The city has been extremely transparent and open, taking the public’s input into consideration while drafting their design for the future of the 6/10 Connector. It is reassuring to know that the mayor and the planning department are actively listening to the needs and wants of the community. By taking a bottom-up approach, the City of Providence is conveying that its interests align with that of its communities, and appreciates the ideas and solutions that its residents bring to the table. Who else knows what’s best for the City of Providence other than the residents that live, work, and thrive here.

On Monday, October 3, the City released their draft plans for the future of the 6/10 Corridor at a public forum held at the Doorley Jr. Municipal Building in downtown Providence. While the City’s plans do not call for a surface boulevard that I and other community members would have liked to see presented, I can tolerate the parkway design. The parkway concept addresses the concerns of both sides about the looming question, “What should the future of the 6/10 Connector look like?” The plan addresses the need to fast-track the reconstruction of the structurally deficient Huntington Viaduct, out of concern that the structure might collapse. The plan appeases auto-interests as well as those citizens who want to see a concept that is more pedestrian and bike friendly, although we would much prefer a pure boulevard instead of a parkway.

The proposed parkway plan frees up land for development (approximately 50 acres), expands the footprint of DePasquale Square, adds two new off-street bike paths, creates a new exit to West Exchange Street, adds additional connections to the existing street grid, and reconnects parts of Olneyville to the urban fabric of Providence, among other things as well. The proposed “halo” elevated rotary where Route 6 merges with Route 10 allows for the potential to incorporate boulevard elements into sections of the route further down the line. While the entire length of the 6/10 Connector isn’t the pure boulevard that many of us had envisioned, the two-phased parkway plan allows the City and State to revisit the compelling arguments made in favor of an intermodal boulevard.

The most important aspect of the plan isn’t the plan itself. Rather, it is culmination of everything that has led to the plan being drafted in the first place. It is the countless hours spent by engaged citizens, who took it upon themselves to get involved, speak out, and voice their opinions about the project; citizens who persevered even when things weren’t going their way because they knew that this is a critical, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn the 6/10 Connector into something truly special. Without vocal citizens and lots of vigorous discussions, RIDOT would probably have elected to refurbish the highway a long time ago, and that wouldn’t have worked for motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, and city residents alike.

The future of the 6/10 Connector will single-handedly change the physical, social, and economic makeup of the city for generations to come. It is up to us as citizens to decide whether or not we want to make Providence a more livable community for our children, our children’s children, and ourselves. Or, if we want to sit idle, content with the current economic conditions in our Capital City. The choice is ours. RIDOT has the final say about the project’s design, and I strongly encourage my fellow Rhode Islanders to continue to be actively involved in the process, and vocal about the future we envision for a livable, thriving city for decades to come.

One is a $25.5 million upgrade to Bliss Hall, a prominent classroom building on the Quadrangle at the center of campus that was built in 1929, and “hasn’t really been renovated since then,” said URI President David Dooley in a recent interview with RI Future.

“The exterior will look exactly the same except the air conditioners won’t be sticking out the window any more because we will have state-of-the-art HVAC,” Dooley explained, “and there will be an addition on the back facing all the new engineering construction that will be going on behind Bliss Hall starting next year.”

The Bliss Hall renovation is part of an overall $150 million project, started under Governor Chafee, to upgrade the engineering program and its facilities, which Dooley described as a major area of growth at URI.

“We know it is one of our fastest growing colleges,” he said, noting there are more than 30 local businesses started by graduates of URI’s engineering school. “We know that every year we have more applications to the College of Engineering than we did the year before. We know we can’t accommodate all the qualified applicants that want to come here to become engineers.”

The second part of Question 4 would direct $20 million to fund “innovation campuses”  – or partnerships with the private sector.

