By Ted Nesi and Tim White

COVENTRY, R.I. (WPRI) – Elected officials in Coventry have taken an apparently unprecedented step by washing their hands of responsibility for one of their employee pension plans, saying taxpayers have no obligation to come up with enough money to stop it from running out of cash within 12 years.

All told, Coventry’s three local pensions plans – one for police, one for municipal employees, and one for non-teacher school personnel – have racked up a $121 million liability for promised benefits, with less than $23 million saved to pay the bill. In fact, just two years ago the newly elected Town Council voted to sweeten police officers’ pension benefits, adding roughly $9 million to the tab in one fell swoop.

Read the rest of this story »

Engage Rhode Island, the deep-pocketed advocacy group closely tied to Treasurer Gina Raimondo, released an unsigned three-page document [pdf] on Monday that makes the case for the legality of the 2011 pension law. Here’s the core of the argument:

If the Rhode Island Supreme Court affirms Judge Taft-Carter’s Decision, it will reverse its own precedent on the unmistakability doctrine, and create new constitutional law which will differ from federal court precedent and the precedent of the majority of state courts in this country. … If the judiciary can require a legislature to bind itself forever through one legislative act, which can never be revisited, the judiciary is thereby given too much power. Thus, it is important to hold from a separation of powers perspective that, unless the legislature’s intent to create contractual rights against the state is unmistakably clear, it should be free to amend its own legislation in the future.

Read the entire PDF here. For an alternative view, check out this from RWU Law’s Michael Yelnosky.

• Related: Mediation to continue in RI pension suit after judge gets update (Feb. 28)

​By Tim White

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Correctional officers at the state prison immediately begin collecting double-time-and-a-half pay when the governor declares an emergency due to a 2006 arbitration award, according to union contracts and a ruling obtained by Target 12.

Read the rest of this story »

​By Ted Nesi and Tim White

SCITUATE, R.I. (WPRI) – Police officers in Scituate are criticizing a plan crafted by town officials that would make officers pay more for less generous pensions in order to help close an $8 million shortfall that opened up over the last decade.

Read the rest of this story »

• Interactive: Town-by-town map of local pension liabilities in Rhode Island (Feb. 4)

​By Tim White

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – As it turns out, it was an offer Frank “Bobo” Marrapese could refuse.

Read the rest of this story »

Roger Williams University law professor Michael Yelnosky had an important op-ed in Sunday’s Projo about the state pension law, warning Rhode Islanders that they shouldn’t take the public confidence of the law’s supporters as a sign that it will be upheld by the courts.

Here’s Yelnosky:

A reader of these pages could be excused for concluding that the state will no doubt prevail in the lawsuits brought by the thousands of current and retired public employees affected by the 2011 Rhode Island Retirement Security Act. …

But these opinions gloss over some real legal issues. …

The “Contract Clause” of the Rhode Island Constitution (in the same language as the U.S. Constitution) prohibits the state from passing “any law impairing the obligation of contracts.” The retirees assert that the pension law does just that by reducing the annual pension benefits they earned during a career of state employment — benefits set forth in Rhode Island law. …

I am not predicting that the plaintiffs will win their cases. I write because the commentary on these pages does not take the plaintiffs’ arguments seriously. Some might wish it were not so, but judicial review of the pension reform law is the next step unless these cases are settled. If we are going to have an informed public debate about the desirability of settlement talks, a more balanced description of the legal landscape seems in order.

Yelnosky’s points reinforce others published here in the past – NEARI’s Robert Walsh made the union’s case at length when the suit was filed, and pension-law expert Amy Monahan of the University of Minnesota warned a year ago that this was a major legal gamble by Treasurer Raimondo and other Rhode Island leaders.

As Tim White has emphasized in his reporting, the key players here almost certainly will be the five justices of the Rhode Island Supreme Court: Suttell, Goldberg, Flaherty, Robinson and Indeglia. Are they willing to risk a “judicial backlash,” as Harvard Law’s Noah Feldman put it, by striking down a law backed by large majorities in the General Assembly, and in doing so place a major burden on strained state and local budgets?

Of course, as one smart legal observer reminded me recently, the justices also have the option of throwing out only part of the law and keeping the rest. The fiscal impacts of a mixed verdict will all depend on how the justices carve up the law’s provisions. Either way, taxpayers and their elected representatives should at least be contemplating what they’d do the day after the justices strike down the law.

