May 9, 2013 – RI Future

May 9, 2013May 10, 2013

License plate legislation aids anti-choice efforts

Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387

Licence_Plate2 — Is Rhode Island the Louisiana of New England?

In the battle over marriage equality in Rhode Island, one of the most vocal groups in opposition to full civil rights for the LGBTQ community was the Knights of Columbus (KoC), a Roman “Catholic fraternal service organization.”

The KoC is one of the major, if not the major contributor to the National Organization for Marriage and a founding member of the anti-marriage equality coalition the Faith Alliance.

In the end, though the KoC could not prevent marriage equality, they did lobby for and receive a special religious exceptions for their organization. In essence, based on First Amendment arguments regarding freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and separation of church and state, the Knights of Columbus have preserved their right to discriminate against LGBTQ citizens, just like churches and clergy.

In January, Representatives Corvese, Edwards, Fellela, Azzinaro and Malik introduced legislation that “would authorize the division of motor vehicles to issue special license plates in recognition of ‘Choose Life.'”

House Bill 5053, allows the KoC to design new license plates in conjunction with the division of motor vehicles, and further will allow the KoC to split the $40 fee with the state, generating a minimum of $18,000 for the organization. This money “shall be distributed annually to the Knights of Columbus Choose Life account in furtherance of one of their missions of assisting pregnant women and their unborn and newborn infants via non-government funded programs that provide free services that promote and support the alternative choices of infant adoption and Rhode Island’s Safe Haven.”

Just to be clear on what this means, the government will be assisting the KoC in its fundraising efforts that seek to prevent women from accessing safe and legal abortions, which the KoC does on purely religious grounds. At the point this bill becomes a reality, the “non-government funded programs” run by the KoC will in truth be at least partially government funded, a clear violation of the separation of church and state.

The KoC lobbied hard to have their facilities protected from the odious burden of hosting same-sex weddings, citing religious exceptionalism. There is no arguing with their status as a religious organization when they are seeking the right to discriminate against certain citizens.

The separation of church and state, however, cuts both ways. Allowing a religious group to advertise their religious views on our license plates, as a means of generating funds is an abandonment of the principles this country was founded upon. I’m sure the KoC can come up with better fundraising ideas that don’t require them to entwine their religion with our freedoms.

I would suggest selling bumper stickers.

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013

What This Parking Garage Has to Do With 38 Studios

The parking garage in question. Captured on Google Street View.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the River Park Square Parking Garage in Spokane, WA has not been a major topic of conversation in Rhode Island. But it should be.

You see, it was paid for by a nonprofit semipublic economic development corporation known as the Spokane Downtown Foundation. Lacking the credit for the loan, the Spokane Downtown Foundation issued $31 million in moral obligation bonds backed up by the credit of the City of Spokane. Then, as revenues from the parking garage came in under budget, the Downtown Foundation was forced to default. Start to sound familiar?

Here comes the key bit: The credit rating of the Downtown Foundation plummeted to D (ultimately winding up as a Not Rated), but the credit rating of the city’s general obligation bonds did not meet nearly so dire a fate. Anticlimactically, Moody’s knocked the general obligation bonds down only one notch to A2. S&P, however, took a more critical view, knocking them down to BBB.

Perhaps the most critical question swirling around the 38 Studios fiasco is what would actually happen if we defaulted. The travails of the River Park Square Parking Garage offer a rough sketch: The EDC’s credit rating would implode, but Rhode Island’s main general obligation bonds would see a much smaller effect. How small an effect remains uncertain, unfortunately.

My guess is that our hit would be substantially less than Spokane’s. Because of a legally murky agreement to back up the debt with municipal parking meter revenues, there was significant doubt about the legal ability of Spokane to default on its moral obligation bonds (a concern not applicable to the 38 Studios bonds). In fact, the ensuing tangle of lawsuits ultimately forced the city to repay the bonds, although Spokane did receive $11.2 million from a settlement. Moreover, the parking garage bonds represented a much larger portion of Spokane’s debt than the 38 Studios bonds represent to Rhode Island, and the parking garage scandal probably did reduce the ability of the city to repay its general obligation bonds. Given the $20 million in legal fees the city ultimately wound up shelling out, those concerns were amply justified. Defaulting on the 38 Studios debt, on the other hand, would likely not meaningfully damage our ability to repay our general obligation bonds.

And then there’s the fact that credit markets have not punished us for a much larger default on pension obligations–obligations that actually were legally binding.

Unfortunately, I was not able to answer the most critical question–how the downgrade affected the interest rate. So I hope someone with more time and knowledge of bond markets than I will look into the matter more closely.

Let me be clear. Although I do suspect that defaulting on the 38 Studios bonds would save us money in the long run, I am by no means certain. But because of the River Park Square Parking Garage, we can constrain the bounds of speculation.

