its favor. A visit to the comments section of the local paper of record when a story hits the media about RIPTA’s budget problems shows the need for the agency to have more positive and enthusiastic backers. Higher gas prices are here to stay; more people are going to need the services RIPTA provides going forward.

While the public relations and economic development components are important, there is of course a transit benefit.

I’ve heard it said that the proposed streetcar route from College Hill to Rhode Island Hospital via the Jewelry District is nothing more than a school bus for Brown University. While Brown will indeed benefit, it cannot be ignored that those two end points are among the largest employers in Rhode Island – employers that have managed better than others to resist the ravages of recession. Those two points will provide a ready customer base for the streetcar as it works its economic development magic on the Jewelry District and Downcity.

The streetcar route is also well-situated to fill the “last mile” gap in Rhode Island’s transit system – the “last mile” referring to the gap in an individual’s journey between where her transit trip ends and her ultimate destination.

Many eschew transit because of this “last mile” gap. Most buses in Rhode Island end their journeys in Kennedy Plaza, which was fine when the adjacent Financial District was the economic engine of the state. Now, though, the city’s jobs are spreading out like spokes of a bicycle from the plaza. The streetcar removes the need to go all the way into the plaza, and back out again on another mode of transport. People coming into the city from all directions can make their needed connections to their end points along the streetcar route.

The Core Connector Study, which is assessing the streetcar proposal, is also looking to make a connection to Providence’s train station. This connection could take the form of a streetcar spur from Kennedy Plaza; a shuttle bus between the plaza and station; or perhaps some other form. With strong commuter-rail service north of the city, and expanding commuter-rail service south of the city, this would create a vast customer shadow for the streetcar that covers two states.

The streetcar will fill in the “last mile” for commuter rail riders, as well. By providing alternative mobility options through the urban core and by getting new commuters onto commuter rail and buses, the streetcar will reduce automobile usage, decreasing our fossil-fuel consumption, reducing the need to provide parking in the city center, creating opportunities for vibrant new development, and relieving individuals and families of the costs of automobile commuting.

Yes, a streetcar line will cost us money. But when examining those cities building or planning streetcar systems, Providence is among the best suited structurally in the country to make such a line successful.

Our streetcar line will tick the boxes of serving existing employment areas, spurring economic development on under- or un-utilized land, and expanding transit ridership in the state and region. The investment is worth it, and the city and state should do all they can to support and promote it. •

Jef Nickerson runs the website Greater City: Providence, which promotes urban growth and regional development, and served on a transition committee that advised Mayor Angel Taveras.

For more information on the Providence streetcar proposal, visit the Providence Core Connector Study website. Ted Nesi will return on Friday.

By Ken Block

Among the many shocking facts that I learned on the campaign trail last year was the fact that there are more than 100,000 illiterate adults in Rhode Island (data from The Poverty Institute).

Rhode Island desperately needs manufacturing jobs to provide employment to our seriously undereducated work force. Governor Chafee’s proposed tax scheme is certain to cause our already decimated manufacturing base to shrink further as some of our remaining manufacturing businesses bolt for less expensive locales.

It is important to remember that Rhode Island’s once vibrant manufacturing industry has withered away due to competition from other regions of our country, and competition from around the world.

Governor Chafee’s tax increases will further deteriorate our already decimated manufacturing industry. To illustrate how the Chafee tax scheme will hurt manufacturing businesses, I will use my traffic-signal manufacturing business as an example.

For starters, Governor Chafee is proposing a 1% tax on “purchases for manufacturing purposes.” Everything that goes into my traffic signals is sourced from other companies. My business assembles the final product and ships the signals out around the country. So, my margins will now shrink by 1% – a huge competitive disadvantage in a highly competitive market.

This 1% tax has a more sinister aspect to it. I source the printed circuit boards for my traffic signals from a Rhode Island-based company. This company has to buy a lot of small electronic components then mounts those components on a circuit board – they are manufacturing my boards for me.

