“With yet another state abandoning proposals for more natural gas pipeline capacity, these efforts to expand fossil fuel infrastructure in New England have hit a virtually unsurpassable roadblock,” said Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) president Bradley Campbell in a statement. “Without Massachusetts, New Hampshire or Connecticut in the mix, Spectra has lost a whopping 84 percent of the customer base needed to finance this ill-conceived proposal. It’s time to kill this project altogether and look forward to opportunities for the clean, renewable alternatives that our families demand, our markets expect and our laws require.”

It is unknown when the RIPUC will act to reject the proposal here.

Smaller than the power plant proposed for neighboring Burrillville, the “Killingly Energy Center” is slated to produce 550 MW of unneeded energy. It will produced nearly 2 million tons of emissions per year, adding to the emissions of the Lake Road Generating Facility, an 840 MW power plant already located in Killingly. Emissions, of course, know no political boundaries, so large parts of Rhode Island will be subjected to this increase in pollutants.

The Killingly power plant is to be built in a residential neighborhood within a mile of 460 Killingly housing units. At least five schools and day cares, over 5,000 students, are within three miles of the proposed plant. Wyndham County, where Killingly is located, has asthma rates 18 percent higher than the rest of Connecticut.

To power the plant, a pipeline connection to the main AIM pipeline will be built, crossing the Quinebaug River, Wyndham Land Trust, the Airline Trail, Pomfret Audubon Society and Bafflin Sanctuary. Each area a precious resource.

Like Burrillville, the proposed power plant needs water. There is a concern that the aquifers will be strained and that residents will suffer a lack of water given that the power plant needs 90,000 gallons a day when burning fracked gas and as much as 400,000 gallons a day when burning diesel oil. Also, like Burrillville, there are safety and and noise issues to consider when a plant like this is built in a residential area.

The Town of Killingly is categorized as a distressed community. Like other areas where these types of facilities are targeted, there are environmental justice issues to be considered. Very often the facilities are like these are aimed at low income communities that lack the financial means to either fight the power plant or resist the financial carrots dangled by the company building the plant.

NTE Energy, the prospective builder, has never completed a power plant. Formed in 2009 as a private equity funded company, there is a worry that the company will build the plant and sell it off for a quick profit. Currently the company has six power plants in development, two of which are under construction. The company has no experience in operating or maintaining a power plant.

Also, like in Rhode Island, the residents most impacted by the siting of a power plant in their community have no say in whether or not the plant will be built. The Connecticut Siting Council, the equivalent of Rhode Island’s Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) makes the final decision regarding the power plant in Killingly. The Siting Council has already determined that Connecticut has an excess of electricity generation into 2020, yet is still considering the power plant in Killingly.

Opposition to the power plant has begun in Killingly. The group is called Not Another Power Plant, and I found that they were very knowledgeable about the situation in Burrillville. I went there Monday afternoon to talk with residents who were holding signs and a press conference to get the word out. Below I speak to Connecticut State Senator Mae Flexer and Connecticut State Representative Danny Rovero about their opposition.

On Thursday October 20th beginning at 3:30 pm there will be a public field review of the proposed NTE/KEC site on Lake Road, Dayville. This will be an opportunity to see the area where NTE hopes to build the power plant. Afterwards there will be a Public Hearing with the Connecticut Siting Council at 6:30 pm at the Killingly High School Auditorium. Public comment will be heard at this meeting.

At the Superior Court of the District of Columbia yesterday, #Sidewalk7 members Claude Guillemard of Baltimore, MD, Ellen Taylor of Washington, D.C., and Donald Weightman of Philadelphia, PA, said that they would go to trial, set for Dec. 8, for their May 9 blockade at the FERC.

Peter Nightingale, of Kingston, RI, was arraigned only yesterday because he was out of the country during the first court date. He says he intends to go to trial. BXE and other groups have long criticized the agency for rubber-stamping fracked-gas pipelines, compressor stations and export facilities that it reviews.

“We have been charged with unlawful entry,” Weightman said, “but the real crime is the unlawful entry of methane and carbon dioxide into our air, the unlawful entry of toxic waste into our water, and the unlawful entry of global warming into the future of our world. The real weapon is fracked gas; FERC is the real defendant; we will charge FERC with the commission of a crime.”

The other three #Sidewalk7 activists – Melinda Tuhus of Connecticut, Clarke Herbert of Virginia and Linda Reik of New York – agreed to perform 32 hours of community service and to stay away from the 800 block of 1st Avenue NE, the area of the FERC offices, for four months.