• Related: Study: RI pension bill ‘a good approach’ – and it may be legal (Nov. 4, 2011)

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras got an early Christmas present on Thursday from Moody’s Investors Service.

In a research note, Moody’s analyst Tom Compton praised the tentative settlement on pensions and retiree health benefits that Taveras has negotiated with the city’s unions and retired workers. The police and fire unions, as well as the two department’s retirees, have all voted to approve the deal.

“The changes offer significant relief to the highly leveraged and fiscally stressed city,” Compton wrote. It will reduce the fixed costs – pensions, retiree health benefits and debt service – that made up about 22% of Providence’s operating-fund spending in 2011-12.

(more…)

Providence’s landmark pension settlement is nearing the homestretch.

The 428 active members of the Providence Fraternal Order of Police will vote Thursday from 2 to 7 p.m. by secret ballot on whether to approve the deal negotiated with Mayor Angel Taveras to shore up the capital city’s underfunded retirement system, union president Taft Manzotti told WPRI 12′s Tim White.

Manzotti said he has “no idea” how the vote will go, although the union provided information and held meetings to help explain the deal. “It all comes down to the perception of the city of Providence,” he told White. “Does this membership believe the city is going to honor their word? That’s what it all comes down to with us. We have tried to make sure everything is accurate and proper.”

Manzotti said he expects to know the outcome of the vote by 7:45 p.m. The other stakeholders in the pension deal – Local 1033, the firefighters union and the retirees – have already accepted it. Taveras said on “Newsmakers” last week he is hopeful the settlement will be approved.

The Providence pension deal has become a hot topic at the state level as Gov. Lincoln Chafee and Treasurer Gina Raimondo argue over whether they should follow the mayor’s lead and try to settle union lawsuits challenging the state pension law; Raimondo and Taveras are potential rivals for the 2014 Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

After the jump, two charts on the nuts-and-bolts of the settlement and the next steps.

(more…)

A new study will give ammunition to those who say local teachers unions wield significant power in Rhode Island.

The two organizations – the National Education Association Rhode Island and the smaller Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals – are the fifth-strongest teachers unions in the United States based on a range of measures, according to an analysis [pdf] by the Thomas P. Fordham Institute and Education Reform Now, the nonprofit wing of Democrats for Education Reform.

The four states ranked as having stronger teachers unions than Rhode Island were Hawaii, Oregon, Montana and Pennsylvania. Connecticut ranked 17th and Massachusetts ranked 21st.

The authors say the study “represents the most comprehensive analysis of American teacher unions’ strength ever conducted,” and it suggests the Rhode Island unions’ are more involved in politics and have more resources than most of their counterparts elsewhere in the country.

(more…)

Hours before firefighters planned to picket her fundraiser, Treasurer Gina Raimondo reminded them that she opposed efforts last year by Governor Chafee, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and others to pass legislation suspending pension cost-of-living adjustments in their contracts.

“I do think it’s important to point out I was a staunch advocate in support of protecting and respecting collectively bargained-for agreements for those firefighters, and I still stand by that,” Raimondo told WPRI 12′s Nicole Estaphan on Monday at the State House.

Raimondo also took the opportunity to defend “the long process” that led to the pension law, and suggested Chafee is going the wrong way by holding closed-door talks with union leaders to discuss a possible settlement to end their lawsuit against it.

“Before the General Assembly passed this historic legislation they had dozens of hours of hearings and give and take and a lot of back and forth and negotiation at the time that led to the final passage of the bill,” she said. “Having said that, at some point as part of this process if the courts asks the parties to sit down and mediate we will do that in good faith.”

“I don’t know if [lawmakers] have ever spent more time on any other piece of legislation,” Raimondo added. “They held a special session. They looked at every possible scenario. The labor leaders were present for every part of the discussion.”

• Related: Firefighters organizing pension protest at Raimondo fundraiser (Dec. 10)

• Update: Raimondo says she respects union pacts

Treasurer Gina Raimondo will have some uninvited guests at her fundraiser in Providence tonight.