“We want to do things that broadly build a robust and successful economy in this state and in the nation,” Dooley told me. “I do think we know enough about the importance of innovation and growing the American economy and keeping America competitive in an increasingly competitive global economy and we know enough about how innovation can fuel not just economic prosperity but also enhance the social fabric of the state and the nation to know that these kind of centers – which are well-precedented, and there are a wealth of success stories out there – can work, can be a magnate for investment in Rhode Island and can attract new talent into Rhode Island as well as create a wealth of new opportunities for the Rhode Islanders that are already here.”

Companies would apply in a public process, that has yet to be defined, and provide matching funds. The $20 million could go to several companies, or just one. “We know that they are going be selected on the basis of what looks like a good return on Rhode Island’s investment in terms of new jobs, new businesses and economic growth,” Dooley said. “How those get translated into very specific points is yet yet to be determined. We certainly expect to play a role in that because we think we have a lot of expertise to share in those areas.”

URI already has such partnerships with companies such as Amgen, Hasbro, Ratheon and Schneider Electric.

“We’ve already got some examples of companies that have come to Rhode Island specifically because they wanted to work closely with URI,” Dooley said, mentioning Navatek in Wakefield. “They are a Hawaii-based company. They opened up their second office right here in proximity to URI just so they could work with URI faculty and students on ocean engineering.”

Dooley said he was comfortable, both professionally and personally, if a defense contractor started an innovation campus with URI.

“To a degree, I can be comfortable with that because I do think we have a responsibility as the world’s leading democracy to provide leadership and in our 21st Century world that continues to mean that in addition to all the robust diplomatic efforts you can mount, you have to have the military capability to say this is what needs to happen or to intervene, if necessary,” he said. “That’s how I think about it individually, as the president I think about it as our responsibility is really to serve all the people of Rhode Island and therefore that includes individuals who are working in the defense industry here in Rhode Island.”

Dooley said he doesn’t worry that the matching funds will incentivize the university to educate for the market, rather than for enlightenment. He said URI’s general education requirements guarantee that can’t happen.

“It is the kind of investment that I think Rhode Island needs to continue to make in order to build not just an economy but a society that is robust and vibrant,” he said. “It’s about driving education, driving research forward and driving innovation. Because that nexus of innovation, the research, development transfer component of innovation been such a source of growth for the American economy ever since World War II, frankly.”

Every rational person in Rhode Island then told Mr Paolino that his plan was very strange as it went against all constitutional law and common sense. But in the very weird world in which nearly all public policy decisions are made by and for the people with a lot of money, I guess he became so out of touch with reality that he thought it made some kind of sense.

There are several major flaws in Joe Paolino’s proposal. Some of which have come out in the public discussion, some that need lots more exploration.

We need a real plan to end poverty, because no matter what you do, low income people are drawn to city centers. This is a hard and fast rule that is as old as cities themselves, 8,000 to 10,000 years. When people have almost nothing, when they are displaced from their land, conquest or mechanization have the same effect, or the factories have closed, the only place they can go is to the city. Elites can try to move them around the city, but all that does is move them, it does not end the poverty or the magnetic attraction cities have for the displaced. Mayor Elorza and all of the advocates are right, it’s a phony plan without jobs or even a whiff of a brighter future for the people being moved around so landlords can claim bigger depreciations.

In the future, a bus hub right downtown is going to be more critical to our survival than it is now. Instead of marginalizing transit to reduce our climate footprint and keep Providence above sea level, Providence needs to eliminate almost all automobile entrance to the city and get everyone riding transit, biking, boarding, or walking. Mr. Paolino has not considered the climate implications of his monstrosity, or maybe he does not care. But in any case, the bus hub belongs downtown, and you sound like a scoundrel wanting to push low income people away from your real estate properties and into someone else’s neighborhood, making it harder for people catching buses.

