cities and towns – RI Future

July 9, 2015

PVD City Council fails to deliver on minimum wage promise in new TSAs

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Last year, after the General Assembly stole away the power of cities and towns in Rhode Island to set their own minimum wages, Providence City Councillor John Igliozzi told a packed room of disappointed hotel workers that the city was not prohibited from imposing higher minimum wage standards via tax stabilization agreements (TSAs), which are contracts between cities and private industry, and cannot be interfered with by the General Assembly.

Igliozzi said then that all future TSAs should include strong minimum wage requirements and many other worker protections and rights.

Igliozzi is the chair of the Providence City Council Finance Committee, so one would expect that he would follow up on this proposal, but so far, nothing like this has been incorporated into the new TSAs being cooked up in City Hall and expected to be voted on this week.

When Jesse Strecker, executive director of RI Jobs with Justice, testified before the Finance Committee of the Providence City Council, he presented a short list of proposals to ensure that whatever TSAs were adopted would truly benefit not just the investors and owners of billion dollar corporations but also the working people and families of Providence.

Strecker’s list included the following:

1. Provide good, career track jobs for Providence residents most in need by utilizing apprenticeship programs and community workforce agreements, hiring at least 50% of their workforce from the most economically distressed communities of Providence, with a substantial portion of that workforce made up of people facing barriers to employment such as being a single parent or homeless, or having a criminal record, offering job training programs so local residents are equipped with the skills necessary to perform the available jobs and hiring responsible contractors who do not break employment and civil rights law;

2. Pay workers a living wage of at least $15 per hour, provide health benefits and 12 paid sick days per year, and practice fair scheduling: offering full time work to existing employees before hiring new part time employees, letting workers know their schedule two weeks in advance, and providing one hour’s pay for every day that workers are forced to be ‘on call’;

3. For commercial projects, create a certain number of permanent, full-time jobs, or for housing developments, ensure that 20% of all units are sold or rented at the HUD defined affordable level. Or, contribute at an equivalent level to a “Community Benefits Fund,” overseen and directed by community members providing funding to create affordable housing, rehabilitate abandoned properties, or finance other community projects such as brown field remediation; and

4. Present projected job creation numbers before approval of the project, and provide monthly reporting on hiring, wages and benefits paid, and other critical pieces of information, to an enforcement officer, overseen by a Tax Incentive Review Board comprised of members of the public and appointees of the city council and mayor, to make sure companies are complying with their agreements, and be subject to subsidy recapture if they do not follow through.

Mayor Jorge Elorza submitted an amendment mandating that under the new TSAs, “projects over $10 million will be eligible for a 15-year tax stabilization agreement that will see no taxes in the first year, base land tax only in years 2-4, a 5% property tax in year 5 and then a gradual annual increase for the remainder of the term.”

In return, the “agreements include women and minority business enterprise incentives as well as apprenticeship requirements for construction and use of the City’s First Source requirements to encourage employment for Providence residents.”

But that short paragraph above contains few of the proposals suggested by Strecker.

Supporting the Jobs with Justice proposals are just about every community group and workers’ rights organization in Providence, including RI Building and Construction Trades Council, Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), UNITE HERE Local 217, IUPAT Local 195 DC 11, District 1199 SEIU New England, RI Progressive Democrats of America, Teamsters Local 251, Fuerza Laboral / Power of Workers, Environmental Justice League of RI, RI Carpenters Local 94, Restaurant Opportunities Center RI (ROC United), Mount Hope Neighborhood Association, American Friends Service Committee, Occupy Providence, Olneyville Neighborhood Association (ONA), Fossil Free RI, Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), Prosperity for RI, and the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School Prison Health Interest Group.

November 21, 2014November 23, 2014

How blue is Rhode Island, by town

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In the sensationally titled “Revenge of the Swamp Yankee: Democratic Disaster in South County,” Will Collette argued emotionally that despite statewide wins for Democrats in Rhode Island two weeks ago, South County was a sad place for the party. He makes a strong case that local South County races, through low turnout and Republican money, had a night more like the rest of the country than the rest of Rhode Island.