The court actions yesterday were part of the ongoing resistance to fracked-gas infrastructure, including demanding a halt to expansion of Spectra’s AIM Project pipeline. #StopSpectra activists have declared a “state of emergency” in advance of a noon press conference Thursday outside the Manhattan offices of Sens. Charles Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. The senators wrote a letter to FERC on Aug. 3 calling for construction to stop. In February, Gov. Andrew Cuomo also asked FERC to postpone the pipeline expansion.

After the court hearing, New York, BXE, and Fossil Free Rhode Island activists hand-delivered invitations to the press conference to the senators’ Washington offices.

The pipeline “would bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New England, despite a report from the Massachusetts Attorney General that shows no need for this gas,” the letter said. “In NY, if completed, the AIM Pipeline would carry gas through residential communities and within 105 feet of critical Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant safety facilities.

Just last April, Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern line erupted into a giant explosion due to pipeline corrosion, and New Yorkers fear what an explosion of this magnitude could mean in such close proximity to Indian Point. Over the last several years, communities along the pipeline route have risen up against the pipeline, and are counting on New York senators to help stop this dangerous project.”

Activists delivered a letter from Fossil Free Rhode Island to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s office.  The senator is generally considered to be a climate champion, but he supports fracked gas as a bridge fuel. The letter asks the senator to change his position so that it is consistent with science and with the nation’s obligations under international treaties, the Rio Declaration in particular.  The letter ends stating: “As a small step in that direction, maybe you could start by following Bill McKibben’s suggestion, ‘correcting the outmoded way the EPA calculates the warming effect of methane.’”

In June, DeSmog Blog reported  that a FERC employee who was the agency’s project manager for reviewing the then-proposed AIM pipeline had been hired by an engineering company that is one of Spectra’s main contractors. DeSmog Blog reported in May and July that a contractor hired by FERC to conduct an environmental review of a Spectra project was already working on related Spectra pipeline projects. U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey have written to FERC Chairman Norman Bay asking about the “potential conflicts of interest.”

A campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience is also ongoing in West Roxbury, MA, where 165 people have been arrested so far blocking construction of the West Roxbury Lateral pipeline.   Resist the Pipeline is coordinating those actions. In addition, the City Council, mayor, the state representative, state senator and U.S. Congressman Stephen Lynch oppose the project.

Boston City Council President Michelle Wu said, “Climate change impacts us all and especially future generations. We need immediate, bold action to transition rapidly away from reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy. Building new natural gas infrastructure, such as Spectra Energy’s West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline, is wrong for our communities and wrong for future generations. I applaud the thoughtful, purposeful, nonviolent civil disobedience West Roxbury residents and friends are practicing to accomplish what needs to get done.”

In addition, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled today that the state can’t force residential ratepayers to subsidize the construction of pipelines. “This is an incredibly important and timely decision,” said David Ismay, lead attorney on the case for Conservation Law Foundation. “Today our highest court affirmed Massachusetts’ commitment to an open energy future by rejecting the Baker Administration’s attempt to subsidize the dying fossil fuel industry. The course of our economy and our energy markets runs counter to the will of multi-billion dollar pipeline companies, and, thanks to today’s decision, the government will no longer be able to unfairly and unlawfully tip the scales.”
[Based on a BXE press release.]

House Majority Leader John DeSimone is also a lawyer and one of his clients is Chung Cho, a restaurant owner who was fined for wage theft in Connecticut and, more recently, faces a lawsuit for allegedly stealing wages from his employees at Gourmet Heaven in downtown Providence.

“Defendants are without sufficient knowledge or information to admit or deny that plaintiffs were employed by Gourmet Heaven,” wrote DeSimone in a court filing on behalf of Cho.

Cho is facing a lawsuit from eight workers in Rhode Island for unpaid wages in violation of the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Rhode Island Minimum Wage Act. The eight workers are being represented by Robert McCreanor and Marissa Janton of the RI Center for Justice. Gourmet Heaven, which Cho recently sold, has been the center of several public demonstrations.

In Connecticut, Cho was charged with “42 felony and misdemeanor counts of wage theft, larceny, and defrauding immigrant workers after a 2013 Connecticut Department of Labor investigation found that Cho owed over $218,000 in unpaid wages” to two dozen restaurant employees, according to a court filing.

The Center for Justice initially filed its lawsuit in February, 2015, after “several requests for extension of the deadline for filing responsive pleadings”. DeSimone filed Cho’s legal response to the Rhode Island lawsuit on May 11, 2015. About a week later, on May 20, 2015, Cho sold Gourmet Heaven to GSP Corp for half a million dollars. At least some of the transactional paperwork for this sale was prepared by DeSimone.

