RI Progress Report: Austerity, URI Contracts, Police Unions

The Board of Governors for Higher Education meet tonight to decide whether or not to give raises to URI professors, and two other faculty unions, as tuition continues to skyrocket for students. The meeting is at 5:30 tonight, at CCRI’s Warwick campus, and according to the Projo, the professor’s union plans to bus faculty to the meeting. Gov. Chafee has lobbied against the raises. Tom Sgouros wrote an in-depth analysis of the debate back in early April.

The Providence Police Union plans to protest future fundrasiers for Mayor Angel Taveras. In an email obtained by WPRI, they write: “Be prepared to participate and stand your ground as this is going to be the biggest fight ever.”

Understatement of the day: “Rhode Island manufacturing may face uncertain future”. This is the headline on RI Public Radio’s brief announcing the series its launching this week on the the decline of manufacturing in the Ocean State.

It’s an austerity effort that would only make sense in East Greenwich. The proposed town budget would cut money to the Teen Center, a Friday night tradition (since, at least, I was in high school some 20 years ago) where local youths are offered an athletic alternative to the even longer local tradition of binge drinking. The budget protects taxpayer funding for the annual Summer’s End concert – the recently-started tradition of having the RI Philharmonic play a downtown concert. The former happens every Friday night and helps local teens avoid drinking and driving. The latter happens one Friday night of the year and offers adults (and others?) an opportunity to bring their own booze to a downtown party accompanied by classical music.

And in an austerity protest that would only make sense to Rep. Dan Gordon, he ended his tax protest on April 20 and filed his income taxes … the self-proclaimed libertarian reports he got a $331 refund from the state.

As Samuel G. Howard predicted yesterday, austerity will no longer be the de facto policy of European nations. According to the New York Times this morning: “After elections in France and Greece punished leaders advocating austerity, Europeans on Monday contemplated a new and untested political landscape shaped by competing demands for austerity on one hand to counter the debt crisis and growth on the other to avert further deprivation.

Vice President Joe Biden endorsed marriage equality on Sunday … though the White House wishes he hadn’t.