But you have already heard those points from others. What you are not hearing is that your economic development strategy is self defeating. An economy based on the needs of the real estate, finance, and insurance industries (you know, the FIRE that burned down the economy in 2008) is guaranteed to swing wildly between bubble and bust while pumping up the assets of the landlords and the banks, and displacing many other people. Piketty has made it quite well known that the greater the inequality in your community, the less well the economy will perform. Economies that have reached the point where real estate redevelopment is the underpinning of other economic activity are in big trouble. They become the early adopters of being a place with no work for most workers. So, they try to displace them away from their properties. But, as the inequality and the end of jobs as we know them further displaces people, as you get more climate refugees, you get more people (and water) flooding downtown right onto the very properties you want more money from.

It is time for economic development from the bottom up. We cannot rely on churning buildings downtown to create jobs for the people who do not have one. We can not rely on the wetlabs, communications businesses, dirty industry infrastructure, and app developers to create jobs for the people who need them, as they never will. The meds and eds strategy creates only a small number of jobs, most of those higher paying jobs, mostly to be filled from away, while creating few for the people already here. In other words displace the poor and have many more join those already on the streets is exactly what is intended, as it is the only way for the rich to steal more as the global economy and ecology strangle and overheat. There are now people asking for money at every street corner, people who feel permanently displaced from the economy.

The answer to our woes is not more concentrations of wealth, though that is the preferred economic development strategy these days. So maybe I am pissing into the wind. But the wall is cracking in the face of the resistance. We are not letting you build any more fossil fuel infrastructure whatsoever, and we are going to stop the running of economies to benefit the landlords of downtown and the bankers. We want clean power and we need democracy. When real estate and finance rule, the people suffer. The debts choke an economy, causing it to squander resources.

A most excellent way to understand the difference between the preferred solutions of the 1% and reality is to compare business climate rankings with various measures of the strength of an economy. No actual study has ever found a correlation between business climate rankings and economic performance. None. No study has ever found a correlation between strong environmental regulations and weak economic performance. None. Piketty demonstrated that inequality harms economic performance too. You want an example? How about Rhode Island. We get the worst rankings in the business climate indexes, but if you look at economic performance we are pretty close to the middle in growth rates, median income, and other performance based evaluations, and hardly a week goes by without the quality of life and new business start up culture being highlighted in the national media.

In other words on balance what the state and other institutions are doing to promote the profits of the 1% is harming us. Cutting taxes for the rich is useless for everything except lining their pockets and causing cities to neglect basic infrastructure. It does not help us systematically end poverty or stop climate change. Trickle down economics is like getting peed on. Which is why there are more and more efforts to restrict democracy and corral the people. Which is why the resistance grows. Daily and on many fronts simultaneously.

The former mayor, Governor Wall Street, the funders of the political machines that pull the strings on Smith Hill; they are all in need of some education on where the economy is going to go and why as the climate crisis rolls on and economic growth slows with the destruction of the resource base and greater “natural” disasters. The future is going to be more locally self reliant. We are going to locally generate renewable clean power. We are going to grow more of our own food. Our transport systems will be less automobile oriented. And the FIRE industries will not be allowed to burn down the economy again. If your plans to revitalize downtown do not take these things, including a slowing of economic growth, the odds of success are pretty slim.

Two new avenues for affordable health insurance made available through the ACA have helped significant numbers of Rhode Islanders gain coverage.  First, new Medicaid eligibility for adults (Medicaid expansion) allowed around 60,000 single adults with income marginally above the poverty line to have health insurance coverage.

Second, the new state exchange, HealthSourceRI, provided a pathway to coverage for another 35,000 Rhode Islanders who purchase private insurance. Almost 90 percent of enrollees, those with income below four times the poverty level, quality for federal tax credits to help pay their monthly premium. The majority of enrollees (60 percent) have income below two and half times the poverty level ($29,000) and also receive assistance paying for out of pocket costs including co-pays and deductibles. (Source: HealthSourceRI, Open Enrollment 2016)

According to the Rhode Island Annual Medicaid Expenditure Report for SFY 2015, the federal/state Medicaid program provides health insurance to one in four Rhode Islanders.  In addition to the 60,000 newly eligible single adults, 150,000 children and families with lower income and 12,000 children with special health care needs have comprehensive insurance through Medicaid.  Seniors (19,000) and people with disabilities (32,000) rely on Medicaid for the services they need to live safely in the community or in a facility when home-based care is not feasible.