So, the cost of my in-state-purchased, made-to-order circuit boards will go up by 1% because the manufacturer will pass the cost of the 1% materials on to me – and then I will have to pay a 1% tax on the finished circuit board because my business integrates the board into a larger assembly.

I now have a powerful incentive to look for a manufacturer for my circuit boards outside of Rhode Island. I can save 1% on the cost of my boards by doing so and I can save 2% on the boards by moving my manufacturing business out of the state!

The majority of states do not tax the raw materials used in manufacturing. More importantly – our immediate neighbors do not have this tax.

If Rhode Island has a stated goal to increase the number of manufacturing jobs in the state, the proposed Chafee tax scheme takes the entire industry in the opposite direction.

We know that consumer behavior can be modified through tax policy. Witness the existing tobacco taxes and the proposed tax on sugary drinks for prime examples. We aren’t going to get new manufacturing businesses to locate in Rhode Island by increasing the cost of doing business in the state. We have already witnessed a mass exodus of vital manufacturing businesses to lower cost regions. Why can’t our leaders see that by increasing costs further that we will only cause more of these businesses to leave our state?

Additionally, other elements of Governor Chafee’s tax plan will result in a significant increase in the cost and headache attached to doing business in Rhode Island.

For example, the governor proposes taxing a whole range of goods and services used by businesses. Some of these goods and services are provided by Rhode Island-based companies, and some not. Where the company providing the good or the service is not based in the state, it would be up to the purchasing Rhode Island-based company to track, file paperwork and pay a “use tax.”  This is a substantial new regulatory burden to place on Rhode Island businesses (although it may stimulate some additional spending on accounting services).

Business owners have a choice on where to locate their businesses. Ultimately, most owners will choose a location that provides their business with the best chance of achieving long-term success. Rhode Island, which has for years been suffering from not being competitive in terms of the cost of doing business, will become substantially less competitive with the Chafee tax scheme.

Tax policy and regulatory burdens absolutely drive business decisions regarding where to locate a business.

Governor Chafee has to decide if he wants to encourage the creation of manufacturing jobs or the destruction of manufacturing jobs in Rhode Island. In the same way that you cannot lose weight while gobbling every sweet and fatty food in sight, you cannot encourage the creation of manufacturing jobs in Rhode Island while making Rhode Island’s manufacturing industry even less cost competitive than it is today. •

Ken Block is founder of the Moderate Party of Rhode Island and a former candidate for governor.

Ted Nesi will return on Friday.

The General Assembly’s long-awaited online tool for tracking members’ votes debuted to much fanfare earlier this month. I’m not an expert on the latest in tech-aided transparency, so I asked for a review from someone who is: John Speck, a consultant who specializes in Web 2.0 and advised the Taveras campaign on technology issues. Here’s his take.

If you go to the General Assembly’s new vote tracking system, be sure to bring your Internet superpowers with you. To successfully find a vote, the site expects you to know much more than a more-or-less normal person would.

Specifically, you need to know:

• House or Senate
• Date of the vote
• Bill number

At no point will you find something as basic as a listing of votes by bill title. When you eventually get all the way down to the “details” of a vote – and that’s a minimum of four clicks, assuming you make zero errors – you won’t find a single word about the bill itself. There’s a big disclaimer, but no text about the bill. Not even the title.

In short, even by the almost unbeatable hunt-and-peck, trial-and-error method, it is physically impossible to locate a vote without the bill number. Those two pieces of information – the content of the bill and the vote on the bill – never appear together. EVER!

To successfully put the two together, you have to be a Smith Hill wonk or possess Internet superpowers like me.

In the world of computers, I’m what’s known as a super-user; a user who learns very quickly and pushes systems to their limits. Because I have superpowers, I was able to find a bill, read its contents, then go look at the vote on that bill.

Yet even finding the bill text was unnecessarily difficult. As in the vote tracker, there was no listing by bill title, and the text search function required many clicks and correct decisions before I could get useful results.

With the help of my superpowers, I was able to fight my way into the belly of the beast and rip out its, um, PDF files.