GSP Corp had come into existence about a month earlier, on April 9, “listing 173
Weybosset Street … as its address and Dae Hyun Yoo as its registered agent,” according to the lawsuit. Gourmet Heaven was incorporated at this address, which is also where the restaurant is located. “Dae Hyun Yoo (aka David Yoo) is the Chief Executive Officer of B.C.S. International Corporation (B.C.S.), a wholesale food supply company,” according to the filing. “While operating Gourmet Heaven, LLC, Defendant Chung Cho regularly ordered inventory from B.C.S. and two of its subsidiaries, Hyun Dai International Food Corp and New York Cheese Corp.”

After the sale was finalized on September 14, “$225,389.11 of the $500,000 purchase price was paid directly to B.C.S., Hyun Dai International Food Corp, and New York Cheese Corp, purportedly to satisfy existing debts.” In the closing statement, Chung Cho is listed as receiving only “$1,620.78 from the $500,000 purchase price” after other debts were settled.

In response to this “sale” (quotation marks are included in the complaint) the Center for Justice amended its complaint to include GSP Corp as a defendant., believing the “sale” is merely an attempt to evade liability. GSP Corp hired Brian LaPlante and Michael J Jacobs as lawyers and have moved to have the complaint against them dismissed. A judge will hear the motion on September 20.

Selling the business and pleading poverty to avoid responsibility seems to be Cho’s signature move. One month after he was arrested in Connecticut, he sold his Connecticut Gourmet Heaven stores to Good Nature Café Inc, which was incorporated the previous October.

After selling his Connecticut stores, “on September 30, 2015 Defendant Chung Cho filed for personal bankruptcy in Connecticut,” says the complaint, “In December of 2015 Defendant Chung Cho testified at a hearing in Connecticut that he has no assets, contradicting a previous sworn statement that he possessed between $1 million and $10 million in assets.”

Back in Providence, on September 16, 2015, GSP Corp took over operation of the store located at 173 Weybosset Street, and renamed it Serendipity Gourmet. “The store continues operation at the same address, with many of the same employees, and sells the same products. The signage on the store uses the same font and colors, and the word ‘Gourmet’ still appears in the name. Signs on the exterior of the store proclaimed that it was ‘under new management.’”

In March of this year, GSP Corp applied for a new food dispenser and holiday sales license with the Providence Board of Licenses for their newly minted Serendipity Gourmet. The board’s attorney is Louis DeSimone, Representative John DeSimone’s cousin.

Voters should know when the people we elect to represent us also defend the monsters who oppress us. Anybody being sued deserves legal representation, but using slick legal moves to avoid paying workers their earned wages is simply gross.

DeSimone is facing a challenge to his House seat from Marcia Ranglin-Vassell.

DeSimone did not respond to requests for comment.

The AIM Project is particularly contentious because it includes construction of a 42-inch diameter high pressure interstate gas pipeline within 105 feet of critical infrastructure at the aging Indian Point nuclear facility, which is situated at the intersection of two earthquake fault lines. A 36-inch pipeline that is part of the AIM project also runs within 500 feet of a stone quarry in the West Roxbury section of Boston, where active blasting occurs. Following a tritium leak from Indian Point in February, New York’s Governor Cuomo asked FERC to stay construction on the project while an independent study of the health and safety impacts could be conducted. Last Friday, FERC denied his request too.

“Spectra Energy’s AIM expansion project has always been a spectacularly bad idea,” said Karina Wilkinson, Food & Water Watch Local Coordinator MA. “We have taken every step we could to oppose this project and now we have no other legal recourse than to go to Federal court. Time and again, we have seen fracked gas pipeline companies trample the rights of individuals and communities. We cannot rely on government agencies to protect us from the devastating consequences that will impact our country and the planet if the rush to profit is allowed to continue and if the U.S. continues to move forward with gaining access to the fossil fuel export market.”

Riverkeeper President Paul Gallay said “It’s disturbing that a federal regulator that’s duty- bound to protect the health and welfare of the public remains oblivious to the many potential dangers and pitfalls this project creates. It is even more disturbing that FERC continues to ignore the real risks involved with running a gas pipeline adjacent to the property of an aging, problematic nuclear plant, which poses a great risk to the region even without this project.”

Affected property owner and SAPE member Nancy Vann stated “We’ve been raising valid concerns about this project since 2013 – but when a captive agency like FERC is making the decisions and then reviewing its own conclusions it’s difficult to obtain a fair hearing. We are pleased to finally be able to take our issues to Federal court and are hopeful that they will get the consideration they deserve.”

