Over a month after agreeing to meet with Burrillville residents while in Warwick and one day after members of the FANG Collective and BASE intercepted her a second time at a community event on the East Side of Providence, Governor Gina Raimondo has agreed to a date and time. It has now been officially announced that Governor Gina Raimondo will be at the Burrillville High School, 425 East Ave, Harrisville, for a community meeting Monday, July 18 from 6 PM – 9 PM to discuss the proposed power plant.
After months of trying to get the governor to come to the town through more conventional channels, Kathy Martley, co-founder of BASE (Burrillville Against Spectra Expansion), presented the Governor with a flower and a home made card at an event in Warwick. The Governor agreed then to come to Burrillville. On Thursday night Martley followed up with the governor outside the First Unitarian Church of Providence. The governor agreed to set a date and time the following day.
On Thursday evening the governor was noncommittal on the Keable/Fogarty bill and said that she will make a final decision on it once it reaches her desk, but the next day, while taping an episode of Channel 12 Newsmakers with Tim White and Ted Nesi, Raimondo said that she will be “very likely to” veto the bill. The Governor told Nesi and White that she was opposed to the bill’s “retro-activity feature” which changes the process at the Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB) even as Invenergy, the company that wants to build a $700 million fracked gas and diesel burning power plant in Burrillville, is engaged in the process.
“This isn’t about, necessarily, whether you are for or against natural gas, we have a process,” said Raimondo, “You cannot change the rules of the game halfway through the game if you want to be a business friendly state.”
I’ve talked before about Raimondo and her emphasis of business over democracy. The process that Raimondo is defending is one that favors the interests of billion dollar corporations over the people of Rhode Island. The people of Burrillville are demanding that this process be corrected in the interests of the people.
If given a choice, would you rather live in a business friendly state, or a democracy friendly state?