Here’s the thing – should it really take superpowers? Shouldn’t more-or-less normal people expect to go to their state legislature’s website and actually see some legislation on the page called “Legislation”? Not the whole bill, but just the title and maybe a short description. I don’t think it’s a lot to ask of the General Assembly considering that we’re, you know, paying for them AND the website.

We can only hope that some legislator has a kid in high school who visits the site, pulls his father aside and says: “Dad, we need to talk about using the Internet responsibly.”

By way of conclusion, let my superpowers save you the aggravation of following the marriage equality legislation. Rep. Art Handy’s bill is H 5012. Write that down. The bill is in the House. Write that down, too. Eventually, there will be a vote. Note the date and write that down with the bill number.

Once you do all that, you’ll be ready to use the vote tracker. •

On Tuesday, Lincoln Chafee will be inaugurated as Rhode Island’s 58th governor. What should he do when he takes office? To get some ideas, I asked five of the state’s smartest citizens what advice they would offer the new governor. Last week we heard from Tom Sgouros, Mary-Kim Arnold, Justin Katz and John Marion.

The final essay comes from Allan Tear, a technology consultant who is co-founder and managing partner at Betaspring, a startup incubator in Providence.

As the first independent Governor of Rhode Island, you have a unique opportunity to forge a new path of leadership that not only challenges old assumptions, but discards them all together. I suggest you start with our outdated language about the economy. Language is important because it shapes the conversation about what we as a state will prioritize, strive for, and compromise on.

Until now we’ve echoed the national economic conversation, with terms like “Small Business vs. Big Business,” “Brain Drain vs. Student Retention,” “Traditional vs. Innovation Economy,” and “Employees vs. Contractors.” This language is reflected in our economic metrics, our rankings and how we compare ourselves to other states. But it reflects where we’ve been, not where we need to go.

Here is some independent language about the economy that breaks the current false choices and illuminates a way forward:

• Startups. A recent Kauffman Foundation study shows that firms less than five years old – startups – have generated nearly all of the net job growth in the U.S. over the past 25 years, while established firms averaged near-zero growth in aggregate. It matters less if the startups are what we think of as “old economy,” “Main Street” or “innovation economy” businesses. What matters is that we start talking about new startups and entrepreneurship as the primary engine of job creation in Rhode Island. Remember: our economic stalwarts of today – Hasbro, APC, GTECH and FM Global – were all Rhode Island startups once.

• Export Businesses. Rhode Island must bring dollars from outside our borders to drive our economy. More important than posturing about “being a state of small business” or the “importance of large employers” is a recognition that businesses that make their dollars by selling Rhode Island goods, services, talent and experiences to non-Rhode Islanders are the fuel that primes our state economic pump. These “Export Businesses” – boat builders in Bristol, artists in Pawtucket, defense contractors in Middletown, software developers in Providence and many others – cut across our old buckets of economic language. Whether it’s to Massachusetts or Manila, our goal should be to be an export powerhouse.

• Talent Flow. As a state that feels like we’ve lost much in the past few decades, we are obsessed with holding onto what’s left, and that is doubly true when it comes to conversations about our college graduates leaving, or Brain Drain. But the most vibrant economic hotspots have a flow of talent coming and going; learning, studying, starting companies, creating art, doing research, treating patients – and, yes, often moving on. This flow benefits us immensely as a state, bringing new ideas and global expertise, and imparting an affection for and connection with the Ocean State. When we shift from talking about Brain Drain to Talent Flow, we can begin to engage the energetic and smart folks that already flow through our state, get the most from our time with them, leverage them as Ocean State alumni if they move, and create new reasons for them to stay. The 21st century economic challenge is not to attract companies, but to attract talent.