“Rhode Islanders should be proud that we are 7th in the nation for the percent of residents who have health insurance coverage”, said Linda Katz, Policy Director at the Economic Progress Institute. “With health insurance, people are more likely to keep up with yearly preventive care visits and people with chronic conditions can get the treatment they need to promote their well-being.  Besides the obvious benefits for families and individuals, having a healthy work force is a good selling point for our state.  Medicaid and coverage through HealthSourceRI are vital to ensuring that thousands of our residents can afford comprehensive health insurance.”

Rhode Islanders are returning to work rebuilding our roads and bridges through RhodeWorks, modernizing our schools with the School Building Authority, and completing green energy retrofit projects through the Infrastructure Bank. We’re attracting new high-wage jobs from out of state, like GE Digital, and some of our biggest employers are doubling down on the state, including Citizens Bank. We have a long way to go, but it’s clear we are moving in the right direction.

Labor Day is an important time to recommit to supporting and protecting our workers. It’s why we raised our minimum wage last year and we’re working to do it again. We’re cracking down on misclassification and going after companies that break the rules to ensure that every worker gets a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

Our resilient and tireless workers do everything they can to grow our economy and strengthen our middle class. And in turn, I’ll be relentless in doing everything I can to ensure everyone has the opportunity to make it in Rhode Island.

I wish all Rhode Islanders a safe and happy Labor Day.

In Newport, Raimondo spoke at the annual conference of the Southern New England Defense Industry Alliance, a sort of chamber of commerce for the military industrial complex in southern New England. “We need to focus on what we are good at and we are good at defense,” Raimondo told the group at the Newport Hyatt Regency Hotel on Goat Island.

The defense sector is an important economic engine for Rhode Island, to be sure. According to a 2014 report from SENEDIA, there are more than 32,000 defense-related jobs in Rhode Island – about 6 percent of all jobs in the state. But there are obvious downsides to profiting from warfare. Providence-based Textron is the last North American company to still make cluster bombs and these controversial weapons of war are sold to Saudi Arabia and have been used on civilians in Yemen, for example.

“Of course we wish we lived in a world where this isn’t necessary,” Raimondo told me after her speech. “I wish there was no need for any of this. It’s an issue that I think we all grapple with. But the reality is we live in a very unsafe world, so it’s our job to protect our people.”

Later in the day, Raimondo went to Westerly to welcome Ivory Ella, a clothing company, to Rhode Island. The online retailer that employs about 40 people was convinced to relocate from Groton, Connecticut to Westerly with the help of $362,000 in tax credits from Raimondo’s Commerce Corporation.

“My good day today is not a good day for the governor of Connecticut,” Raimondo said to me.

“But,” she added a little later on in our conversation, “I hear your point.”

The point is that when one state pays a company to relocate there, it is also paying that business to damage another state’s economy. There’s been much written and said about states poaching jobs from one another – the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Providence Journal have each documented the downside of the practice.

Raimondo said it isn’t her job as governor of Rhode Island to worry about other state’s economic hardships.

“I’m elected by the people of Rhode Island to take care of Rhode Islanders,” she told me. “I’ve got a mission and my mission is to expand opportunity here.”

In some ways it’s great that Rhode Island has a thriving military industrial complex. And in some ways it’s great that we can poach jobs from Connecticut. But in the grand scheme of things these both seem like bad long term investments for our society, if not our economy. Unless, of course, you assume the United States and Rhode Island will always be at war with other parts of the world, including Connecticut.

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.]

