December 8, 2012 – RI Future

December 8, 2012December 10, 2012

With Legislature, You Get What You Pay For

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So in the 2011-2012 General Assembly class, roughly 1 in 4 legislators were lawyers. Now, that’s a considerable over-representation. Thus it’s not surprising to me that the legislature typically starts its session about the time court gets out.

Lawyers are also adept at writing laws, typically in legalese (despite there being more efficient and understandable ways to write legally binding documents in plain English). Any legislator or citizen that wishes to pass a bill must likewise be able to write in language understandable to lawyers, but much more difficult to parse for the average person.

This over-representation of the legal profession (and other professions) has led some to point out that our legislature is vastly different from the people it represents. This is a national phenomenon, as RIPR’s Ian Donnis pointed out in October. Mr. Donnis limited his discussion to Rhode Island’s federal officers, but our farm team, state government, is also vastly different from the people it represents. So the question is, how do you create a legislature more representative of the people of Rhode Island?

Moderate Party Chair Ken Block has a “solution”: shorten the legislature’s amount of time in office to three months a year. That idea might appeal to the small-government types Mr. Block sort-of represents, but it’s ultimately irrelevant to the question above. Whether it’s one day or twelve months without holidays or weekends, how often the legislature meets is not going to.

We have to make Rhode Island’s legislature more representative of its people.

Yet, there remains little incentive to serve. Beyond the amount of abuse you’re going to take (we can argue whether that abuse is warranted or not), the legislature is a demanding job for little pay. Your constituents need your assistance at all hours, regardless of whether you have cows to milk or legal documents to file. You are reasonably likely to spend the period from June to November running for office; though a number are fortunate enough that Rhode Islander apathy and Democratic inertia combine to allow them to run unopposed or avoid either a primary or general election.

A problem small-government types like Mr. Block run up against is that we consider that legislative work is “public service.” So is fire-fighting, police work, or any of the other various services that governments provide. Yet all of those workers are compensated. There has been so much antagonism towards compensation for RI legislators that 30 lawmakers refused their mandated raise. While far too many of us struggle to make ends meet, these lawmakers are literally turning down money.

Recognizing that there is a disconnect between the constituent and their representative, that the latter is in a privileged position, hurts no one. But attempting to pass off that the solution to this issue is halving the number of months the legislature serves is disingenuous at best and intentionally misleading at worst.

Few working people have both the time to take off or the money to spend to mount an effective campaign against incumbents. Among those that can, even fewer are likely to find employers who are willing to let them leave work early, or take a break to field constituent calls. Is it any wonder why such a system favors the wealthy, the different, the unrepresentative would-be representative?

We need to reform our campaign finance laws, and we need a wage for our lawmakers that would allow them to take care of themselves and their families while being able to give their full undivided attention to the needs of their constituents and their state. Until then, we will have to rely on those extraordinary individuals that heed these words from Rep. Teresa Tanzi’s keynote speech to Netroots Nation 2012:

You need to join me. Take the next step, run for office. Yes, you. The one with the family, the job, the crushing load of schoolwork, the fuller than full plate. YOU! Anything less than full participation will not be enough.

Now, can you hear I’m talking to you? I need you standing beside me when the doors close to the public, and the negotiations begin. I need you sitting beside me, after the debate ends, the votes are taken and a proposal becomes law. I need your voice to be the voice of all the women, families and children who are voiceless and invisible. I need you to join me. You. I am talking to you.

EXTRA: It was pointed out to me that a reduction to three months would also likely reduce the likelihood of a public hearing on any specific bill.

December 8, 2012December 8, 2012

Reuters Blog Blasts Raimondo’s Actuarial Acumen

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(Editor’s note: when I originally posted this item, I mistakenly thought the Muniland post was from this week. It’s actually a year old! But since we posted a similar piece earlier today that spoke to the same issue, I amended it and left it posted. Sorry for any confusion.)

