Rhode Island Policy Reporter

RIPR looks at state and federal policy issues that affect life here in the Ocean State. Each report focuses on particular policy areas of interest. Future issues will examine controversial aspects of environmental policy, health care, property tax reform, and education spending. The intention is to look at action rather than talk. We aspire to be a news source that never attends news conferences, where little of substance is ever said.

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  • Oct 04 - RIPTA and DOT, who's really in crisis?
  • Aug 04 - MTBE and well pollution, Mathematical problems with property taxes
  • May 04 - A look at food-safety issues: mad cows, genetic engineering, disappearing farmland.
  • Mar 04 - FY05 RI State Budget Critique.
  • Feb 04 - A close look at the Blue Cross of RI annual statement.
  • Oct 03 - Taxing matters, a historical overview of tax burdens in Rhode Island
  • Oct 03 Appendix - Methodology notes and sources for October issue
  • Apr 03 - FY04 RI State Budget critique
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Archive

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Thu, 28 Oct 2004

A follow-up to the DOT remarks

A friend writes:

What about the matching Fed $???? Use it or lose it - right?
That's the DOT line, which presumes we can only borrow to match it. But we're the only state that routinely borrows to match it. Other states think that's a stupid idea, but that's what we do. (Even FHWA, the federal highway guys, think it's a stupid idea, which they told me in 1998. Even Capaldi himself told me it's stupid idea, but that was in 1998, before he was head of the department.)

The money is question is $30 million. We could have three times that much by restoring the income tax to the level of the bad old days of 1996. Did you know you got a 10% tax cut between 1997 and 2002? Most people didn't even notice. We ought to spend that money to get the federal funds, but we ought to do it by appropriating it and spending it, instead of bonding and eventually spending twice as much. What we do now is only digging us into a hole, just the same way my sister did with credit cards a few years ago. The reason our budget is in disarray is that we had competing tax giveaways in the 1990's, as both Almond and the legislature competed to see who could give away most. They had a golden chance then to put issues like this to rights, and they blew it.

14:56 - 28 Oct 2004 [/m0410] link