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013

The Morning After

Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387

It seems fitting that the Providence Journal editorialized in support of making Plan B, the emergency contraceptive drug, over the counter the very morning after Rhode Island’s annual abortion restriction hearing in the State House. Over sixty supporters came out in waves of pink to support the work of the RI Coalition for Reproductive Justice and Planned Parenthood as the House Judiciary Committee heard five abortion restriction bills.

Interestingly of the five bills heard, only three of the legislative sponsors came out to support their own legislation. Rep. Fellela who sponsored the sex selection ban and Rep. Palumbo who sponsored the wait period “women’s right to know act” were noticeably absent. Over all, little time was spent explaining how any of the bills heard would reduce unintended pregnancy or abortion rates in Rhode Island, both of which are some of the highest in the New England region.

As the legislature enters its final five weeks of what has already been an active session with passage of marriage equality, we hope the General Assembly will remember that Rhode Island already has a range of restrictive regulations and laws on the books, many of which are unconstitutional and unenforceable. Rhode Island already requires “informed consent” prior to abortion, prohibits public funding for abortion services and is subject to all the federal laws including the late term abortion ban upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2009. There is no need to replicate these policies in state law.

However, Rhode Island persists as an outlier in New England for its high unintended pregnancy and teen pregnancy rates. Although those rates have been on a decline over the last ten years thanks to advances in long acting reversible contraception methods and greater public awareness of family planning services, none of the five bills proposed here today address unintended pregnancy and will do NOTHING to reduce the abortion rate in Rhode Island.

The General Assembly does however have the opportunity this session to expand the Medicaid family planning benefit to include more low income women, and Rhode Island will receive $9 from the federal government for every $1 we spend on this program through the state’s Global Medicaid Waiver. We can and should do better in Rhode Island. It’s time to move beyond the divisive political attacks on reproductive health and work together toward real solutions to real problems in public health. Rhode Island is not North Dakota. Rhode Island is not Texas. Rhode Island is not Arkansas. Rhode Island can do better.

In case you missed the hearing you may watch it online (the hearing on the abortion bills begins at minute 85).

Organizations & Individuals who testified in Opposition to Abortion Restrictions in RI

Paula Hodges – Planned Parenthood Southern New England

Steve Brown – RI American Civil Liberties Union

Carolyn Mark, RI NOW

Rev. David Ames, Planned Parenthood Clergy Advisory Board

Rick Harris – RI National Association of Social Workers

Kristina Fox, Ocean State Action

Mary Chace, RI League of Women Voters

Steve Alquist, Humanists of RI

Dr. Emily White

RI Medical Society

Sarah Kramer – Brown Medical Student

Marie Deluca – Brown Medical Student

Micala Venta, Brown Medical Student

Caitlin Naureckas – Brown Medical Student

Rachel Orsinger, RI Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Barbara Colt – Rhode Islanders for Abortion Rights

Rev. Elizabeth Barnum

Margret (Penny) Guyer

Rachel Bloom

Lauren Niedel

Jessan Dunn Otis

Gus Uht

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013

DePetro, Carcieri, Healey at Odeum: Two thumbs down

Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387

Yesterday I thought it would be hard to put together a group of people who have been worse for Rhode Island than John DePetro, Don Carcieri and Bernie Healey. But Anthony Gemma proved me wildly off base by showing up as well.

If you missed my live-tweeting of conservative Catholic night at the Odeum Theater on Main Street, East Greenwich last night, don’t worry. You didn’t miss much.

The most exciting moments included DePetro probing Father Healey about whether or not people chew gum in church, Feroce scrolling through his smart phone to read aloud from his email or Carcieri talking about 38 Studios. Oh, that’s right, DePetro didn’t ask Carcieri about 38 Studios; instead they talked about how idyllic life was back in the days when Thanks Don was growing up.

I’m pretty sure Charlie Rose’s job is safe.

It was really more of a fundraiser for the struggling local theater than actual entertainment. Many, if not most, of the attendees were dyed-in-the-wool conservatives and more than a few were friends and/or relatives of the headliners. DePetro made more references to the local restaurant that sponsored the evening than he did to leadership, which was supposed to be the focus of the event. Local celebrity appearances were limited to former state Senator Frank Maher and Anthony Gemma.

Here’s a Storify of most of my tweets from last night and many of the responses I got.

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013

End the era of Citizens United in Rhode Island

Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387

Tonight, I will deliver this testimony to the House Judiciary Committee:

. . . corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

~Supreme Court Justice Stevens, January 2010

Everyone makes mistakes, even Supreme Court Justices. Sometimes five of them make the same mistake at once and produce a horrible decision that threatens to unravel the democratic fabric of our civil society. Such was the Court’s decision in Citizens United vs. FEC. Our President, Senator Whitehouse, the City of Providence among other RI municipalities, and this very legislative body have all recognized this and pushed for the reversal of the decision. H6051 and the “We The People” constitutional referendum it enables gives the Rhode Island people that same opportunity with a direct vote.

