March 13, 2014

David Cicilline is protecting your tax dollars against Congressional Republicans

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There’s little House Democrats can do if the Republican majority wants to spend its time suing President Obama. But Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline has managed to at least hold the GOP fiscally responsible for doing so.

Wednesday the House of Representatives passed 233-181 the so-called ENFORCE Act. It would create a expedited process for members of Congress to sue the president if they feel he or she isn’t fully executing the law.

“Instead of tackling the real issues facing our country, the House Republicans continue to make a mockery out of Congress by bringing politically-motivated bills to the floor that do absolutely nothing to improve the lives of Americans,” Cicilline said. “The ENFORCE Act would allow for a Congressional majority to sue the Executive Branch without any oversight, safeguards, or accountability to prevent abuse.”

On the House floor he said, “The bill raises its own constitutional issues, and fails to put in place responsible safeguards to prevent abuse. This I believe Mr. Chairman is dangerous attack that threatens the careful balance of power developed by our founding fathers.”

But Cicilline did more than just talk about the bill. He also authored a successful amendment that would attach a fiscal note to the ENFORCE Act.

“Ultimately, the tab for litigation under the ENFORCE Act is to be paid by the American people,” Cicilline said. “At a minimum, they should be informed of how much of their hard earned money is being spent pursuing these lawsuits.”

He said Republican leadership spent “up to $3 million” defending DOMA, the federal law that allowed states to ignore same-sex marriages before it was ruled unconstitutional and “we still do not have an adequate accounting of how much the House Majority has spent on defending this discriminatory law, or whether it continues to spend taxpayer funding on this matter.”

Cicilline and Rep. Jim Langevin both voted against the bill. Here’s video of Cicilline’s remarks:

March 13, 2014March 14, 2014

State library funding rewards Barrington, punishes Central Falls

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There are several differences between the public library in Barrington and the one in Central Falls.

The Barrington library has more than 129,000 print items on its shelves and lent out 384,257 materials last year. The Central Falls library has about 34,000 print items on the shelves and lent out 14,994 materials last year. Barrington’s library is open seven days a week, and Monday through Thursday it’s open for 12 hours a day – 9 am to 9pm. Central Falls’ library is open six days a week; five hours a day on Saturdays and seven on weekdays. Barrington’s library employs 45 people, 15 of them full time, and Central Falls employs two full time and two part time people. The Barrington library’s annual budget is just over $1.5 million and the Central Falls library’s budget is $165,000.

Another difference is the amount each will get in state aid this year. Governor Chafee’s proposed budget would give $341,488 to Barrington and $17,569 to Central Falls. That’s because state library aid is appropriated based on a library’s budget rather than its need.

Here’s the law: “For each city or town, the state’s share to support local public library services shall be equal to at least twenty-five percent (25%) of both the amount appropriated and expended in the second preceding fiscal year by the city or town from local tax revenues and funds from the public library’s private endowment that supplement the municipal appropriation.”

As such, state taxpayers generally send more dollars per resident to suburban libraries than to urban libraries.

Deborah Barchi, director of the Barrington library and a past president of the Ocean State Libraries consortium, thinks the state funding formula for local libraries is fair.

“Each town makes those decisions based on what they value,” she said. “No matter what metric you use, there would be somebody who would feel they weren’t getting enough money.”

But Steve Larrick, the president of the Central Falls Public Library Board, disagrees.

“We think the state needs to play a role in our urban libraries,” he said. Rhode Island “needs to do a better job of thinking about these social determinants.”

Larrick, who is also the town planning director in Central Falls, explained what he meant about social determinants.

“Barrington doesn’t need a library to have access to tremendous resources,” he said. “They have great access to broadband in their homes, and their schools are top notch. Their school library is probably better than our public library. A dollar spent there will not be as meaningful as a dollar spent on the Central Falls library.”

Central Falls almost lost its library when the city filed for bankruptcy two years ago. Receiver Bob Flanders closed the library and a grassroots community effort aided by New York Times coverage and a $10,000 donation from Alec Baldwin, kept the doors open. But operating expenses were decimated, and because the funding formula uses budget numbers from two years ago it is hitting them in state funding this year.

“For this year and next year, the average is really down because of the bankruptcy,” Larrick said.

I asked Governor Chafee to comment on the disparity in funding between the Barrington and Central Falls libraries. Spokeswoman Faye Zuckerman sent this:

“As Governor, a former mayor and city councilor, Governor Chafee has been an advocate for Rhode Island’s cities and towns. Throughout his years in office, he has been working to reverse the damage done by the past administration to municipalities and the Rhode Island property taxpayer.”

March 13, 2014

Barth Bracy wags the dog

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The hearings held in the State House Judiciary Committee had a slightly different format than usual.