Paul Valletta, president of the Cranston firefighters union, confirmed to WPRI 12′s Tim White that his members will be picketing outside a campaign fundraiser Raimondo is holding Monday night at Rick’s Roadhouse to coincide with the Patriots’ appearance on Monday Night Football.

“It’s just our way to say that we haven’t forgotten what the general treasurer did to many state workers, police officers, teachers and firefighters,” Valletta told White on Monday. “It hasn’t been forgotten that people’s lives have been changed negatively when they didn’t have to be.”

Valletta famously argued during last fall’s debate over the new pension law that Raimondo had “cooked the books” by getting the Retirement Board to change investment and actuarial forecasts in ways that worsened the pension fund’s finances. Raimondo said the new numbers were more accurate.

The R.I. State Association of Fire Fighters has asked all off-duty members to join the protest, writing in an email that it’s “very likely that she will be making a run for the governor’s seat next election.” Valletta said some police officers may show up, as well, but they don’t want to cause “a mess on the street.”

“One of the issues we are focusing on is the age issue: with the change to the pension you are going to have firefighters stay into their 60s and 70s to get a full pension,” he said.

Echoing an argument gaining steam of late, Valletta said Raimondo should have negotiated changes to the pension system at the bargaining table with organized labor rather than having state lawmakers approve the changes unilaterally.

​(photo: ProvidencesRestaurant.com)

Super-lawyer David Boies has been at the center of some of the biggest legal battles in recent American history, including ​Bush vs. Gore, U.S. vs. Microsoft and the fight about California’s Proposition 8 and gay marriage.

Now Treasurer Gina Raimondo has lured Boies to Rhode Island to join the legal team defending the state’s landmark pension overhaul; he’s even cut his fee from $1,250 an hour to just $50. The first major hearing before R.I. Superior Court Judge Sarah Taft-Carter is scheduled for Friday morning.

​Boies is chairman of the law firm Boies, Schiller and Flexner LLP. He sat down Thursday with WPRI.com to discuss the reason he took the case, how he views the legal arguments, and why he thinks liberal Democrats should support the pension law. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Let’s dive right in on the legal issues. Judge Taft-Carter says employees and retirees have an implied contract right to their promised pension benefits. You think she’s wrong.

Yes. I think there’s a difference between a statute and a contract. But obviously my view doesn’t control; I’m just an advocate for one particular party. What matters is what the courts ultimately decide. And so what we’ll be doing in the course of the proceeding is each side will have an opportunity to set forth their arguments for why this is or is not a contract.

Do you think it’s already too far gone at the Superior Court level because of Taft-Carter’s decision about the implied contract, and it will have to go to a higher court?

(more…)

The Providence Journal is set to lay off more than a dozen employees during the first week of November, according to the president of the newspaper’s largest union.

Providence Newspaper Guild president John Hill told WPRI.com he was informed late Wednesday by Journal executives that the paper had “a dismal October revenue experience” and they’ve decided the only option is to reduce headcount permanently.

“The advertising market is so uncertain,” Hill said Friday. “They do not have confidence in their ability to predict revenue at this point.”

Journal executives are still seeking $1.2 million in savings, which the Guild estimates will require the elimination of roughly 16 of its members’ jobs. The terms of its contract gives the publisher “complete discretion” over the size of the paper’s staff, he said.

(more…)

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The Providence Journal’s largest union says it may consider offering contract concessions such as temporary pay cuts in order to avoid layoffs if too few employees accept the voluntary buyout offer put forward last week.

In a letter sent Friday, the Providence Newspaper Guild asked Journal management for a chance to discuss other ways of saving money before the company moves forward with layoffs. Employees must volunteer to take the buyout by Monday and have been warned layoffs could follow if too few accept it.

Guild president John Hill acknowledged it would be new territory for his union to reopen a contract that was already ratified, and he emphasized that no offers can be made until he formally surveys his roughly 220 members to see what they would be willing to accept.

“We want to see if there’s something we can do,” Hill told WPRI.com. Journal management has indicated that it won’t be able to respond to the Guild with specifics until the first week of October, he said. The union would need to vote to approve any deal on concessions.

Hill described the mood in the newsroom as “tense and anxious” with a few days left before Monday afternoon’s deadline to volunteer to leave with a buyout. “The people who are most vulnerable [to layoffs] are some of our best – we’re going to build a future on these guys,” he said. “We’ll lose the seed corn if this goes through.”