Will focuses on General Assembly and Town Council races, but his post made me wonder how different towns around Rhode Island voted compared to the state averages. So I dug into the numbers for statewide races. Here’s what I came up with:

Democratic Lean by Town Population

Democratic Lean by Town Density

This is a little confusing; here’s what I did:

I looked up what percentage of the votes in each town the Democrats and Republicans for each statewide office received.
I subtracted the GOP candidate’s percentage from the Democrat’s for each town, giving the percentage margin the Democrats won (or didn’t) by.
I then averaged together the margins for each statewide race, roughly giving each town’s Democratic lean.
I then subtracted the average statewide Democratic lean from each of those town leans, giving us an idea of how each town compares to Rhode Island as a whole.

Those are the numbers you see above. Here’s my spreadsheet. A few observations:

Hardly anyone lives in New Shoreham. But we already knew Block Island isn’t a population hub. (These population numbers are from Wikipedia and could be wrong.)
There’s a clear trend of the denser and more populous cities voting more for Democrats than less populous towns. I ran the correlations and it’s 0.55 for population and 0.82 for density. Both are reasonably strong.
Imagine the vaguely logarithmic trendline that would best fit these points. For the density graph the formula for that trendline would be y = 0.084*ln(x) - 0.6147. It’s in relation to that trendline that I’ve made the map at right. Gray towns are those that voted about how you’d expect based on their density, blue towns voted more Democratic than density would suggest while red towns voted less Democratic.
Remember this is one point in time, November 4, 2014. It can’t tell us a lot about how things are changing or how all those people who didn’t turn out would vote if they did.

So at the end of the day, what does this tell us? Municipalities with higher population & density tend to vote for Democrats more than towns with lower populations. This isn’t just true in Rhode Island, it’s true across the country. But what is interesting here is how different areas of the state deviate from that implied trendline.

June 13, 2014June 13, 2014

RI House to hotel workers and PVD City Council: screw you

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Last night the Rhode Island House passed a measure in the budget that would eliminate the ability of cities and towns in Rhode Island to set their own minimum wage. Though the bill was targeted to stifle a proposal before the Providence City Council, Representative Ray Gallison, chairman of the House Finance Committee, inserted the new state mandate into the budget bill, which effectively cut off any debate or public comment.

In an effort to combat that proposal, Rep. Maria Cimini, a Providence progressive, introduced an amendment that would allow voters in the city to set the minimum wage by ballot initiatives. But in a curious turn of events withdrew her measure after Rep. Michael Chippendale, a Foster Republican, asked if the language as written would allow cities and towns to lower the minimum wage to $2 an hour.

In response, Cimini asked that Gallison’s bill be taken out of the budget and voted on separately. More debate followed, but the conservative, pro-business members of the General Assembly passed Gallison’s measure 57 to 17. This with no real debate and no public comment. Democracy in action.

Along the way jokes were made, several reps pretended to understand economic policy and an exciting night of politics was had by all.

Somehow though, it was forgotten that the entire reason for Gallison’s bill, the entire reason this was being discussed in the General Assembly at all, was because a small group of hotel workers, men and women working long hours for little pay and less respect, dared to believe that their democratically-elected government might work for them, instead of for the powerful forces of money and business.

One can imagine the panic on the faces of the new leadership in the House as they realized that people were rising up and demanding economic policies and laws that benefited the many over the few and the have-nots over the haves. One can further imagine the smug look of satisfaction that passed over their faces as they crafted a plan to take away the tiny amount of political power these working mothers and fathers had access to.

After all, how dare someone who has never had the money to donate to a political campaign believe that the system will work for anyone except the rich, the entitled and the well-connected. With a laugh and a smile and barely concealed contempt for everything these working men and women have attempted, Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and the Rhode Island House of Representatives stomped on the rights and the dreams of good people suffering crippling poverty as if it were the most common and expected thing in the world.