With 12 bills on the agenda, the first 12 speaking positions were reserved for the legislators who introduced each piece of legislation. Seven of the bills introduced seek to expand women’s access to reproductive services and the remaining five seek to further limit this right.

Representatives Tomasso, O’Neill, Ferri, Handy, Tanzi, Finn and Almeida were all on hand to present the legislation they introduced to support women’s health care. Those introducing bills that would restrict women’s access, save for Representatives Macbeth and McLaughlin, were nowhere to be found.

Representatives Palumbo, Corvese and Fellela instead chose to allow lobbyist Barth Bracy, executive director of RI’s Right to Life organization, to introduce the bills for them. This does make a certain amount of sense, because it is probable that Bracy had quite a bit to do with authoring the bills these representatives put their names on, but literally could not be bothered to stand behind.

It must be easier for our state representatives to introduce bills that seek to strip away the reproductive rights of women when you don’t have to look them in the eye while you do so.

March 13, 2014

If self-congratulation could save the Earth

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Yesterday, March 12, 2014, the sponsors of Senate Bill 2690 held a hearing on their bill which has the following summary:

An Act Relating To Public Utilities And Carriers – The Distributed Generation Growth Program (would Create A Tariff-based Renewable Energy Distributed Generation Financing Program.)

The discussion left me in the state of bewilderment I anticipated. Self-congratulation and lots of words, but a near-total absence of substance. Why this frustration, you might wonder. Let me explain.

Here is a quote from the report of the hearing in the Providence Journal:

They [renewable energy developers and environmental advocates] said that proposed legislation to extend the life of what was originally created as a pilot program and increase its size would not only boost the state’s economy by creating clean energy jobs but would also help the environment by reducing the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.

“Reducing the carbon emissions!” That should be good news for me and my friends of Fossil Free RI, who were well represented among the those who testified. Good news? Well, maybe. Let me mention that my testimony was in line with the views of AFSC-SENE. Of course, I am really shocked, shocked, shocked that none of my profound thoughts made into the ProJo report. Here is the testimony I submitted for the record:

The DG bill is for a program to provide 160MW nameplate capacity over five years. What does this mean?

Power consumption per capita in the US is 1.5kW. That is 1.5 GW for RI.

This five-year program will replace nominally 10% of RI Electric electric power: 2% per year.

The actual power is about 20% of nameplate power. That gets us to 0.4% per year.

Take into account that RI per capita power use is 60% of the national average and that electric power makes up for about 40% of our energy consumption.

Conclusion: the DG program will make a yearly change of 0.3% in our power consumption.

To prevent catastrophic climate change, we have to cut our carbon dioxide emissions by about 10% per year. In other words, to do what needs to be done, this program should be expanded by a factor of roughly 30; that might be “only” 20, if the “20% of nameplate power” is too conservative.

If the fossil fuel industry were to put in place a decoy program to guarantee their continued business as usual, it might look like this program.

This bill needs the following amendments:

A provision that power generation as a public utility be publicly owned and cooperatively operated. The People of Rhode Island are fed up depending for power on National Grid, a corporation headquartered in the United Kingdom.

There will have to be:

occupational safety protections for the workers doing e.g. roof top installation and maintenance and

occupational injury benefits and retirement programs

By all means, please amend and adopt this bill, as long as you realize that it dramatically fails to accomplish what the physics of climate change demands.

This bill was probably formulated by people who may know exactly what they are doing. Whether that is good or bad remains to be seen, but the decisions are made by people who seem totally oblivious how many injuries and fatalities their plans may make and what to do about these consequences. Nor did they seem to know whether they are talking about a 0.1% 1%, or 10% fractional solution of our share of the climate change problem.

Can anyone expect this process to produce rational decisions? Of course not, all we’ll get is just more bloody capitalism! Is it a surprise that the People have no confidence in their representatives and increasingly tune out of the fact-free reporting perpetrated by the corporate media complex?

March 13, 2014March 13, 2014

How Chafee just saved our economy from a $124 million hit

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On Monday, Lincoln Chafee did something incredibly important for our state’s economy. Following Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, he stopped severe cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a program that provides food assistance to families at risk for hunger. Passed in the most recent farm bill, these cuts were vigorously opposed by each member of our national delegation.

By increasing funding to the Low Income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP) by $1.4 million, Chafee has guaranteed the state an extra $69 million in SNAP funds. According to the Department of Agriculture, the economic multiplier for SNAP is 1.79, so the $69 million will translate into a projected $124 million of GDP. That would be a huge hit to the economy. Stopping it is very big news.

We face a hunger crisis in America. Millions of families struggle to put food on the table. Because of what Lincoln Chafee did, not only will our economy avoid a big hit, fewer Rhode Islanders will go to bed hungry.