Progressive News, Opinion, and Analysis
If you can’t be at all the action for Netroots Nation 2012 in Providence later this week, you can at least follow along on Twitter. We’ve embedded a widget below that will pick up anyone using the official Netroots hashtag for this year’s conference: #NN12
Progressives had mixed reactions to the budget bill passed by the House Judiciary Committee late Thursday night, expressing disappointment with the lack of focus on the revenue side of the ledger. While there are few new cuts in this year’s spending proposal, and a few restorations, it didn’t include tax-the-rich revenue enhancers that organized labor and community activists lobbied for all session long.
“If this budget is passed as is, the wealthiest Rhode Islanders will skate by again while lower and middle-income Rhode Islanders get stuck with the bill,” said George Nee, president of the AFL-CIO who took an active role with Working RI, a group that led the charge for taxing the rich.
While legislative leadership and the local media widely predicted income tax equity reform wouldn’t pass this year, the fight isn’t over yet. Progressive lawmakers are expected to offer an income tax amendment to the budget bill when it hits the House floor next week. Rep. Maria Cimini, a progressive Democrat from the Elmhust area of Providence, led the charge in the House this year, could be the one to offer the amendment. She’s a rising star to the liberal left and an increasing thorn-in-the-side of the more moderate House leadership.
Her bill would have raised the income tax rate on those who make more than $250,000 from 5.99 percent to 9.99 percent, what the rate was before former Gov. Don Carcieri cut taxes to the rich. It also included a job creator incentive that would have lowered the proposed increase by 1 percent for every 1 percent the state’ unemployment rate dropped.
But Rep. Larry Valencia, a progressive Democrat from Richmond, also could offer the amendment. He sponsored a similar bill for the second consecutive year that doesn’t include the job creator incentive, which he said would make the budget more volatile.
“You can tell by the kinds of bills I’ve introduced that I would have preferred some changes to a more progressive tax code,” Valencia said, right after voting for the bill Thursday night. While he was hoping for income tax reform, he said he was happy it included some new sales taxes and glad it didn’t increase the meals and hotel tax – which would have hurt the the local tourism economy, one of the state’s strongest sectors.
Rep. Scott Guthrie, a populist Democrat from Coventry, has sponsored several income tax reform bills during the past two sessions also could offer an amendment.
House leadership has communicated to progressive legislators that it doesn’t want an amendment to come up on the floor. Income tax reform is expected to be used as a campaign issue this summer and fall, as voters seem to support it more than politicians. A Flemming Associates poll showed that 68 percent of Rhode Islanders support a more progressive income tax code, and many conservative legislators don’t want to be put on the record as supporting tax breaks for the wealthy.
Now that the House Finance Committee has released its proposed budget, it’s worth noting that most of Governor Chafee’s municipal relief package is not contained in the document. Readers familiar with my opinions will know what I think of that; so I wanted to use that fact to highlight another set of facts: that things at the municipal level, and particularly the school level, are crying out for change.
When I testified at the State House on the Governor’s proposal I pointed out how school committee attorneys use the current broken system of laws governing everything from contract negotiations to lay-offs to enrich themselves : to the detriment of teachers, students, and citizens. For example, between August 2008 and early 2011, the firm of Little, Mederios, Kinder, Bulman, & Whitney, PC, was paid $1,363,989.96 for their legal advice to the school committee in East Providence. This extraordinary amount of money was transferred from the public to private hands during (some would say caused) the worst labor strife the city has seen in years.
Why is this relevant now? Because it keeps on happening and no one in the main stream media seems to want to dig into the practice of how certain (not all) law firms bilk tax payers at the municipal level. For example, the same firm listed above was recently hired to represent the School Committee in South Kingston. According to an information request answered John Ritchotte, Chief Financial Officer of the South Kingstown School Department, since July 10, 2010, LMKBW has been paid $226,364.34 in legal expenses. The school committee has spent a total of $266,206.27 in legal expenses over that same period. The main lawyer from the firm assigned to South Kingston is named Sarah Rapport.
What has the town’s $226,364.34 paid to Sarah Rapport and LMKBW bought them? Chaos. Early this spring, after the terminations of three teachers, a series of protests erupted at school committee meetings. Local media like the South County Independent and The Narragansett Times have done a great job covering the discord, but state wide media has ignore the strife. It doesn’t seem to fit the story arc put forward by RIDE of collaboration and cooperation.
But that’s another story. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s the point – maybe the whole point of this is to show that what is really happening at the municipal level and the school committee level has multiple perspectives. Too often we only get one side of the story shared by the media, especially the dominant media sources in this state. When you drill down and really start to look at root causes of problems at the local level and say “hey wait a minute…..” and see a high powered Providence law firm travelling from town to town, earing millions of dollars by creating discord and disharmony maybe then the story has to change a little bit. Maybe the problem isn’t the all-powerful unions. Maybe the problem isn’t overpaid public sector workers. Maybe there is a different problem we need to address.