(more…)

This sound familiar? Harold Meyerson writing for The Washington Post:

At stake in the conflict is not only the future of education reform but also the role of unions within the party and, by extension, the nation. Emanuel’s clear desire to reduce the teachers union’s role in the city’s schools is hardly his alone. It’s shared by other Democratic mayors such as Los Angeles’s Antonio Villaraigosa. Still other heavily Democratic cities, such as San Jose, Calif., have reduced their employees’ pension benefits. What’s brewing is a battle between Democratic Party management (chiefly mayors, backed by a significant portion of the public) and Democratic Party labor, also backed by a significant portion of the public. If there’s a win-win scenario out there, the party and its publics would do well to find it.

I’d add a few local mayors to Meyerson’s mix of Democrats those who clash with their teachers unions – Providence’s Angel Taveras, who’s spoken with Emanuel in recent months about their similar fiscal problems, as well as Cumberland’s Dan McKee. And it’s not limited to mayors – there’s also Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, a Carcieri holdover unpopular with the unions whose portfolio includes the troubled Central Falls schools that drew President Obama’s attention.

Nor is it limited to education. Democratic Treasurer Gina Raimondo, backed by Chafee and General Assembly Democrats, pushed through sweeping pension changes opposed by labor. Her predecessor, Democrat Frank Caprio, saw public-sector unions desert him and back Chafee in 2010. And union officials vented their frustration last year when Democrats Gordon Fox and Teresa Paiva Weed blocked tax increases.

Donna Perry and Sam Howard have their own thoughts on this divide.

Working Families’ anti-Fogarty mailer

Outside groups continue to ramp up their spending with just days to go before next Tuesday’s primary elections for the General Assembly and other offices.

The Rhode Island AFL-CIO and the state’s two teachers unions – the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers – disclosed Thursday that they spent $18,000 this week under the banner of the “Working Families Coalition” in a push to swing more than a dozen elections around the state.

NEARI contributed $10,000, the AFT contributed $5,000 and the AFL-CIO contributed $3,000. The entire $18,000 was spent with All the Answers Inc., a Warwick-based firm whose president is Paul Sasso.

The unions said they’re spending money to support the following candidates: Ray Hull, Spencer Dickinson, Lauri Archambault, Rene Menard, Mike Morin, Steve Casey, William O’Brien, Joseph Faria, William San Bento, Charles Tsonos, Gregg Amore, John Hanley, Gayle Goldin, Paul Jabour, Adam Satchell, Lewis Pryeor, Nicole Acciardo, Michael McCaffrey, David Gorman, Terrence Mercer, Ray Spooner, Alan Tenreiro, Michael Araujo, Nicole Nordquist, Sandra Cano and Jay Charbonneau.

They said they’re also spending money to defeat a small group of legislative incumbents and challengers: Kathleen Fogarty, Mia Ackerman, Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, Jon Brien, Michael Pinga, Marc Cote and Lou Raptakis.

• Related: Colo. gay-marriage backer Gill, Bloomberg spend on GA races (Sept. 5)

(photo: @JonPincince, via Twitter)

R.I. Central Labor Union newspaper, 1893

In the modern age, many American holidays’ roots have been largely forgotten, becoming more like Britain’s bank holidays than specific celebrations. Labor Day is one of those, which is too bad, since it has a rich local history of its own.

Scott Molloy, a professor at the University of Rhode Island’s Schmidt Labor Research Center, retold the story in a 1993 issue of Old Rhode Island magazine:

In the midst of the financial panic of 1893, Rhode Island workers secured a long-sought ambition – the establishment of the first Monday in September as a legal holiday.

The state’s horny-fisted sons and daughters of toil had marched, petitioned, and agitated for over a decade. Rhode Island workers witnessed New York and Oregon pass holiday legislation in 1887, and by the spring of 1893 most other states had followed suit. The General Assembly, under the prodding of elected representatives from various mill towns, finally joined the bandwagon, and Governor Russell Brown signed the authorization.

Read the rest here. I’ll be back tomorrow – Happy Labor Day!