There are two ways a Supreme Court decision can be reversed. The simplest and most common is for the Court itself to review and overturn its decision when it takes up a related case. The other is to amend the US Constitution, either through Congressional action or an Article V convention called for by at least ⅔ of the States. In the history of our great country, there has never been an Article V convention. For all intents and purposes, we must hope that the corporate sponsored hyper-partisan politicians in Washington take action to amend the Constitution and put an end to the money in politics that put them there, or that the Court will take up a case and do what’s right.

Given the dangerous implications of unlimited corporate spending in elections, any action that can be taken to facilitate the reversal of Citizens United should be taken immediately. The “We The People” amendment to the Rhode Island Constitution, if approved, would do this in a few ways. If the amendment gets challenged and heard by the Supreme Court, it would give the Court the chance to overturn Citizens United. However, if the Court affirms its previous decisions and overrules a popular democratic vote, then a fire will be ignited under the Congressional amendment process and probably the Article V process as well, making those avenues more likely to move forward. Finally, the RI “We The People” amendment might not be challenged, and Rhode Island could serve as a model whereby other states could reclaim their right to regulate special interest spending in elections.

In addition to these critically important policy implications, H6051 will give Rhode Island voters a cathartic opportunity. For long years, we have watched our democracy slip away from us, powerless to do anything about the growing influence on money in politics. Faith in government is plumbing the depths. The people know what is right on this issue. They know that a corporation is not a person and that its spending in elections is not free speech. We, The People, deserve to be heard. This is our democracy.

For these good reasons, I urge you to pass H6051 and put the question to the people. Give us the chance to send a message to the Supreme Court and all our leaders in Washington, D.C. These are extraordinary times when corporate power threatens to overwhelm the power of the public, and these times demand extraordinary action. This bill is that action.

Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,

Abel Collins

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013

If Superman goes housing, make it mixed income

Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387

With the fate of the Superman building unknown, downtown Providence could look very different in a few years. I’m relatively new to Rhode Island, but don’t want the state’s most well-known building to be housing only for the uppercrust.

Such redevelopment could not only gentrify downtown and push low income residents further out of Downcity which limits their ability to get to work and partake in the dynamic life of the city, but it also limits the ability of the city to attract the “creative class” that has been time and again pointed to as a way to rejuvenate a city’s economy (most recently by Governor Chaffee in his NYT justification for signing the same-sex marriage bill).

The thing is, there is a way to both revitalize downtown and ensure that it does not lock out either the poor that need access to the services (like the busses) and the jobs that the city has to offer or the creative class that may one day have the money to purchase high-income residences but maybe not the first time they buy or rent a home.

What Providence needs is a good model for integrated housing success. That can be found in Montgomery County, MD.

As early as 1974, Montgomery County developed a mixed income housing plan that required all new developments to include low and middle income housing if they wanted to build high-income housing. A pretty thorough description of Montgomery County’s plan can be found here, but the model breaks down to three components:

All new housing developments have to include a) a section of low income housing b) a section of middle income market rate housing.
A sizable chunk of the new housing is available for the county to purchase through it’s housing administration.
The housing administration then uses the low income housing for two things: 1) for section 8 voucher recipients and 2) to help low income residents purchase their first properties.

What Montgomery County developments mainly look like now is a dream for land use planners. It is more racially and economically integrated than most of the U.S. and it is relatively sustainable.

The thing is, the plan also resulted in some other not-necessarily foreseen consequences: good schools and a sustainable government structure.

Instead of having all the poor and poorly prepared students housed in schools segregated from the high performing schools which results in a bifurcated system where the poor kids get locked into low performing schools and the rich kids either opt out of the system or stay in locally based high performing public schools not available to kids from across town, Montgomery County has diverse AND high performing schools.

In fact, Montgomery County is ranked as one of the best school systems in the country. And what’s more, they have done better than almost all other school systems at decreasing the race and economic gap in test scores. The reason is obvious—struggling students are not all housed together in struggling schools. Instead struggling students are placed in the same schools (with the same funds) as high performing students. No school is overwhelmed by struggling students, they each have a mix to work with.

But they also have enough money to do so since the tax base includes people from all walks of life—not just the poor and not just the rich.

But if people can’t be persueded by what’s best for all incomes, we might want to consider what’s best for the future economic growth of the city. The “creative class” does not necessarily start life rich. They are artists, technicians, programmers, and engineers. They are also almost uniformly young–too young to have much financial capital at their fingertips for down payments on high-priced homes. Their careers are usually marked by relative poverty (or at least relative lower middle classism) as they embark on starting new businesses or enter their first jobs in tech firms. So if they can’t find housing close to what the city has to offer, they will go to a different city where they can get around without a car and still be able to access the cultural life they thrive on.

Montgomery County has a thriving technology industry and they are second to Boston in the number of biotech companies that are housed within their borders. Most of these were once start-ups where the owners and workers made very little in the first few years, and those companies that have found their footing and turned into money making ventures have stayed because their workers like where they live.