Spotter links people looking for a parking spot with people with a vacant driveway. Press a button, the app finds and directs you to the closest parking spot. The recent college grads, Brown went to Brown University and Newman completed Rutgers, say they already have “hundreds of downloads” and have 80 available parking spots on the East Side of Providence. Download it here. Using a Spotter spot currently costs $1 an hour, the parking provider pays a percentage to the company.

“Two hour parking doesn’t make sense for a lot of people,” said Brown, about metered parking. “Commercial lots don’t make sense for a lot of people because it’s just way too expensive. By tapping into the sharing economy, and working with local residents … who have this idle asset, this driveway, they can begin bridging that gap and helping the people who need it.”

Newman added, “Anybody who has an empty driveway can sign up, put their spot on there, and start generating revenue.”

By opening the parking market to smaller players, their app can help create better urban environments by taking an emphasis away from downtown parking lots. “Creating a more compact, dense city center is always advantageous to the city,” Brown said. “We’d love to help turn some of those parking lots into parks.”

In the short term, they hope to offer a useful service to commuters and tourists of Providence. “We’re able to increase the supply of parking. We’re able to limit the need of more parking lots, creating a nicer Providence,” Brown said.

They believe their idea is “completely scalable.” Newport and Fall River might have ample need, and they are discussing ways to roll it out in other metropolitan areas of the United States and abroad. So far, they say, they’ve been pleased with the business climate in Providence and Rhode Island.

James Kennedy, RI Future transportation correspondent, and I interviewed Brown and Newman about their new service below:

From the headlines, you would think that CNBC is the gold standard economic authority. After the cable news network released its 10th annual “America’s Top States for Business 2016” listing, in which Rhode Island was ranked dead last, local corporate media raced to bring the bad news to readers and viewers. CNBC ranks R.I. worst state for business, CNBC: Rhode Island ranked ‘Bottom State for Business‘, and RI back to dead last in new CNBC rankings are typical examples from the Projo, Channel 10 and Channel 12 respectively.

Missing from the Cassandra-like coverage is any hint that the rankings are meaningless and based on metrics that rate our state on how well our policies kowtow to the whims of business, not on how well they benefit the poor and middle class. Only Ted Nesi even approaches this angle in his coverage, but he did so through the lens of competing political discourse. But what about the economics of the report? Does it hold up under scrutiny? I’ve tackled the subject of economic rankings before, here and here, trying to bring some sort of real economic analysis to bear.

I asked Doctor of Economics Douglas Hall, Director of Economic and Fiscal Policy at the Economic Progress Institute, for some insights. Hall said that many of CNBC’s economic indicators “have a lot of merit and point to the need to address matters via public policy, such as repairing the state’s crumbling infrastructure and the need to help Rhode Islanders improve their educational attainment. But when you deconstruct their aggregate groupings,” said Hall, “many of the categories are deeply flawed and point to policies that would severely undermine the well-being and quality of life of working families in Rhode Island.”

One indicator the report uses is “union membership and the states’ right to work laws.” Low union membership and strong anti-union right to work laws contribute to a higher economic ranking for a state in CNBC’s report, yet Hall says that “research clearly shows that as unionization rates have gone down, the well-being of the American middle class has gone down.” In Hall’s view, this metric “taints the entire aggregate measure.”

Another metric, the CNBC aggregate category for the cost of doing business, considers the cost of paying wages and presumably, says Hall, “a state in which every employee worked for sub-poverty wages would get a very high grade in this category, while those paying living wages that can sustain a family and support a viable business community through demand for goods and services, would get a low grade in this category.”

It seems clear that these rankings of states by various business interests, including corporate entities such as CNBC, puppet organizations such as ALEC and members of the State Policy Network (which includes the RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity) and various Chambers of Commerce are are not objective measures of a state’s economic well-being, but are tools crafted to shape public policy to the advantage of large business interests and to the detriment of the poor and middle class.

The most sensible tactic in dealing with such garbage is to file it accordingly.