(image credit: Quahog.org)

One of the noteworthy statistics in the exit polls from Tuesday’s recall election in Wisconsin was this one, flagged by The Fix’s Aaron Blake: 17% of voters who backed Republican Gov. Scott Walker say they also support President Obama for reelection this fall. Blake called the number “stunning.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned by covering state and federal politics concurrently, though, it’s that plenty of voters’ views on optimal public policy don’t lead to unwavering support for either party as a national-eye-view might suggest. Rhode Island voters haven’t backed a Republican for president since 1984 – and they haven’t backed a Democrat for governor since 1992.

Meanwhile, Governor Chafee and Rhode Island are being used to put Walker’s victory in context. Here’s Molly Ball reporting for The Atlantic:

 It’s not only Republican governors, Walker noted, who are pushing to reform the pension, benefit and pay privileges enjoyed by public workers. He pointed to the efforts of Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, Lincoln Chafee (a liberal independent) in Rhode Island, Andrew Cuomo in New York and Jerry Brown in California, all of whom have approached the issue of public sector pension reform, if in less inflammatory manner.

And here’s The Wall Street Journal:

Labor fights are raging in other states. In Ohio, Republican Gov. John Kasich signed a law removing collective-bargaining rights for public employees until a union-driven referendum repealed it last November.

In Rhode Island, Gov. Lincoln Chafee, an independent, proposed bills that would allow a few financially troubled cities to reduce disability pensions for police and firefighters.

In Michigan, tea-party Republicans who pushed—so far, unsuccessfully—for right-to-work legislation, said a Walker victory could reinvigorate their cause. …

MSNBC (perhaps after reading the WSJ) also lumped together Ohio, Rhode Island and Michigan this afternoon in a report on states where labor wars are raging. Forbes’ Josh Barro argued back in March these strange bedfellows prove “necessity has trumped political coalitions,” while local union activists have described Chafee’s municipal bills as “Wisconsin heavy.”

Chafee and Walker have very different styles, though – a Wisconsin paper suggested voters recall Walker for someone like Chafee, and last year Chafee cautioned Walker against taking on Wisconsin’s unions: “You don’t want a war you can’t win.” Walker, for his part, won more than half the vote in Wisconsin last night, while Chafee won office in 2010 with barely a third.

An earlier version of this story said Rhode Island last elected a Democratic governor in 1994; that was the final full year in office for the state’s last Democratic governor, Bruce Sundlun.

Iannazzi, right, with Taveras

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – The leader of Providence’s largest union leveled his toughest criticism yet at the city’s police and fire retirees this week, saying their alleged intransigence killed a potential deal with Mayor Angel Taveras to stabilize the troubled pension system and suggesting they do not understand the gravity of the situation.

“Some individuals, acting in a manner that I characterize as irresponsible, have suggested that no changes to the retirement system can occur and that we stand back and let the inevitable (city insolvency) occur,” Donald Iannazzi, Local 1033′s business manager, wrote Tuesday in a letter to his members. “Local 1033 has never acted irresponsibly and will not start today.”

Iannazzi confirmed the letter’s authenticity after WPRI.com obtained a copy. It says Local 1033′s negotiating team “agreed in principal to a tentative agreement” that would have suspended cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for retirees receiving less than $40,000 in exchange for no changes to medical benefits. The union’s agreement was contingent on police and fire retirees signing on, he said.

“Response from too many retirees receiving 5% and 6% compounded COLAs was that they would rather fight to the end, even if the end caused a failure in the retirement system and in the city,” Iannazzi said.

Joseph Penza Jr., the attorney representing the Providence Retired Police and Firefighters Association in negotiations with the city, disputed Iannazzi. “I have no idea where he got that information from, absolutely none,” Penza told WPRI.com. “I don’t know who he’s quoting. We’ve been negotiating with the city. … That mantra, if you will, does not come from us.”

(more…)

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras sent a letter March 28 asking the city’s retirees to voluntarily suspend their cost-of-living adjustments, and about two dozen have agreed so far. (Alisha Pina has more details.) The missive went out as the city continues negotiations with Local 1033, police and fire retirees.

If you want to read the documents Taveras sent, you can download them as PDFs from WPRI.com: the three-page letter, the legal release form, and the frequently asked questions. In the letter, Taveras says the city “runs the risk of running out of cash by the end of June and faces a $50 million shortfall in July.”