The squeaky clean shine seems to be fading on Raimondomania, in some circles.

The rock star treasurer, hailed for pairing down the retirement benefits of public employees, took a few bruises locally this week for declining to sit down with labor leaders who suing the state over her pension reform efforts. And she’ll take a few more if and when Judge Sarah Taft-Carter asks the two parties to try to work it out among themselves.

She’s taken some in the national media too.

Cate Long, who covers public sector finance for Reuters, wrote on her Muniland blog, “It’s getting a little tiresome to hear all the adulation that’s being heaped on Gina Raimondo…”

Long writes in a post from last December (not this week, as I initially reported):

…the problems Raimondo addressed were not the biggest that the state faced. The main problem with Rhode Island’s pension system is that it has very poor investment returns on its $6.5 billion portfolio of assets. Over the past ten years the state’s compared with the national median of 3.4 percent (page 6). These returns are in the lowest tier of state pension plans, and this chronic underperformance is causing a substantial shortage of assets to pay retirees.

I’m withholding my praise for Gina Raimondo until the investment returns of the Rhode Island pension plan move closer to the national median. Then state workers won’t have to bear the entire burden.

Here’s what Ted Nesi wrote about it in January.

Greg Gerritt of the Green Party makes a similar point in a post published today on RI Future. Raimondo led efforts in 2011 to lower the expected rate of return from around 8 percent annually to 7.5 percent. In the last fiscal year, Gerritt reports, the return was 1.5 percent.

So maybe I spoke too soon when I said I trusted Gina Raimondo’s actuarial acumen earlier this week. But, way more importantly, shouldn’t this be what the former venture capital millionaire is good at – investing the state’s money?

Long, who focuses on the last ten years of data to make her point, reports that the “major source of pension plan funding, investment returns on plan assets, has been terrible in Rhode Island. I’m not aware of any discussion or changes in the law to address this issue.”

Perhaps pension reform efforts focused too much on contract rights, and not enough on money management. After all, you don’t get taken to court for simply making smart investments.

December 8, 2012December 10, 2012

The Real Pension Fund Dilemma in Rhode Island

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Today on the news I heard that RI state pension funds had a return on investment of 1.5% in the last fiscal year. Grew right along with the growth of the economy for the 1%. Rest of us fell further behind.

But what the pension fund really fell behind on was its expected growth, the growth that allows the fund to make payments to retirees. The official expectation for the pension fund is growth of 7.5% each year. This is recent as previously the rate of return expected had been close to 8%. In either case the actual return was only 1/5 of the expected return. Adding to a long string of years in which growth targets were missed by a wide margin.

In a place without an out of control ruling class seeking new ways to loot the populace, the state would tax the wealthy to make up the difference in the pension funds because there is a clear understanding that equalizing the wealth strengthens the economy.

But even that will not really solve the problem that the pension funds are going to get smaller and smaller returns over time. Not due to mismanagement, but because the economy is going to get smaller. The stringing out of the recovery after the bubble burst being only the latest and most abundant clue that we have essentially reached the end of economic growth in the west, especially any growth that actually flows into the hands of the 99%.

There are many levers that can be pushed to create more economic growth, but the one thing economic growth is unable to survive is ecological collapse. The loss of soils, clean water, forests, fisheries, and biodiversity, combined with the fires, droughts, floods, and heat waves of climate change is eating up all the actual growth and many people are ending up poorer even if a few in the cities are getting richer.

This is why over the last 15 years the west has either been in the midst of some bubble or in recession. We have gone from HI Tech and internet, to Housing and strange financial instruments as the bubble we obsess over, but the results are the same. A small class makes out, everyone else falls behind, and the Earth becomes a less hospitable place with diminished life.

Rhode Island’s pension fund is hurting even with the current “fix” and the economic shenanigans used to grow the economy faster are a disaster (remember 38 Studios). Rhode Island needs a new course, based on ecological healing and economic justice if it is going to have prosperity.