Because, sadly, it is.

DSC_9387 Lima — How many dollars should workers receive?

DSC_9419 MacBeth — Voted against raising working mothers out of poverty.

January 14, 2013January 14, 2013

Abolish the Property Tax

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In 2010, the property tax came into full view for me. That was the year the Providence City Council was forced to raise taxes on the East Side, whose property values had increased while the rest of the city’s had fallen. A friend of mine called me up to turn out with his family to the City Council meeting. Flanked by three landlords (all living on the property they rented) I sat through the proceedings, which brought cries of anguish from the watchers as the Council did what it felt necessary to prevent bankruptcy.

I was working on David Segal’s campaign at the time, and I went back to work the next day. Mr. Segal, himself a former Providence city councilor, later summed up the ills of the property tax in one very succinct sentence (as I recollect): “it’s the only tax that doesn’t take into account people’s ability to pay.”

Sometime after, we were canvassing voters in Woonsocket, and door after door, property taxes topped the list of complaints. It’s hard to stand there and listen to a woman describe how she’ll have to leave the home she raised her children in because she can’t pay the tax and knowing that there’s little the office your candidate is running for will have little to do with it.

Property tax seems to be the forgotten trio of the big three taxes in the state; the other two are sales and income. Duels over the latter two seem to be yearly battles; Governor Lincoln Chafee previously fought ineffectually to broaden and reduce the sales tax, while House Minority Leader Brian Newberry made it his opening salvo for the 2013 legislative session. The General Assembly, which implemented a “flat tax” and then handily “repealed” it by making it permanent. It seems to have had the intended effect, if that effect was for the economy to stay flat.

Property taxes, in the meantime, have shot up, with communities across the state asking to raise them beyond state caps. Anger over the car tax (a form of property tax) has become especially emblematic of the issue; worse, it has turned citizens against large nonprofit institutions who pay only voluntary payments to communities. Unrestricted by property tax, they’re free the purchase real estate and shrink a community’s tax base while greatly enriching the nonprofit.

But our communities have little choice to accept this; they are devoid of other funding mechanisms. The General Assembly is unwilling to provide funding for cities and towns, the same funding it cut off years ago. So now we are strangling ourselves with the property tax.

A solution to this revenue dilemma seems to lie in a post on The Urbanophile, (urban analyst Aaron Renn’s blog) post about New England vs. Midwest culture (and yes, I saw Mr. Renn recent post in GoLocal and did some reading):

The manner in which local taxes were levied in Connecticut is very different than in Ohio. In Ohio, income tax (charged where you work, not live) funds much of the local revenue for cities and townships, with property taxes going to fund school districts which are operated as separate governmental subdivisions. In Connecticut, property taxes support most of the local level spending, so property value is king. In a majority (although not all) of the communities the school district is only semi-autonomous and is funded directly as a line item in the municipal budget.

Would allowing Rhode Island’s communities to tax in this manner; levying an income tax based on employment location, while reducing property taxes to cover only school districts; create a better Rhode Island? It would drastically shift incentives, away from maintaining property values (which are already going to be high in one of the most densely populated states) towards job creation.

Furthermore, it would change the tax base away from those who can’t pay the tax to those who can. Rents, likewise, would lose some of their upwards pressure; renters might actually see savings afterwards, and rents might be likely to come down. Resentment towards large institutions might also dissipate. While protected from property taxes, I’m pretty sure nonprofits are not shielded from income taxes, meaning that they would be taxpayers along with the rest of Rhode Island’s citizenry. Negotiations over raising their voluntary payments might permanently end, especially if large institutions found ways to assist their local school systems.

It would undoubtedly be a radical action for the state to take. But when the moderate, timid actions have failed, what else is left? It’s time to give our communities better tools to defeat their fiscal fears.