Another section of Taveras’s letter might be interesting to taxpayers as well as retirees:

We have a $613 million annual budget. Of that, $308.6 million is allocated to our public schools and by state law we are prohibited from cutting education funding. That leaves $305 million. We also need to make $69 million in debt payments. That leaves $235 million. Our annual required payment (ARC) to the pension system is $58.9 million. That leaves $176.6 million. Retiree medical costs amount to $38 million.

In all, we have $138.6 million to run the city. That includes payroll, public safety, road repairs, parks and recreation, contributions and support for our community centers and libraries and trash pickup, among other things. To date, we have spent approximately $92.4 million, leaving us with $46.2 million in the bank to get us to the next fiscal year. Our budget deficit is 48 percent of our remaining cash. We cannot rely solely on cutting spending to balance our budget. …

To use the language of the federal budget, only $138.6 million of the city’s $613 million budget is discretionary spending; the rest – 77% of the budget – is mandatory spending. The city will actually spend more this year on debt and retirees ($165.9 million) than it will on all non-school city services ($138.6 million).

Politically, Taveras’s challenge is made even greater because the discretionary spending category includes most of the services residents actually notice (police, parks, libraries, potholes, snow plowing). So the spending he has direct control over is also the spending people are most likely to complain about seeing cut.

By Ted Nesi and Tim White

BARRINGTON, R.I. (WPRI) – Former state Sen. Charles Levesque joined Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio and state Sen. Frank Ciccone at the Barrington police station the night Ruggerio was arrested.

It’s unclear why Levesque was at the station that night. Reached by phone at his Middletown law office on Thursday afternoon, Levesque cut off a reporter’s initial question by saying: “It’s over.”

Pressed on whether he gave Ruggerio or Ciccone a ride home that night, Levesque told WPRI.com: “You know what? It’s over. Have a good day.” Then he hung up.

Ruggerio told officers he had just one drink prior to his arrest – described as “1 Hard Liquor – 6 ounces with ice” – and he said the only food he’d eaten that day was a banana for breakfast at 10:30 a.m.

The justice of the peace who arraigned Ruggerio was yet another one-time lawmaker: former state Rep. Fausto Anguilla, D-Bristol, who retired in 2006. But Anguilla said on Thursday night his service in the General Assembly had nothing to do with Barrington Police calling him to the station last week.

Read the rest of this story »

(photo: General Assembly)

Nee, left, Raimondo and Chafee

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Treasurer Gina Raimondo is urging lawmakers to reject a little-noticed proposal by Governor Chafee to shave $2.6 million off the amount taxpayers must put into the pension fund next year.

The governor’s proposed 2012-13 budget would scrap a seven-year-old law mandating that if the state’s required pension contribution rate falls from one year to the next, taxpayers must put 20% of the reduction into the pension fund anyway.

Raimondo said her staff examined the requirement while crafting last year’s pension overhaul. ”After thoughtful analysis, Treasury concluded that the policy should remain in effect and therefore did not recommend a change to this statute,” she wrote in a letter to House Finance Committee Chairman Helio Melo obtained by WPRI.com.

Rhode Island AFL-CIO President George Nee praised Raimondo’s position. “The labor movement appreciates the treasurer weighing in on the side of our members,” he said in an email. “The present law is sound fiscal policy and should remain unchanged.”

(more…)

The capital city’s police union is rallying its members in opposition to the far-reaching overhaul of municipal budgeting rules proposed last week by Governor Chafee with the support of Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and other local leaders.

The bill “puts us at even greater jeopardy of losing our hard fought benefits,” Taft Manzotti, president of the Providence Fraternal Order of Police, wrote his members Thursday. “While this proposal flies in the face of well established principles of contract law, it is being cheered on by mayors and municipal leaders across the state.”

“City and town leaders are clearly not backing down in their unscrupulous effort to rob us of what is rightfully ours, and we cannot remain silent while they do so,” Manzotti said.

The package of seven bills unveiled by Chafee last week proposes a host of changes such as relaxing collective bargaining rules and suspending expired police and fire contracts; capping pension benefits and making some tax-free accidental disability pensions less generous; and reducing health insurance benefits.

Manzotti asked his members to call their representatives and senators “and tell them to vote ‘NO’ to Governor Chafee’s package of bills. We must make sure that the voices of Providence FOP #3 are heard as loudly and as clearly as those officials that support this legislation. The future welfare of this Membership depends on it.”