In addition to concerns about Indian Point and the quarry, our groups are highly concerned about the issue of “segmentation” of the Algonquin pipeline expansion into three separate FERC proposals. By calling this pipeline’s expansion by three different names, Spectra Energy has so far managed to avoid review of the full project’s environmental impacts. Courts have found that type of manipulation to be unlawful in similar cases.

Segmentation is reaching a new level in Rhode Island with National Grid’s plan for a natural gas liquefaction facility at Fields Point and with Invenergy’s controversial proposal to construct a fossil-fuel, mostly fracked gas, 1-gigawatt power plant in Burrillville.  Indeed, a study submitted by Invenergy to assess the effect of the facility on the Rhode Island environment fails mention that just across the border, in Uxbridge, MA, EMI NextGen is planning to build yet another 1-gigawatt power plant.

[1] The New York-based groups are: Food & Water Watch NY, Riverkeeper, Inc., Reynolds Hill, Inc., Sierra Club Lower Hudson Chapter, and Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion. The Massachusetts-based groups are: Charles River Spring Valley Neighborhood Association, Food & Water Watch MA, West Roxbury Saves Energy and Better Future Project. Fossil Free Rhode Island and Capitalism vs. the Climate from Connecticut represent the other two states impacted by the project.

The Governor’s Budget Article 13 increases the minimum wage to $10.10 next year and expands the state earned income tax credit from 12.5 percent to 15 percent of the federal credit (the Governor indicated an interest in further expanding the EITC pending available resources following the mid-year revenue forecast). Senator Goldin and Representative Slater have each introduced bills ((S 2156 and H 7347, respectively) to further increase the EITC to 20 percent of the federal credit. Lawmakers have made real progress in these two areas over the past two years and we are pleased to see a commitment to raising the labor and living standards of our workers going forward.

These two measures are particularly important in light of the persistent decline in Rhode Island’s low wages since 2000, and the gap between low wages in Rhode Island and those in Connecticut and Massachusetts, evident in Figure 1.

Research shows that coupling an EITC increase with an increase in the minimum wage has a greater impact on reducing poverty than either does on its own. This finding contradicts those who point to one approach as superior to the other in helping low-wage workers make ends meet.  Both, together, have maximum beneficial impact. Using these policies together also requires that businesses and our government both play key roles in boosting incomes for workers in low-wage sectors, which is both fair and practical.

Today, minimum wage workers do not earn enough to meet basic needs.  The Rhode Island Standard of Need, a study that documents the cost of living in the Ocean State, shows that a single adult needed to earn $11.86 per hour in order to meet his or her most basic needs in 2014.

As seen in Table 1, Rhode Island currently significantly lags its neighbors, Massachusetts and Connecticut, in the size of state EITC, and will fall behind Connecticut (and even further behind Massachusetts) for the minimum wage, unless the Rhode Island minimum is increased to at least $10.10 in 2017. Both of our neighboring states have steadily increased their minimum wages in recent years.

EITC filers pay payroll taxes, sales and property taxes, the car tax, gas tax.  Even with the increase in the state EITC to 12.5%, Rhode Island still has one of the highest effective tax rates on low-income households, when looking at the combined state and local taxes – 7th highest among all states. The EITC is the best way to provide some targeted tax relief to those who need it most.

Compared to our neighboring states, families in the bottom quintile (bottom 20 percent of family income) pay 12.4 percent of their income in state and local taxes, compared with 10.0 percent in Massachusetts, and 10.6 percent in Connecticut. Increasing the RI EITC helps close this gap modestly – a 15 percent EITC in Rhode Island would lower bottom quintile taxes to 12.2 percent, and a 20 percent EITC would lower it to 12.0 percent, according to recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, evident in Figure 2. (Higher sales and excise taxes in RI account for much of the current gap).

Putting more money in the pockets of workers will also put more money in the cash registers of local businesses. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would put nearly $27 million in the pockets of 78,000 Rhode Island workers in low-wage jobs, money that would flow quickly into the local economy.

Raising the minimum wage and the EITC are important steps that lawmakers can take to help ensure that workers are able to keep their heads above water in the Ocean State, and to keep the Rhode Island economy on a path to full economic recovery.

The National Day of Reason is held every year on the same day as the the National Day of Prayer. The goal is to celebrate reason, an inclusive concept everyone can get behind, as opposed to prayer, which caters to the religious only. The Day of Reason also calls attention to the dangers of mixing church and state, dangers the National Day of Prayer epitomizes.

