What's this? A Book!
Or buy here: Light Publications, Powell's, or Bn, Amazon A look at the lousy situation Rhode Island is in, how we got here, and how we might be able to get out. Featuring
Now at bookstores near you, or buy it with the button above ($14, or $18 with shipping and sales tax). Contact information below if you'd like to schedule a book-related event, like a possibly entertaining talk on the book's subjects, featuring the famous mystery graph. Join the RIPR Mailing List! For a weekly column and (a few) other items of interest, click here or send an email to ripr-list-subscribe@whatcheer.net. RIPR is a (paper) newsletter and a weekly column appearing in ten of Rhode Island's finer newspapers. The goal is to look at local, state and federal policy issues that affect life here in the Ocean State, concentrating on action, not intentions or talk. If you'd like to help, please contribute an item, suggest an issue topic, or buy a subscription. If you can, buy two or three (subscribe here). Search this siteAvailable Back Issues:
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Contact:For those of you who can read english and understand it, the following is an email address you are welcome to use. If you are a web bot, we hope you can't understand it, and that's the point of writing it this way. editor at whatcheer dot net Archive:
AboutThe Rhode Island Policy Reporter is an independent news source that specializes in the technical issues of public policy that matter so much to all our lives, but that also tend not to be reported very well or even at all. The publication is owned and operated by Tom Sgouros, who has written all the text you'll find on this site, except for the articles with actual bylines. Responsibility: Tom Sgouros
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Tue, 19 Dec 2006
... finally concludes with a conviction. Didn't you hear about it? Wonder why. Read here.
09:30 - 19 Dec 2006 [/y6/de]
Mon, 18 Dec 2006
Because the issues aren't strictly related to RIPR's mission, but more related to the accident of where the editor makes his home, a sub-blog has been established here to deal with matters that pertain to the town of North Kingstown, and the town government there. For example, the Budget Advisory Group report of last year is there. See here.
00:56 - 18 Dec 2006 [/y6/de]
Tue, 12 Dec 2006
New issue out:
- Who's responsible for the state of the state budget?
- Why is being so irresponsible about the budget thought to be good politics?
- Quonset rears its ugly head again.
- We are adopting Massachusetts's tax code. Shouldn't we know more about what's going on there? (See below.)
Wouldn't now be a good time to subscribe?
09:02 - 12 Dec 2006 [/y6/de]
Mon, 11 Dec 2006
Paul Krugman's column of last Friday listed a few people who were, of all things, right about the War in Iraq in 2002. Along with the few hundred thousand of us who were in the streets of New York and DC. It wasn't that hard to make what turned out to be the right decision.
00:00 - 11 Dec 2006 [/y6/de]
Fri, 08 Dec 2006
Story here. The funny part about the plaudits awarded Director Capaldi upon his departure is that DOT is a fiscal nightmare, and has dragged the rest of the state budget down with it. DOT excesses have put us so far into hock it will be years before we get out. But the article is all about his far-seeing innovations that allowed us to get even further in debt under his watch. But the cleanup will happen when Mr. Capaldi is on the beach in Florida, sipping whatever they sip down there.
But the funniest part yet about all this is that the dimensions of the DOT disaster were first described to me by none other than James Capaldi, in a meeting in his office in 1998. Since then, of course, he's done precisely nothing to right the excesses he described to me then, and has only contributed to making them much much worse.
There's more in the current issue of the Reporter. Why not subscribe?
22:48 - 08 Dec 2006 [/y6/de]
A Projo story about the possible consequences of the state government's deficit. Dire, yes. A surprise? Not for anyone who was involved in writing the budget last spring. You were looking for honesty in the budget? You cast your vote based on the charade of the budget? Oh, dear, I'm so sorry to hear it.
22:48 - 08 Dec 2006 [/y6/de]
Thu, 07 Dec 2006
Where is this from?
[C]ities and towns are facing a long-term financial crunch caused by increasingly restricted and unpredictable local aid levels, constraints on ways to raise local revenue, and specific costs that are growing at rates far higher than the growth in municipal revenues.Municipal managers and elected officials across the state---regardless of whether they live in cities, towns, resort communities and rural hamlets---understand that municipal government is nearing a crisis point. Citizens are feeling increasingly sour toward local government because their family's property tax bill has increased dramatically, they are now paying fees for many services that used to be covered by general revenue, and, still, core local government services are being cut.
Sound familiar? It sounds like any number of recent reports about Rhode Island, but this is about Massachusetts, and is quoted from Local Communities at Risk: Revisiting the Fiscal Partnership between the Commonwealth and Cities and Towns, a 2005 report from the Municipal Finance Task Force, a group convened by the Metro Area Planning Council, the umbrella planning authority for greater Boston. The task force was chaired by John Hamill, the President of Sovereign Bank New England, so the report is occasionally called the "Hamill Report."
There's more about this in the upcoming issue of RIPR, out tomorrow. Wouldn't now be a fine time to subscribe?
11:37 - 07 Dec 2006 [/y6/de]
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