Tim White contributed to this report.

• Related: Chafee channels Carcieri as lawmakers face cuts fallout again (March 16)

Josh Barro of Forbes argues Chafee’s embrace of far-reaching changes to how cash-strapped municipal governments operate is part of a larger trend:

Chafee is coming out for mandate reform for the same reason that mayors like Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel and Los Angeles’s Antonio Villaraigosa are aggressively pushing pension reform. A majority of the typical local government budget consists of compensation costs. States and localities face significant political and economic barriers to collecting new revenue. When budgets get squeezed, the practical choice is often between reining in compensation costs per employee or cutting back on service delivery.

For politicians who care about providing high-quality government services, public employee compensation reforms have become the best available option.

Bob Plain of Rhode Island’s Future thinks I missed a crucial distinction between Chafee’s ideas and Carcieri’s:

[T]he big difference is Chafee’s bottom-up approach. Carcieri’s proposal was a blanket exemption to every municipality and Chafee’s is need-based. RI Future has held the former governor’s feet to the fire for cutting so much money from cities and towns that had so little. So did Chafee earlier this week.

Here’s hoping that Chafee’s proposal sparks a big debate in the General Assembly about the disparity between the haves and have-not communities in Rhode Island as this is arguably the biggest affliction affecting the entire state.

Monique Chartier of Anchor Rising thinks it’s foolish that some of the savings would go into pension funds:

Many cities and towns do not have the revenue to properly fund their pension plans. Some cities and towns do not have the revenue to maintain day to day operations, much less try to make up underfunded and very generous pensions. Accordingly, how could they have the money to reinvest, exclusively or otherwise, into their pension systems?

The Projo reports labor leaders are not happy:

Governor Chafee’s proposal to let financially distressed cities and towns make significant changes to union contracts represents a “fundamental assault” on the labor movement’s “core values,” according to George H. Nee, president of the state AFL-CIO. …

[James Parisi, lobbyist for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals] said giving certain cities and towns the ability to freeze annual salary increases for teachers and change medical benefits were particularly offensive, considering local chapters have, over the years, made concessions in their contract negotiations. …

Paul L. Valletta Jr., lobbyist for the State Association of Fire Fighters, said the proposal essentially allows executives of financially distressed cities and towns to “rip up” collectively-bargained union contracts.

“I actually thought this governor thought more of working men and women of this state,” he said. “This opens up everything. There are no protections anymore.”

And in case you missed it earlier this morning, my take is that Chafee sounds a lot like Carcieri:

Chafee’s pitch on Thursday sounded much like his predecessor’s in December 2009. ”I urge the General Assembly to pass the municipal tools articles immediately upon returning to session,” Carcieri said. “There is no need to debate them again this year. Pass them and free the cities and towns to manage their own budgets.”

Few cuts in last year’s state budget have gotten more attention than the $24 million reduction in funding for programs that assist developmentally disabled Rhode Islanders.

The latest salvo is the mailer at right from the Have a Heart Coalition, which attacks House Speaker Gordon Fox, House Majority Leader Nick Mattiello and two of the men tipped as potential Fox successors – Helio Melo and J. Patrick O’Neill – for having “trampled on the dignity” of the disabled.

The mailing does not say who funded it, but the address given for the Have a Heart Coalition is that of the United Nurses & Allied Professionals union on Branch Avenue in Providence. Jim Parisi of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals union and Jeanne Jose of UNAP are the contact people on the coalition’s website.

The Have a Heart Coalition has not registered as a lobbying organization with the secretary of state’s office, according to its online directory.

Update: Looks like that’s not the only mailer from the Have a Heart Coalition floating around. Here’s another one passed along by a reader:

What’s ironic is Chafee’s original 2011-12 budget proposal didn’t even call for those cuts, as he reminded me in an interview last year. But he did sign the revised budget lawmakers crafted that included them.

The Detroit News reports:

General Motors has the largest pension obligation of any company in the United States, and the automaker had been hinting for months that it needed to do something to reduce the risk that liability posed to its financial strength. …

GM, too, eliminated those pensions for salaried employees hired after Jan. 1, 2001. Those people — who make up about 30 percent of GM’s U.S. salaried workforce — already have defined-contribution, or 401(k) plans, instead.