We’ve proven that Rhode Island cannot win by playing someone else’s game, so it is left to us to forge a new economic path on which our state can thrive. The guideposts to that new path start with language; clear-eyed and supported by data, but unafraid to break from truisms that don’t serve the future well. I look forward to your leadership in starting, framing and driving this crucial conversation, and I think it will be a happy surprise to see the previously underleveraged talent that will respond to a change in language, stepping forward to help us compete on a different field. •

(photo: Betaspring)

Next Tuesday, Lincoln Chafee will be inaugurated as Rhode Island’s 58th governor. What should he do when he takes office? To get some ideas, I asked five of the state’s smartest citizens what advice they would offer the new governor. So far we’ve heard from Tom Sgouros, Mary-Kim Arnold and Justin Katz.

Today’s essay comes from John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, a nonprofit organization which promotes “open, ethical, accountable, effective government.”

If I could give one piece of advice to Gov.-elect Chafee – just one piece of advice – it would be to convince Larry Ellison that Rhode Island is not only a wonderful place for a sailboat race, but also the perfect spot for Oracle to moves its headquarters. Jewelry District, anyone?

That may not be the most useful advice, though, so let me offer something else. I would suggest that when Gov.-elect Chafee makes most of his decisions, he should use a 25-year time horizon.

Why 25 years? Because that is the approximate length of a generation in the United States, as measured by the OECD. Using that time horizon, any decisions the governor makes will impact the next generation directly.

This will not be easy advice to heed because our political system is designed with short time horizons, specifically the electoral cycle, in mind. For Gov.-elect Chafee that means 2014, the next time he will have to face the voters. Not so long ago, during Gov. John Chafee’s generation, that meant an even shorter two-year time horizon.

The electoral cycle is short because we insist on accountability through the ballot box. If our leaders had generation-long terms of office we could not send them signals about whether we approve or disapprove of their actions frequently enough. But a four- (and for members of the General Assembly, two-) year electoral cycle creates an incentive for politicians to be shortsighted in their policymaking.

The most notable example of this shortsightedness is the political business cycle, where politicians use fiscal and monetary policy to boost the economy before an election. These responses to electoral incentives offer near-term political benefits at the cost of long-term financial problems.

Gov.-elect Chafee will face two areas of concern to Common Cause Rhode Island where using a 25-year time horizon will serve us well.

The first involves fully implementing separation of powers. That principle was absent from our constitution for over 10 generations, and remains in its infancy since voters added it in 2004. By thinking about he and future governors should use separation of powers, Chafee can help shape the institution of the executive unlike any of his predecessors.

The second area of concern to Common Cause is judicial selection. The outgoing governor publicly expressed indifference to putting people on the bench. But judges often sit for several decades, helping to interpret the policies elected officials work so hard to establish. By making good appointments, and not succumbing to the temptation to trade judgeships for short-term political gains, Gov.-elect Chafee can affect the shape of the law – and his policies – for a generation.

This prescription for good government will not be easy to fill. Many of these choices will be made out of the public eye, and will not gain the future governor votes in four years. However, making the long-term decision at the expense of short-term political gain will eventually pay great dividends, both to the state and to the legacy of the second Governor Chafee. •

(Photo: Common Cause Rhode Island)

Next Tuesday, Lincoln Chafee will be inaugurated as Rhode Island’s 58th governor. What should he do when he takes office? To get some ideas, I asked five of the state’s smartest citizens what advice they would offer the new governor. Previously we heard from Tom Sgouros and Mary-Kim Arnold.

Today’s essay comes from Justin Katz, who writes at the blog Anchor Rising and is a featured essayist in the new book “Proud to Be Right.”

Everybody’s heard the clichéd relationship advice to set free the ones we love, because if they do not return, they were never ours in the first place. There should be a political corollary: Listen to those with whom you disagree.

As he ambles into office, Gov.-elect Lincoln Chafee should be deliberately aware that what he sees as resolute independence many of his new constituents see as refractory dogmatism.

As a U.S. Senator, his opposition to the Iraq war didn’t strike us as principled, but as knee-jerk leftism, an impression bolstered when he bragged that he’d written in President George W. Bush’s father’s name on his ballot in 2004. Even The Providence Journal’s former political columnist, M. Charles Bakst, described the senator as “the picture of indecision,” whose “dithering has been a distraction.”