January 11, 2013January 13, 2013

Regionalization Difficulties

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You can see Warwick from the top of EG Town Hall but the two have not been able to work out regionalized fire dispatch after three years of working on it. (Photo by Bob Plain)

Regionalization is one of those issues in Rhode Island that many people talk about but never seems to move forward.

In a recent GoLocalProv article URI professor Ed Mazze suggests again that the state should regionalize along its five counties. But Warwick Mayor Scott Avedesian explained to RIPR Political Roundtable this morning why it’s easier said than done.

“When it comes down to the details everyone gets very territorial and no one wants to give at all,” he said. “In every county, there is someone that nobody wants.”

Mr. Avedesian would know; a three year effort to regionalize fire dispatch services with East Greenwich just recently fell apart, East Greenwich Patch reports this morning.

Regionalization presents some serious obstacles for Rhode Island, which along with Connecticut, is one of two states in the nation with no form of county government, according to the last U.S. Census of Governments. As noted in GoLocal, Sen. Louis DiPalma (D — Little Compton, Middletown, Newport, Tiverton) is working on legislation this session that would, in theory, alleviate some of the obstacles.

Perhaps if the General Assembly was to offer incentives to cities and towns for regionalization it could get them to voluntarily associate along geographical closeness or cultural similarity. The state should not to regionalize based solely on county lines drawn in the 17th century when Rhode Island was entirely different than today.

Such an incentive for voluntary association will still have to be powerful, but it’s possible. For instance the GoLocal article places regionalization in a context of property taxes. But the recession, combined with the cuts to state aid, forced municipalities to raise property taxes (as the article points out).

Restoring that aid as a condition for consolidating services across municipal lines could see our state’s communities become much more willing participants. Offering a loan or other funding mechanism for getting services in line with each other might also see communities more willing to participate.

Furthermore, an unsaid issue is that “efficiency” and “cost-saving” often means job loss. We need to make sure our police and fire departments are either protected from that, or else there’s something waiting for anyone who has to be let go due to redundancy.

A part of consolidating services is to break beyond lines on the map in exchange for fiscal sense. If we remain trapped in a 17th Century mindset about the importance of our vestigial counties, look for regionalization to be a troublesome road, filled with issues of geography and suburban-urban clashes.

April 30, 2012April 29, 2012

Carcieri Passes Buck for Stiffing Cities and Towns

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With former Gov. Don Carcieri now being blamed for the fiscal mess Rhode Island’s poorest communities find themselves in because of his starve the beast policy towards state aid to cities an towns, the retired Republican took to the friendly airwaves of WPRO recently to defend his decisions.

“You said it very well,” he said to Steve Kass – the former full-time-now-fill-in talk radio host who gave Carcieri such favorable attention at the time that the governor finally just dropped the pretense and made Kassman his communication director in 2005. Seriously, that’s who was conducting the interview – the guy’s former communications director.

“Every business person I knew was looking at their business an seeing sales decline and figuring out how they could reduce their costs and be more efficient and it was pretty obvious government needed to do the same,” Carcieri continued. “We couldn’t say we need the same amount of money or more when all of our citizens and all of our businesses are hurting.”

Kass’ probing follow up question? “And also deliver quality services as well,” he tacked on to Carcieri’s defense. To which the former governor added, “Well of course that goes without saying.”

Riveting radio, indeed. Nothing more interesting than listening to a politician make unchallenged talking points.

But then it got, if not interesting, at least bizarre when Kass actually blamed the legislature for his former boss’ crowning fiscal legacy. Carcieri, knowing he would be tossed only softballs, played right along.

“You kind of get painted with whatever happens out of the legislature it’s something you have to live with,” he said.

Yeah, you especially get painted with that brush when it’s your legislative proposal that the General Assembly passes. Never mind that later in the conversation, when Kass tried to blame Congress for the nation’s deficit, Carcieri kept the onus on the executive at the helm.

“It takes leadership,” he said. “You know that.”

Kassman knew that, of course, after Carcieri told him he did.