Starting Oct. 1, the approximately 19,000 U.S. salaried employees hired before 2001 will be moved to that plan as well. However, they will retain the traditional pension benefits they earned up to that date.

GM is also offering retirees the option of taking those benefits as a one-time lump-sum payment when they leave the company.

As a reader pointed out to me in passing this item along, GM’s United Auto Workers union took a major ownership stake in the automaker during its bankruptcy. (Technically, the owner is a UAW retiree health trust.) That makes the corporate politics of GM’s decisions all the more interesting.

A sharp-eyed Providence worker who’s unsympathetic to the Taveras administration spotted this passage in the city’s brief to the Rhode Island Supreme Court in the Medicare case, and asked us to look into it (emphasis mine):

The entry of an injunction has the immediate and deleterious effect of denying to the City approximately $800,000 in desperately needed savings that would have otherwise been realized for the financial year ending June 30, 2012.

If the trial and any appeal of this matter are not finally and conclusively adjudicated in the City’s favor by June 30, 2012 the City will lose all $6 million of the projected savings for the financial year ending June 30, 2013 and will have no choice but to seek relief under Chapter 9 of the Title 11 of the United State Bankruptcy Code.

If the city can only save $800,000, the worker asked, why has Mayor Taveras repeatedly blamed the Medicare ruling for causing $6 million of the city’s $22.5 million projected deficit for this fiscal year, which ends June 30?

The answer mainly has to do with different time horizons.

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Rhode Island’s public-sector unions are expected to try and defeat some of the dozens of Democrats who voted for last year’s pension law in the September primary. But State Rep. Jon Brien, one of the most conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, has filed a bill he hopes will help protect his colleagues.

Brien’s legislation would allow independent voters who join a party solely in order to cast a primary ballot to leave the party right after they vote. Right now, they stay listed as a member of the party whose primary they voted in for 90 days after the election.

“They don’t want to be a part of a party,” Brien, D-Woonsocket, told WPRI.com. “When you’re knocking on doors, people are skittish. The thing that I hear the most out there is, ‘I don’t like to show my hand.’ No one wants to show who they belong to. … It’s really creating open primaries.”

“I can go out there and say to all my unaffiliated voters, ‘You’ve got to come vote for me in the primary, and as soon as you disaffiliate, you’re done,’” Brien said. “That takes away the edge that the unions have had, where they’ve beaten a David Caprio or a Doug Gablinske or a Mary Shallcross Smith as a punishment for votes.”

The bill – which was drafted incorrectly [pdf] and will be replaced by a “Sub A” – has a hearing Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee. Brien said he’s discussed it with Speaker Gordon Fox, “and he thought it was a very worthy idea.” (A spokesman for Fox was not immediately available.) Other bill sponsors include Reps. Michael Marcello, Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and Donald Lally.

Update: Larry Berman, a spokesman for Fox, said it’s possible the speaker will back Brien’s legislation.

“Speaker Fox shares Representative Brien’s belief we should encourage people to actively participate in all aspects of government, particularly voting,” Berman told WPRI.com. “If this bill makes people more likely to vote in the primary then that is a positive step in increasing citizen participation. The speaker will consider all testimony submitted at the committee hearing and make a determination on how to proceed.”

From Smith Hill to Providence and Pawtucket, government lawyers have been batting zero in their efforts to convince Rhode Island judges to uphold changes to public-sector workers’ retirement benefits.

That’s why the four state leaders who pushed through the new pension law should start formal negotiations with union leaders on an alternative overhaul of the system before they lose in court, according to Bob Walsh of the National Education Association Rhode Island.

“The legislative victory that the folks who supported changes in the pension system achieved is going to be short-lived – because it was illegal,” Walsh told WPRI.com on Tuesday. He suggested state leaders should appoint a neutral mediator such as former R.I. Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams to start talks between the two sides.

The unions haven’t filed an injunction to block the new law from taking effect because it won’t impact active workers until July 1 or retirees until Jan. 1, when they miss their first cost-of-living adjustment, Walsh said. Superior Court Judge Sarah Taft-Carter already gave the unions a first-round victory last fall in an existing suit challenging earlier pension cutbacks.

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