Darwin Day, celebrated on or around February 12 each year, marks the legacy and insight of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution was so important to our understanding of science and our place in the universe.

Last year the Connecticut Coalition of Reason petitioned Governor Malloy to declare May 7, 2015 a Day of Reason, but the petition was denied without explanation. Malloy is expected to reject this year’s petition to declare May 5, 2016 a Day of Reason because the policy of the Governor’s office is to “reject all proclamation requests out of hand if the same request was rejected in the prior year” says Patrick McCann, who prepared both petitions.

McCann is the President of the Hartford Area Humanists and the co-chair of the Connecticut Coalition of Reason. He wants the Governor to issue a proclamation “to recognize that Connecticut has a very large and thriving secular community.

“In fact,” says McCann, “a very recent Gallup poll shows that Connecticut is one of the least religious states in the country with 39 percent of respondents indicating that they were non-religious.”

When McCann later found out that Governor Malloy had signed a Day of Prayer proclamation at the behest of some religious constituents, he was furious. “By issuing a Day of Prayer proclamation and rejecting our Day of Reason proclamation request, the Governor is sending a very strong signal that he favors one segment of the population over another. I for one find that unacceptable.”

Last year Malloy’s office also rejected a petition to declare February 12 “Darwin Day” because it was submitted late. This year the petition was submitted on time, but Malloy rejected this one too without any consideration of the content.

Calls and emails to the Governor’s office seeking an explanation for the rejections have gone unanswered, forcing McCann to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last year. Although the reasons for the rejection of the proclamations were not available, the information obtained through the FOIA was telling.

According to McCann, “The Connecticut Governor’s office received 675 proclamation requests between January 1, 2015 and April 10, 2015. Of these, 601 were granted. Of the 11 percent that were rejected it is likely that some percentage were rejected for technical reasons e.g., falling outside the required time frame. The remainder must have gotten rejected for content. Since our request had complied with all the guidelines, it must have been rejected solely on content.”

“Non-theistic constituents like Mr. McCann have contemporary grounds on which they can base their concern,” added Dr. Jason Heap, executive director of the United Coalition of Reason, headquartered in Washington, DC. “If it is true that the reason for rejecting the Darwin Day proclamation was due to its being rejected last year, then it is understandable that non-theistic voters might feel as if their concerns and inspirations are second-class. Recognizing Darwin Day doesn’t glorify a court decision that determined that “intelligent design” as another form of creationism was unconstitutional and therefore had no place in our nation’s public-funded schools. Darwin Day does not mock religious thought such as concept of special creation or the removal of a deity’s responsibility for natural suffering. Rather, it is a recognition of a key figure in modern scientific inquiry–an inquiry that all humans benefit from, regardless of their sincerely-held beliefs.”

Heap also added his concerns for the potential rejection out of hand of McCann’s National Day of Reason proclamation. “It doesn’t take a theological scholar to understand that the National Day of Prayer’s task force has only one sincerely-held belief community in mind. Their website does not hide their mission to “…represent[s] a Judeo-Christian expression of the national observance, based on our understanding that this country was birthed in prayer and in reverence for the God of the Bible,” and that their supporting materials on the website is used as a tool for Christian evangelism. For Gov. Malloy to deny a National Day of Reason proclamation but find it necessary to create a Day of Prayer proclamation excludes non-theists in Connecticut as well as every other sincerely-held belief group that does not hold similar theological views to the National Day of Prayer Task Force. We are seeing how divisive sectarian prayer has become in our government buildings with rabbis being escorted from the premises after she exercised her free speech to claim the prayer as offensive, or using political processes to block the Satanic Temple from delivering their own Constitutionally-protected expression. It is in such current situations that I invoke the memory of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island colony, who wrote in The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution: “All civil states with their officers of justice in their respective constitutions and administrations are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual or Christian state and worship”.

Absent an explanation, Governor Malloy’s repeated rejection of his secular constituent’s concerns smacks of bigotry and preference. Fortunately, other elected officials in Connecticut have been far more supportive. Connecticut Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy sponsored and co-sponsored the Darwin Day resolution in the Senate and Representatives Jim Himes and Elizabeth Esty have sponsored and co-sponsored the Darwin Day resolution in the House. Rep Himes has sponsored the Darwin Day bill three times and has met with members of the Secular Coalition of Connecticut. Senator Blumenthal and his wife attended this year’s Darwin Day Bash held at the Norwalk Inn and Conference Center.