John Simmons, executive director of RIPEC, and Gov. Linc Chafee. (Photo by Steve Klamkin / 630wpro.com)
Take a look at RIPEC’s board of directors – they are largely bankers, lawyers, health care professions and business executives – and it shouldn’t surprise that the pro-business lobby and advocacy organization wants the DEM to be subservient to a proposed commerce secretary.
Of course environmental management is in no way, shape or form simply a function business development. And that the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council thinks it should be shows clearly why – despite it’s name – it can’t be trusted to recommend public policy. This is more like something the US Chamber of Commerce would propose to a conservative Republican than anything an open-minded Rhode Islander would consider.
RIPEC offered to author a report on the efforts of the EDC after the 38 Studios debacle (And make no mistake, Chafee didn’t reach out to RIPEC to do this – despite the way it’s being cast by the media – RIPEC reached out to the governor) But instead, the business-backing organization used the opportunity to try to recast economic development in a way that would best benefit its supporters rather than Rhode Islanders.
The most egregious example of which is its recommendation that the Department of Environmental Management be put under the custody of its proposed commerce czar. This is not only a ridiculous idea, it also undermines one of the Ocean State’s best economic advantages: its well-maintained natural habitat and public access to it.
It’s akin to the teachers’ unions suggested the Department of Education be put under the custody of a labor secretary. Or, for the matter, Save the Bay suggesting the EDC be run by DEM. There may be areas of overlap in these examples – and perhaps even opportunities for improvements – but to suggest that one be put under the rubric of the other belittles the importance of the function that gets the demotion.
The 140-page report offers no justification for this huge policy change, probably because one doesn’t exist.
I’m not surprised that RIPEC thinks our natural habitat should be managed by someone concerned primarily with commerce, but I will be surprised if any politicians think this is a good idea.
Rhode Island should have someone who wakes up in the morning thinking about business – in fact, I’m pretty certain it does with the director of the EDC – but it should also have someone who wakes up in the morning thinking about the environment.
I personally don’t want CEO’s running environmental protection efforts. Clearly RIPEC is trying to use the EDC fiasco to push for more corporate infiltration into government. Also I noticed in ProJo that RIPEC started in 1932. I would be curious to know that history. Is their genesis like that of Tax Foundation, also created around that time in a response to slow down and disrupt the implementation of Roosevelt’s New Deal? Why and who created RIPEC. Former RIPEC staff already infiltrates RI government, have they helped out economy?
“It’s akin to the teachers’ unions suggested the Department of Education be put under the custody of a labor secretary.”
You don’t think some of your contributors would welcome DOL taking over DOE? Anyway, your right. It’s a bad recipe. Commerce and environment should be on equal footing under the Governor. If there is any conflicts with regulations, let the Governor or legislature settle them.
Ah, those RIPEC–kers are at it again. What a tired old nonevent. The aristocrats among us think that even further vertical integration, presided over, of course, by a hand-picked trusty, will bring further spine to the civil society that Lincoln Chafee prated about in his election speech.
Looks more like war as a cover-up for theft, with emergency measures at home to avouch it, will be the order of the day. What else is new?
Watching Ken Burns’ interesting film on the utter unpreparedness of Lincoln’s government for the collareral damage generated by the Civil War. No field hospitals. No ambulance corps. No centralized registry for the dead, and on and on and on.
If, indeed, there is war, as Mitt Romney, Cheney, and Netanyahu so devoutly hope there will be, Ken will be able to make a film about the utter fecklessness of a Republic that became an empire under the financiers, and their mouthpieces, and we can all anguish about that grievious tragedy, too.
The RIPEC–kers and their ilk want to ride us down gently into the dirt, so much so that foreigners will buy our birthright for scrap.
Now, that–War and Economic Depression–will be a real business solution to the disasters that these termites themselves have created.
Gambling for the Democrats. 38 Studios for the Repubs.
A true republic has never existed, but from FDR through Carter, we had a decent approximation of one in these United States. Now, we can only watch and laugh, like Gina must have, when the former Secretary of the Treasury, the guy, who, with Clinton’s help made a nightmare of Citigroup, falls in the freakin’ pool.