Similarly, that Chafee reciprocated the aid that Sen. John McCain and the national GOP had offered during his Senate primary battle against Stephen Laffey in 2006 by publicly supporting Barack Obama in 2008 didn’t persuade us that the politician is independent-minded, but that McCain and the GOP had deserved their late-decade losses.

In short, those of us who’ve watched Linc transition out of his father’s party (and, truth be told, helped to usher him on his way) don’t interpret the consistent behavior of Mr. Trust Chafee as considered so much as petulant and defiant – and radical in just about every way.

In the weeks since the election, Chafee has seemed determined to cement our impression. When Chris Plante, executive director of National Organization for Marriage Rhode Island, requested a meeting, Chafee spokesman Michael Trainor explained that the governor-elect’s “long-established position” supporting same-sex marriage suggested that discussion would “not be productive.” Similarly, Terry Gorman, leader of Rhode Islanders for Immigration Law Enforcement, heard from a Chafee staffer that “the governor-elect had already conducted all the meetings he would with constituents on matters such as these.” Again Trainor’s plea was “not productive.”

Mr. Chafee should consider how eminently reasonable it is of his opposition to wonder whether his supposed meetings and deliberations are entirely fictitious – at least to the extent that they are implied to include those not of like mind. And this doesn’t even begin to delve into justified suspicion that the new governor will have a dedicated (and peremptory) ringtone on his cell phone for organized labor.

For a column that details some of the differences between the incoming governor and current Gov. Don Carcieri, Trainor told Bakst’s replacement, Ed Fitzpatrick, that “the point that [Carcieri] is missing is Linc’s ability to bring people and factions together.” Without giving any indication that he sees the contradiction, Fitzpatrick went on to reference Chafee’s threat that board members of the state Economic Development Corporation might be personally liable for money lent to 38 Studios and his suggestion that the company’s founder, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, had faked his famous bloody-sock injury. Threats and insults don’t tend to be unitive strategies.

Cynical political observers might suggest that Chafee should take a lesson from Politics 101 and host short, pointless meetings with his issue-by-issue opposition in order to deflate their claims of exclusion. The governor-elect’s problem goes deeper than that, though.

His doubters don’t want evidence that he has the patience to listen to the hum of their voices; they want evidence that he has, indeed, considered their points. He will be a proven independent only when they emerge from their meetings feeling as if he could accurately paraphrase their positions, and they will “come together” only when they trust that he is intellectually capable of independence, even though surrounded by left-wingers, labor leaders, and political insiders.

So, at every opportunity, Mr. Chafee should sit down across from people with whom he disagrees and ask his own political advisers to leave the room. He should then set free his cherished ideas and trust that the discussion will lead him back to them; otherwise, he may find that they were never plausible in the first place.

This assumes, of course, that Lincoln Chafee is able to frame political subject matter in this reasonable, rational fashion. If he is not, well then, that’s something the rest of us should know as soon as possible. •

(Photo credit: Jonathan Beller)

Next Tuesday, Lincoln Chafee will be inaugurated as Rhode Island’s 58th governor. What should he do when he takes office? To get some ideas, I asked five of the state’s smartest citizens what advice they would offer the new governor. Yesterday we heard from Tom Sgouros.

Today’s essay comes from Mary-Kim Arnold, executive director of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, the nonprofit state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The size of Rhode Island’s economy places us 46th in the nation. We have the fifth-highest rate of unemployment; we are 10th in health care rankings, second-highest in expenditures for public education. What do these numbers mean in terms of how much we love where we live?

Not as much as you might think, it turns out.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a national philanthropic organization focused on “informed and engaged communities,” undertook a three-year study to identify how and to what extent emotional factors kept residents attached to their communities, and what impact that connection had to the area’s economic growth and well-being.

The study, which involved interviews with nearly 43,000 individuals across 26 cities, found that strong community attachment was correlated with local GDP growth, which measures not only economic success, but also a community’s ability to grow and meet the needs of its population.