Parents: Proper Marijuana Reform Protects Families

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“You’ll think differently once you have a child of your own.” This was the comment I most often heard whenever I used to have conversations with other parents about drug policy reform.

Last year, my wife and I were blessed with a beautiful baby boy. In the first year of his life, he has grown at a rate beyond what I could have imagined. Now, at only fourteen months, I am already thinking about when I will need to have that first conversation with him about the dangers of drug and alcohol use. As I think about that conversation—which has the potential to shape my son’s views about drugs and alcohol for the duration of his childhood and adolescence—I feel even more committed, not less, to reforming our archaic, unjust and dangerous drug laws, particularly with respect to marijuana.

Contrary to popular belief and understanding, forty years of research overwhelmingly indicates that parents and school-age children are the first casualty of our failed marijuana policies. That’s because our drug laws are not working, neither in Rhode Island nor nationally.

As an epidemiologist and a scientist, I can cite statistic after statistic about the billions of dollars we have wasted on the ‘war on drugs,’ the devastating toll this ‘war’ has taken on children and families, the collateral consequences associated with incarceration, and ever increasing numbers of kids using substances. And based on our current policies, I can predict where those statistics will be in ten years. But to me, this issue is more than a bundle of statistics. When my child enters middle school, he will face the same situation that kids now face: increasing numbers of students saying they know a drug dealer on school grounds, and an average marijuana “initiation” of age 12 and still declining.

In response to those parents who told me I would think differently, I say to them: The only thing that is different is that now I see firsthand why reforming our drug laws is one of the most important things I can do as a parent to protect my son from the dangers of drugs.

To me, marijuana reform means reducing the influence of the black market through adoption of a robust regulatory approach with a strong emphasis on restricting drug access to youth. It means better education and prevention for our children. It means providing resources for treatment, not incarceration for non-violent offenders who struggle with addiction. It means working together to develop and to implement an evidence-based, not fear-based, strategy to protect our children and families from the dangers of drugs.

I am often asked: How can we be certain that alternatives would be more effective? Could marijuana become even more available and more widely used than it is now? Questions like these, especially for parents who remain skeptical about reform, aren’t negligible side-issues. When discussing what a post-prohibition regulatory model for marijuana might look like, fears about availability, a profit-driven industry similar to Big Tobacco, and sending a dangerous message to our youth that drug use is acceptable are important to consider.

As a new parent, I appreciate the fears expressed by many parents which give pause to supporting alternatives to current marijuana prohibition. And I would never support an alternative that didn’t strictly control the market, ban advertising and allocate a proportion of any revenue generated toward youth prevention efforts, including education and counter-advertising—the same tools states have used to lower youth tobacco use to record-setting lows.

We have a clear choice: continue to blindly follow a failed policy which will undoubtedly result in more of the same—increasing rates of drug use and associated harms—or resolve to openly discuss our fears so that they no longer prevent us from implementing more sensible drug policies, policies that will better protect our children, families and communities. And like every pressing public question, this one deserves deliberation, now more than ever.

Today, Rhode Islanders will have the chance to deliberate the way forward. Brown University is hosting The New Directions Conference, a public, statewide discussion whose goal is to bring all parties to the table to discuss our marijuana policies. Policy experts, concerned citizens, law enforcement and state legislators will sit side-by-side this morning to address every aspect of the issue, with one purpose: to explore possible alternatives for marijuana reform that would protect families first. (The Conference is at capacity, but will accommodate standing-room for same day registration).

The Conference is not a fact-finding commission—it begins the conversation acknowledging what we already know, that our current system has not produced results. But the truth is, if pro-family alternatives exist, the only way to find out is by discussing them. I believe responsible parents, and all concerned citizens in this state, would agree.

Nick Zaller, PhD

Father and Associate Professor of Medicine,

Brown University

Providence, RI