What mattered most?

Surprisingly, the most important factors to most residents were not economic. From city to city, the top three factors that people identified were:

1. the availability of social offerings – places to meet, arts and cultural opportunities and the sense that people care about each other;
2. a sense of openness – how welcoming the community is to different types of people, including families with young children, minorities, and talented college grads; and
3. aesthetics – the physical beauty of the community, including parks and green spaces.

Gov. Chafee, I know that you are taking office at a time when our state faces a range of serious and complicated issues that will require your vision, your leadership, and your unwavering commitment to the people of Rhode Island. As you face these challenges, I urge you to consider factors beyond the state’s rankings and beyond the immediate economic data.

Consider also the basic questions of what it means to live with each other in a free society: How do we make meaning in our lives? How do we provide opportunities to understand each other? How do we care for each other, how do we demonstrate that care? How welcoming are we to newcomers? How do we value what is beautiful around us? How do we make beauty, even in times of cynicism and uncertainty?

You have the opportunity to show us your vision for our state. Remind us that there is a common good. Show us what that common good looks like from where you stand.

Congratulations on your election, and thank you for your willingness to serve the state at this challenging moment. •

(Photo credit: Rhode Island Council for the Humanities)

Next Tuesday, Lincoln Chafee will be inaugurated as Rhode Island’s 58th governor. What should he do when he takes office? To get some ideas, I asked five of the state’s smartest citizens what advice they would offer the new governor.

Today’s essay comes from Tom Sgouros, author of “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Rhode Island” and a former Democratic candidate for treasurer.

In conversations with people about the ills facing our state, the litany of woes is long, and fairly familiar. People complain about property taxes, the car tax, pension woes, the state budget, and more. Central Falls gets a special shout-out these days (and how anyone thinks they’re going to be able to hire good teachers now is beyond me), but it wasn’t so long ago that West Warwick was considered the state’s basket case. Our new governor can ask 100 people what’s the matter, and for 90 of them, he’ll get the same answer.

But lurking under most of these issues is one big issue: the relationship between the state and the cities and towns. Our governments exist to provide a set of services we all need. The strange thing is how we think that having governments constantly at odds with each other is the most efficient way to deliver those services.

Take education, for example. The state sets requirements and standards, and even some curricula. It provides some of the money, too, though much less than it used to. But towns hire the teachers and run the schools. There is only one service here, provided by two different governments. So how can we expect the service to be provided efficiently if the governments are always skirmishing with each other about whose responsibility is what?

Most other services are shared in the same way: roads, public safety, public health, planning and much more are all provided partly by the state and partly by the city or town you live in, and for most of them there are very similar conflicts – which ones are the state roads, how many state requirements are on the police force or the water supply.

The state has all the power in the relationship, but it hasn’t always wielded it to our advantage. State tax cuts which benefited a small number of (wealthy) people have resulted in hikes in property taxes, which hurt a large number of the rest of us. But when you go talk to legislators, they always sound like the aggrieved party. I heard the chair of the Senate Finance Committee say last year that there was no evidence that increasing state aid reduces property taxes. But the reason there’s no such evidence is that no one has tried it. The state might claim state aid went up during the last decade, but the claim requires you to redefine the accounting to make it look that way. And over the past two years, even the pretense is gone, and state aid has plummeted.

It would be foolish to imagine that all the offense is on the state’s side. As we see in Central Falls, local governments are quite capable of making a big mess, too. But again, would the mayor have made the bad decisions he made without seeing the state as a separate party able to bail him out, as they’d bailed out the Central Falls school system almost two decades ago?

What we need in Rhode Island is an understanding that there is one set of services and must be just one system to deliver them. This doesn’t mean doing away with towns, but it does mean recognizing that cooperation, not conflict, is the best way forward. It also means that the forms of cooperation have to become part of the government, since a “system” that depends on the good will of this mayor or that governor isn’t a system at all.

This is a big challenge, but it’s the central one facing our governments. •

(Photo credit: Ephram Bromberg/Light Publications)